What's the flow there for a user? They're researching an answer ... do they ignore the issue and run off and buy something? I sometime have poor focus but when you're problem solving it seems the least likely time to distract yourself with shopping.

I did once follow a Google ad about 10 years ago, but in my defence I was just surfing cool tech and the image looked interesting. Of course I didn't buy anything, who lets advertisers tell them what to buy?

I digress.

> They're researching an answer ... do they ignore the issue and run off and buy something?

Yes, that's an entirely credible idea. To use the first ad I found as an example, maybe I'm debugging an annoying issue with migrating my MongoDB cluster and I notice an ad for a managed MongoDB service and realize I'd rather pay them to deal with this.

> Of course I didn't buy anything, who lets advertisers tell them what to buy?

I do! There are millions of useful services out there and ads are an effective discovery tool.

Of course, we know you are special. But consider that other people may not be as strong willed and resilient to the advertisers' ways.

I think I would expect logged-in users to be more likely to have whitelisted the site than random Google visitors.

But there are a lot more of the random Google visitors than active participants. SO is effectively a machine for getting smart people to create specific, targeted searchable content to run ads against.