Buying traffic · also called bait headline, curiosity gap
Clickbait
Clickbait is a headline or image engineered to provoke a click through exaggeration, withheld information or shock, without delivering what it implies.
"You won't believe what happened next." Clickbait works by opening a gap between what you know and what you want to know, then failing to close it honestly. The click is the goal; the reader's satisfaction is not.
It has long been the cheap fuel of low-grade arbitrage, especially on native advertising, because a sensational headline raises CTR and so lowers the price of each click. But it is a false economy in the search model. A person lured by a celebrity rumour has no interest in the "best car insurance" links on the page. Either they leave, or they click at random, and the advertiser who pays for that click gets nothing. Feeds measure this through advertiser conversion data and respond with smart pricing, deductions, or termination.
It is also a rule problem at every stage. Ad platforms restrict sensational and misleading creatives, Google requires the ad text to be passed with RSOC requests and to match the page, and consumer law such as the FTC Act prohibits deceptive advertising. Curiosity is allowed. Deception is not.
Think of it like this
It is a shop window showing a sports car with a sign saying "inside". You walk in and they sell socks. You got a visitor; you did not get a customer.
Related terms
Misleading ad
A misleading ad promises or implies something the landing page does not deliver, tricking people into a click they would not otherwise have made.
Ad angle
An ad angle is the particular idea or motivation an ad uses to make a topic interesting, such as saving money, curiosity, convenience or news.
Native advertising
Native advertising is paid promotion designed to look like the editorial content around it, typically a headline and thumbnail shown beneath or beside articles on news sites.
Smart pricing
Smart pricing is Google's system for automatically lowering what an advertiser pays for a click on a partner site when that click is less likely to lead to a sale.
Ad review (ad approval)
Ad review is the check an advertising platform runs on each ad and its landing page before, and sometimes after, allowing it to be shown.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR is the percentage of people who click something after seeing it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
Sources: Google AdSense Help: Related search for your content pages