Somebody’s got to be getting rich or no one would bother. What type of financial arrangement is usually involved?
Well, Ok, the way I have seen it work is that you go to a page- simply chock full of ads. The clickbait might be “40 pictures you wont believe, and # 29 is amazing!”. You have to go thru a page to see each picture, each page also full of ads.
Basically, they generate money from ad revenue.
I’d be surprised if clickbait sites survive much longer. Internet advertising rates are in freefall, especially for things like click bait sites which are not at all targeted and really only have “low value eyeballs”. Targeted advertising is much more valuable and it’s really where the money is going, you might be lucky to get 1 in 200,000 views with a useful click through on a generic click bait site.
You might also find this forum useful, summarises the “hook” in click bait articles in a single line:
Naughty.
Read this article on “content farming”–you won’t believe what’s in the see also! (Link farms, click farms? WTF?)
Ever notice when you click on that stuff (“what do sitcom stars of the '70’s look like now” type crap) it’s really slow between pictures on the slide show? It’s to keep you on each page longer so you’ll get bored and look at the ads.
And they lie like mother fuggers. I clicked on one that said “You’ll never guess who Gene Wilders daughter is” and it went through a bunch of celebrities kids but never mentioned Wilder.
South Park did a couple of episodes on this.
Google and others are also conspiring against clickbait links and will no longer permit or index them. No cite, read this on one of the tech sites a few weeks ago. Not surprising that it’s in part because it’s devaluing ad revenue the same way letting 5.000 homeless in might devalue the Black and White Ball. Bad for everyone, and probably not all that great for 99% of the clickbaiters.
I am heartily sick of seeing scads of this web junk food on even quality, big-name sites. It can die any day now.
Ads currently showing on this page (for us non-members):
"His Final Words Were Shocking" <picture of Don Knotts>
"20 Mysterious Photos That Cannot Be Explained" <completely non-mysterious photo>
"Presidents Ranked By IQ Guess Who Was First" <picture of laughing Obama>
"13 Poisonous Foods We Commonly Eat" <picture of cashews>
Presumably there’s enough money in these stupid ads to help fund this messageboard.
Mangnets.
There’s also different kinds of clickbait, too - besides the "Do These 29 Hollywoo Stars And Celebrities Know Things? What Do They Know? We Found Out (And Number 12 Will Amaze Your Dog)" sites, which - as has previously been mentioned - are really just thinly-veiled ad delivery exercises, there’s also “Hot Take”-type clickbait on news websites.
That’s basically where someone posts a particularly controversial opinion piece, knowing it’s going to get a lot of people reading it and commenting on it; that sort of thing is audience metric/advertising gold (Gold, Jerry! Gold!).
Some internet advertising is sold with guaranteed page impressions - ie the website guarantees that x number of people will see the page; clickbait headlines (What do you get when you cross an owl with a bungy cord?) are one way to reach those targets.
Those are different kinds of links.
One of the most annoying for tech support people, are sites which essentially collecting every tech support question they can run across, and posting the links to them all. Google something like “Windows 7 SP1 will not install” or “folder security AD SID shows not username” or similar tech question - it’s getting better, but you used to get more than anything sites that listed these tech support questions on several other sites, but no answers. List 300 tech questions on one page and you’ll have the keywords to get a hit out of almost any tech question.
Plus, I seem to find the same discussion thread word for word on half a dozen sites. Someone’s blatantly ripping off.