On the top of the StraightDope.com home page just now there was one of those text Google AdWords banner ads. One on the ads in it was for Giraffe’s boards, one was some PR stuff for BP, and the last was something like “Ask the Master: Did Isaac Newton die a virgin? straightdope.com”.
I don’t know if that’s paid for on an impression or click-through basis, but it seems pretty silly to pay Google to get people click on a link to take them back to the page they are already on. Whatever they are paying you as the site owner hosting an ad must be less than what you’d be paying as an advertiser to have the ad there.
If I’m confused on how this works and, say, there’s some setting for the site to serve up a free ad for itself if there are no paid ads available then never mind.
I have no idea why such an ad would appear. We don’t advertise, since there doesn’t seem much point. (If you Google “did Isaac Newton die a virgin?” TSD appears at the top of the list with no effort on our part.) Perhaps some friend of TSD has placed ads on our behalf, but if so this was done without our knowledge.