The Price of Free Google Report.
Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
You must log in or # to comment.
Well let’s see…
- I’ve used Firefox with uBlock Origins pretty much as soon as uBlock Origins came out. I’m now using Librewolf.
- Im using a YouTube extention that automatically skips sponsers and adreads.
- I don’t use Google for my searches. Haven’t for over 10 years.
- I use Spotify on my PC, with the Bash Spot X patch.
- My OS is also Linux, so no built-in ads.
- On my phone I have AdAway installed.
- I patched my YouTube app with ReVanced Manager, giving me block against ads, sponsers, and adreads.
- I don’t use Spotify on my phone, instead opting to download music I bought from artists (typically Bandcam) or get through Soulseek.
- I use Firefox on my phone too, with uBlock Origins. Did that for nearly as long as my PC.
- I also don’t use Google for my searches there.
I’m very curious about what my value to Google is, considering all that.
Your location data. You help with traffic notifications, harveating of networks in relation to your location. Even if you dont use maps.
What is bash x spot?
It’s crazy that we have to go to that much effort just to have a reasonably pleasant online experience.
Imagine if humanity would spend all this energy and effort into things that would actually benefit humanity world wide. Medicine and medical personnel, food research and production, education, housing, care for the elderly…
Oh man, this world could be so nice…
We’re still basically monkeys with nukes.
AND impatience
AND impotence
I want to argue against that but that would take too much time.
Ape live short die fast time 4 individual ape priceless
I think about this all the time. Tech company spends $19 billion more in ai, etc. Meanwhile, my local school system is firing teachers over a $500,000 shortfall.
I expect my price is through the floor. Living in Ireland with ad blocker enabled and Google set to disable ad tracking and personalized ad delivery. Even when I use their YouTube app and am compelled to see ads, many of them are bottom of the barrel garbage for pay to win games / casinos and outright scams because Google can’t match a more lucrative campaign against me.
It’s funny because I also listen to podcasts on Spotify and the podcasts are so bereft of matching campaigns the ad break starts and stops almost instantly. The only one that doesn’t is Behind the Bastards which repeatedly inflicts 2 minutes of plugs for other Cool Zone Media podcasts that I’m habituated to auto skip through.
Fuck I’m getting rolex ads and nice vacations lately.
From the looks of it I do a lot of “high value” searches and I’m perpetually online due to work. I bet they fucking love me.
Clear cookies and use a vpn to book flights.
Ok but what actually is the issue? Whenever I ask this people respond things like oh they are making money off you. Again what is the actual issue?
Data collection. One of the reasons the Nazis were so successful was because countries like Germany and the Netherlands kept excellent records on people. As soon as they got access to those records, they were easily able to identify people as undesirables and send them off to the camps.
Today, Google collects data like this on you, and then the US government buys it off them, bypassing constitutional privacy protections. This is the one of the ways ICE is targeting people. (Feel free to replace with your local equivalent.)
In order to prevent things like this happening, we should prohibit the collection of the data in the first place.
OK so it’s done. All the data scraping is illegal.
Now all that money they are making either comes directly out of our pockets or you don’t use it any more. A lot of countries now cannot afford the internet as a complete service.
The thing is though that people are selfish so this isn’t going to happen.
And it worked just fine without those services, or the Internet at all, for thousands of years. I’m not sure if the Internet has been a net positive or negative for society yet.
What defines advertising value to calculate this?
I dont buy anything online, Amazon or otherwise. And I dont engage with any ads unless by mistake. I suppose there is value in market research itself but nobody is making any sales revenue off somebody like me.
How do you search for a restaurant or a barber when you’re in a city you’ve never been before? Or how do you rent a car on an airport in another country? You ask for a telephone book?
I typically find those things on the map. Or in specialized apps. Don’t see how it’s ad driven revenue.
Also who is changing barbers every time or moving between cities every few weeks? It’s like once a year thing for most people, isn’t it?
the point was you may be using some advertised service even if you think you don’t.
Even just walking down the street looking for a place for lunch, the street signs are advertising to you.
but nobody is making any sales revenue off somebody like me.
Everybody who thinks this is definitely having sales revenue made off of them. It needs to be restated forever in discussions like this that the metric for success in online advertising is not largely “oh shit, I could go for one of those right now”.
Those are what stick out in our mind because we remember them. I really did see an ad for Roblox as a kid and immediately go start playing. But sooooo much of advertising is subconscious to a point that we couldn’t possibly measure its true effect except by statistics.
Even beyond what we purchase: I’ve been bombarded with sponsorships for Raycons for years. Even with SponsorBlock on YouTube, sometimes they leak through. I will never buy a Raycon product. But I still occasionally talk about them, inadvertently advertising them, simply because they’re a good punching bag. I watched a whole video reviewing what pieces of shit Raycons are. Fuck it: I’m talking about Raycon right now. And that’s still among the worst-case scenarios for the advertiser. So much of advertising isn’t “I want this product now” or even “this product looks desirable”; it’s headspace.
The idea that advertisers’ psychological manipulation just doesn’t work on certain people needs to die and stay dead. If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and any effect is a better effect than nothing. If you realize an advertisement worked on you, the advertisement has failed part of its job.
I’m guilty of exactly this. I buy almost nothing online. But I recently got into weight lifting. I wanted good at home adjustable dumbbells. I have a fully stocked gym that I use four times a week, but when I miss a day, I want to at least do something.
Fast forward to me refusing to pay $1,000 for them. I am the target demographic described in the high income no kids male part and low and behold, a beautiful kind Lemming pointed out I can get the exact pair I had been looking for on Facebook marketplace cheaper (and new) on a website I’d never heard of.
Watching reviews, breakdowns, demos, all were imprinting in my mind that I want this particular set. Am I sucker? Maybe. Did I spend $250 on a product I use often and increases my overall quality of life? Definitely.
Yeah, you look at products long enough, and you start getting imprinted with what ends up looking like a reasonable price. Is it a good or bad thing? I don’t know. But, like you said, you use it and it’s worth it to you.
Personally, I got a regular set of 1" weights, two 1" dumbbell bars, and clips. And a cable column. That was way back during covid, and it helped get me through being at home a lot. Now I just go to a gym.
