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Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are also more people online now than then.
I think netcan was referring to ratios (CTR) rather than raw counts of clicks.
Good 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…
Results? 0.049% CTR vs. 0.137 CTR
I hope I'm not the only one confused by this, but the lack of a percent symbol on the 0.137 means he went from 0.049% to 13%, an improvement of almost 300x.
Is this a typo? Did he mean to say he increased his CTR to 0.137% or did he actually increase his CTR by 300x?
Edit: Why is this being downvoted? It's a legitimate question.
Pof's target audience here is "people who like video games" and they're trying to get people to play a free online game. They don't really have anything to teach people in verticals where the consumer is making a measurable commitment. You do not need to be very persuasive to "convert" with that crowd.
Almost all marketing advice more specific than "the customer is always right" and "sex sells" etc. is dependent on the product and the audience.
What this is is a great ad. It's really funny (The speed lines especially. This car does not look very fast, but the speed lines show it's got a lot of heart), and it understands its audience. I think it has broader application than many are giving it credit for, it probably would work with any sincere product (i.e. selling something other than "one simple rule") targeted at younger people that does not solve a "serious" problem. Once you are proposing that people spend more than $40-$50 you are pretty smarmy if you are trying to push them into an impulse purchase
No one should decide on a health insurer based on a MS Paint ad, no matter how hip, nostalgic, and casual they are. On the other hand, you can make a lot of money selling funny ads to people and I think that's what's going on here.
Besides the novelty factor (which others have mentioned), his 'paint' version is also much simpler, and therefor much easier to understand at a quick glance. - Large text - Not very much text - A single image - A single visual flow (top to bottom) - A concise color palette (greens and black) Compare to the 'standard' ad, where: - Text is too small - Too much text - Too many images competing for attention - Muddled vi…
Ad-blindness is another factor. At first glance, his simple ad looks like part of the content, the fancy ad just looks like an ad and is filtered out subconsciously. Definitely a factor to take into account when you're targeting gamers I'd think.
I disagree that the simple ad looks like part of the content (unless the rest of the page is kindergarten kid's drawings). It's unique and an eye catcher. Until everyone starts doing it and then it'll become filtered just like the "fancy ad".
The "test everything" mantra sounds good, but in practice, you generally have only so much data you can afford (in impressions per day, or whatever), and when your CTRs are often 0.1% or lower, you need quite a lot of data to get narrow confidence intervals around your CTRs. Using the basic binomial model, if you have two test conditions, one of which actually does 20-25% better than the other, (say, 0.11% versus 0.0…
You only need about 1,000-10,000 impressions to get an idea of how a creative performs. Often less. As you get more and more used to each particular advertising platform, you also get a feel for how an ad is performing.
In my business, a difference of 0.02% CTR could mean the difference between earning 30% ROI and 50% ROI - the words "test everything!" mean everything to me and my results.
People are more likely to trust something that looks amateur since it feels more like a recommendation than an advert.
Mr.Green, a well renowned CPA Marketer/Blogger, wrote a brilliant article about this. You can find it here - http://www.mrgreen.am/affiliate-marketing/the-ugly-truth/
Actually 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 h…
The most over-the-top-ugly banner ad I've seen was a "Would you like to go back to school on a grant?" ad targeting women. It had a cartoon woman in a superhero costume with a blinking siren pasted (seemingly) randomly on her head.
there's a difference between high CTR and high conversion..
It would have been interesting to see a measurable goal (downloads, newsletter signups, watch a 3 minute video... something measurable) and how the conversions were across the two ads.
The MS Paint ad still may have more total conversions but it would be interesting to see how the cost per conversion compares. If both cost per conversions are within budget, then by all means go full speed ahead with MS Paint.