Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
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Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
1–10 of 128 posts
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#2The problem is, that this only works because it's so completely different from all the other ads and because of that reason escapes some of the banner blindness.
We've had similar results when we modified our logo and added mistakes. For example a rectangle Google AdSense Banner with a mirrored version of our Logo or just some crazy saturation affect applied on top of it actually got excellent CTRs. Even though it was kind of unnerving to have all my friends tell me about the mistakes that were in our ads...
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#3Actually advertisers have known this since a long time. Ugly wins more attention. More attention = higher conversion.
The first job of ads is winning attention. You have to fight against all the clutter and stand out. You can do so by a variety of tactics. Use human faces. Use cute looking models. Use ugly fonts or clipart. Use mouse pointers. Use fluorescent colors. Use dashed coupon type borders.
You need to know however that while your conversion rates will increase, the number of complaints you receive will increase too.
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#4The second example fits POF's aesthic more, he should do all ads like that, along with some simple GIFs. Very cool!
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#5Curiosity. The first one is obvious as to what it is, a racing game, with the second one you can't tell what it is, so people clik thru to find out.
Improve your CTR with obfuscation. Probably won't help with coversions though.
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#6Good lesson on the value of in-market testing. That said, would love to see some theory and analysis about why the MS Paint ad outperformed the standard ad. My hunch is that the first ad -- while it obviously looks a lot more professional -- looks like every other banner ad on the internet. It reeks of ad-ness, and it may set off some psychological barrier to receptivity amongst viewers precisely because their brains have been trained to filter out ads. (Banner blindness, as one of the other posters has pointed out).
Conversely, the MS Paint ad is, if nothing else, novel. It looks pretty different from most display ads out there. It catches the brain's attention, rather than being caught in the brain's passive ad-filtering heuristics. This may be, if nothing else, a story about attention and awareness.
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#7Is it just me or did anyone else find the first ad terrible and the second one quite good? I think I have been in the game too long.
One of my favorite ads of all time was the stick drawn fat girl with the secret to losing weight. I am sure the person behind that ad has a serious bank account.
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#8[deleted]
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#9Possibly one of the most exaggerated headlines I've ever seen, and that's saying something.
Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads
#10Good lesson on the value of in-market testing. That said, would love to see some theory and analysis about why the MS Paint ad outperformed the standard ad. My hunch is that the first ad -- while it obviously looks a lot more professional -- looks like every other banner ad on the internet. It reeks of ad-ness, and it may set off some psychological barrier to receptivity amongst viewers precisely because their brains…
Yep, it's the same as when Google came out with their text ads. They were different, so people clicked them.