I recently did an experiment with one of my sites (don't ask what site it is).<p>This is what I did.
For 3 days, i spammed some forums with irrelevant headlines that only dumb people would fall for. such as "I made $XXXXX in 1 day. See how i do it." and then a link to my side. On those days, the adsense takings were record highs. They were clicking like mad.<p>Thereafter, for another 3 days, i spammed the same forums with RELEVANT headlines with content that is relevant to the topic being discussed. I just shove the link to my site at the end of the content. Based on the traffic records, the number of new visitors visiting is the same as the prior 3 days. BUT the adsense takings tumble to 1/3 of the previous 3 days. This means that these people are clicking on less ads.<p>Of course, this empirical observation might not be statistical significant but if this is of any indication, adsense would only work for content site targeting dumb people who reach their site via search engines. Using Adsense for Digg or Reddit just wouldn't work.<p>FYI, i have stopped spamming. So don't berate me for doing so. These 6 days were the only days i spammed.
The only times I've responded to advertisements, I've copy-and-pasted the URL of the destination and put it in the address bar, to avoid any payment from anyone.<p>_That's_ how bad techie people can be for business.<p>My mother, on the other hand, will sit and read pop ups.