That’s wild. It’s possible that Google shows me relevant ads. But if it’s formatted anything like a sponsored result, I think my eyes just skip past it. Like after so many years I just have ad block built in to my retinas.
I wonder if one was actually useful, maybe I’d notice it?
We easily adapt and block out stuff we don't want to see. In big cities we do this automatically - we don't even notice the dirt, parked cars, litter, people.. unless we consciously focus on them. I guess it is the same with ads, they lose their power as we adapt to them.
The solution is to force ads upon you and hope that you accidentally click on one due to sensory overload. Or more ads.
Yeah Banner Blindness is definitely a thing, it's something to keep in mind with UI design where you can end up making something so in your face that the user just ignores it even harder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
If it was actually the best result for you, they wouldn't need it to be an ad.
Competitors on Apple's App store can pay to show up when consumers search for the app they're after. To counter-act this, some apps will pay to have their app show up, as an ad, after you search explicitly for them
Meaning that, due to and capitalist incentives and double-dipping from tech companies, what you're searching for may actually be what's advertised
Oh yeah. I recently started with engaging with a vendor that has good SEO and I would just instinctively skip past their search result because it was one of those expanded ones.