<p>Well, I'm certainly using it&mdash;I've offered a bit over 150 bounties (>90% of them on other people's questions). Other users have offered a substantial number of bounties as well. I'd say it's <em>somewhat</em> effective, but better questions are more effective.</p>

<p>However, most of my bounties have been to reward good answers rather than to draw attention. A number of users have offered many bounties on their own questions (in several cases, almost all of their earned reputation has plowed back into bounties) -- those users clearly seem to see some value in doing so, whether it's to gain more / better answers or simply to reward the people who spend time on their questions.</p>

<p>(I haven't examined the figures in any detail so these are just seat-of-the-pants impressions.)</p>

<p>Of the draw-attention kind, my rough guess would be that I had something under a 50% hit rate (drawing at least a somewhat helpful answer), and I'd say that if the question was a bit unclear before a bounty, it will remain so after a bounty is placed; the rate could be much lower on the questions that weren't really clear.</p>

<p>There also seems to be a good deal of variation in hit rate by topic. </p>

<p>Overall, the best thing you can do to get attention for a post is make it as clear and engaging as you can. Only after that would I suggest you consider a bounty, but with a really good question you should still be prepared for the substantial possibility of getting no response.</p>

<p>On the other hand, offering bounties does seem to increase the upvotes a question gets, sometimes to the extent that it's worth a substantial fraction of the bounty, so if the question is a good one and you bounty it yourself, sometimes a good fraction of the bounty cost is made up for. If you bounty good questions it's not necessarily very expensive.</p>

<p>You can get statistics from the <a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/queries" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Stack Exchange data explorer for our site</a> (<a href="http://data.stackexchange.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a> will let you choose a site)&mdash;if there's no existing query that suits your needs, you may be able to write one; there's a tutorial on writing queries for it <a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/tutorial" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>

<p>Here are a few existing queries that may help you some:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/74426/how-many-of-closed-bounties-have-been-awarded" rel="nofollow noreferrer">What percentage of closed bounties are awarded?</a> (NB this includes "reward existing answer" type bounties so it's higher than the rate for "attention" bounties alone.)</li>
<li><a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/510996/recent-bounties" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Recent bounties and their outcomes</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/7666/bounties-awarded-by-month" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Number of bounties awarded by month</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/161292/bountifulii" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Who gives bounties to what</a>. (Note that "Promotions"&mdash;misspelled in the table there&mdash;are bounties placed on other people's questions; it also lists bounties on your own questions)</li>
</ul>
