Half of the problem is knowing where people will click, the other half is knowing when.
People into Black Hat SEO circa 2008 would often practice "blending" where the point was fitting the Google text ads into places on your site where people would be likely to mistake them for content. This is related tactically to a certain kind of landing page which seems to make no sense, but some users will get confused and click on a random link which goes "ka-ching".
In that kind of site all the links are paid links, on the real web it is not too different, it is maybe 10 or 20 paid links per real link. Fitts' law is on their side. I guess the only reason they don't put mini-banners between the navigation links (as Fitts would have you do) on the bottom of the page is that goes too far and gets you kicked out of the ad network.
I have noticed the layout shifts that happen on certain sites when I am just about to touch a link on my tablet and thought... "I wonder if you can predict some clicks based on the accelerometer trace" but then, nah, they'd have to ask permission to use the accelerometer wouldn't they?
Half of the problem is knowing where people will click, the other half is knowing when.
People into Black Hat SEO circa 2008 would often practice "blending" where the point was fitting the Google text ads into places on your site where people would be likely to mistake them for content. This is related tactically to a certain kind of landing page which seems to make no sense, but some users will get confused and click on a random link which goes "ka-ching".
In that kind of site all the links are paid links, on the real web it is not too different, it is maybe 10 or 20 paid links per real link. Fitts' law is on their side. I guess the only reason they don't put mini-banners between the navigation links (as Fitts would have you do) on the bottom of the page is that goes too far and gets you kicked out of the ad network.
I have noticed the layout shifts that happen on certain sites when I am just about to touch a link on my tablet and thought... "I wonder if you can predict some clicks based on the accelerometer trace" but then, nah, they'd have to ask permission to use the accelerometer wouldn't they?