The moment these ads are loaded on the page, real time auction occurs, where advertisers place bids algorithmically and automatically, based on your profile. Facebook makes it's money by selling this ad space. It doesn't particularly care whether you click on them or not. But if they don't load in the first place, there's nothing for Facebook to sell.
The real insideous part is that advertisers don't need to actually bid on the auction to participate, and anyone participating gets to havest your ad profile. This is one of the big ways data brokers are able to build profiles on you. They can then do whatever they want with this info, and you'd probably never know.
If youre referring to whether or not Meta "cares" of you click and ad or not, then fair play. I'd argue that's more or less semantics, but ok, they do care and there is indeed an entire industry built on them caring.
In my defense I was more referring to the fact that whether you click or not doesn't change the fact that there is still ad sales happening in the background, and based on that, yes my assesment is correct.
If you'd like to clarify which part of my argument you had issue with instead of having me just guess, that'd be helpful too.
More to the point though, if there isn't ads rendered, you can't even get accidental clicks.
The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices.
In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.
government's don't surveil for money, unless you bend the argument a bit to say the government has finite resources and is run off money itself. which is kinda true, but also kinda fuzzy (the Fed).
There’s a delicate balance, more impressions isn’t always a good outcome. Id assume here given the battle against ad blockers that the platforms do believe the aggregate impression mix leads to good performance for advertisers though
We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.
Even cringy ads that digust or anger users in the moment have a subtle effect of making them more likely to buy or recommend that brand in the future. The name recognition is what advertisers are buying, it doesn't have to immediately persuade the user to click for them to get what they want.
Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.
many of times, i have looked to purchase a product or service and remember an ad that i saw that has alter my decision.