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Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

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Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#81

Post by creamyhorror »

If you guys think this ad is on to something, you really should see the ads put up in the SomethingAwful Forums (general subforum: http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1 ). The interesting thing is that many (I'd estimate more than half) of the ads are put up by forum members themselves, making for a range of very informal, hilarious, parodic, often obscene ads that play to every stereotype ironically and knowingly, sometimes made shittily with MSPaint.

And where do those ads lead? Usually to a forum thread where members are playing/raiding an MMO together, or discussing a topic of great interest, or selling a service like painting portraits, web hosting, or resume editing (and in one or two cases, to a discussion of a particularly zeal-inspiring anime series).

Some purely parodic examples can be found here:

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2332472-A...

And here is the current roster of ads, though many are from external advertisers and hence less funny:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/adlist.php

(Note that "goons" is the moniker for forum members, and many ads target them specifically with "goon discounts" and so on.)

Marketers with an attitude and something of a free hand could take a leaf from them.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#82

Post by hkuo »

This is hilarious, but it doesn't take into account one of the major factors of online advertising, and that is branding, or brand awareness. While the official EA ad may not get as many clickthroughs, what it will get is subconcious eyeballs, and given enough impressions of the same ad in various formats, same EA logo, car, game title and branding, you don't need people to click on the ad to start to recognize that there is a new Need for Speed game available. It's similar to flooding the airwaves with a particular TV ad. The goal is awareness, which over time, can lead to a purchase, whether the person decides at some point to purchase online or offline. Maybe they're at GameStop and EA has placed an in-store display with the same EA Need for Speed branding. The person may have forgotten about the game, but walking in to this GameStop, they're memory is refreshed of it by being previously exposed to it through digital or television.

So in short, what's more important? Immediate click-through satisfaction or building real brand recognition that can show greater returns over time, mostly in ways not calculable?

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#83

Post by benpof »

alain94040 wrote: post #72

Interesting, but the author is missing a critical point: the conversion after clicks. When I see the first ad, I clearly understand immediately that it's for a car game. I'm not likely to click, but if I click, I know what I want, and I'm very likely to actually download/install/play the game. When I see the second ad, I wonder what it is, so yes, I'm more likely to click on it. But I'm not interested in car games. S…

Hey alain94040, I didn't have time to test for CVR :( It would mean split testing demogrpahics/bids and possibly even landers. The point that everyone should take home is just to test every idea that comes to mind :)

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#84

Post by klbarry »

bgilroy26 wrote: post #63
klbarry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other pieces of universal marketing "truth", all of which are accurate/general enough to not be refuted: 1) Ethos (your perceived character) is the most important, with regards to pathos (emotion) and logos (logic) 2) People make judgments by comparison/anchoring. 3) People process information best from stories. 4) People are foremost interested in things that affect them. 5) Breaking patterns gets attention. 6) Peop…

Wow great list! I'm really jealous because I've been reading about the value of being able to generate specific examples: http://lesswrong.com/lw/5kz/the_5second_level/

Thank you. I'm a student of mass persuasion. The list will be updated on http://kevinlordbarry.weebly.com/irrefutable-truths-of-marke.... Keep in mind that the whole site is very unfinished, it just has some content mixed in with lorem ipsum text.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#85

Post by benpof »

FIRST: tylerrooney, thanks for posting my blog on Hacker News! Much appreciated. Judging from the comments, we've got some super knowledgeable people here.

So to clarify, this was simply a CTR case study, I know there's another side of the coin for CVR but that would have taken more time and funds than I would have been willing to allocate :(

But hey, open invitation the community here: If you want to submit a 310x110 ad for the purpose of testing against the same demographic that I did, feel free to email it to me: ben@pof.com. I'll run it for a few days and I'll let you know how well your ad did :) And to make it worth your while, highest CTR ad (from Hacker News members ONLY) gets $100 credit to advertise on https://ads.pof.com. AND you can use your affiliate links so if you make some coin, it's yours to keep (Put it towards your Diablo 3 pre-purchase, yeah? lol) Just grab the direct link for Need For Speed World from your favorite network and send it over. And hell, if your ad beats mine, I'll post it on the POF blog, with your permission of course.

End date for this little challenge.... April 30th?

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#86

Post by benpof »

jdkramar wrote: post #68
chops wrote: post #43

This is definitely interesting. I know I'd be more inclined to click something that looks like that ridiculous paint drawing. But this bit bothered me: 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 a…

This also bothered me. Just reading through his blog post makes it clear that proper English isn't very high on his list of priorities.

Whoops, my bad, it's been fixed with the % sign.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#87

Post by screwt »

jonnathanson wrote: post #6

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…

The MS Paint ad was much more readable, IMO. Too many adds try to cram too much into their restricted screen real estate, with the result that they're much less clear.

Factor in that most ads are competing with others alongside (and they all look the same); also as others have mentioned, we've adapted to filter out 'obvious' ads.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#88

Post by benpof »

felipemnoa wrote: post #79
acangiano wrote: post #73

This is actually well known among savvy internet marketers. And it's why those tips for belly/whitening/wrinkles "invented by a local mom" always look far from professional. It works because: - It stands out from the content - It defeats ad-blindness - It's not expected, so it makes you curious If this style becomes the norm, users will learn to mentally filter ads made in Paint as well.

>>"invented by a local mom" That is the first flag that it is a scam.

With the # of ads I've seen with that tag, I'd imagine the "local mom" to be some sort of genius, making $5000/week, getting dermatologists to hate her b/c of some wrinkle miracle while losing 800 lbs in 2 weeks.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#89

Post by benpof »

Cor wrote: post #48

This has been known about for a long time; ugly sells. 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/

Also, http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plent...

Some good lessons to be learned from that post.

Re: Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

#90

Post by benpof »

gghootch wrote: post #67

I wonder if the inspiration for this test was directly taken from Max Teitelbaum's interview @ mixergy? Search for 'paint' and you'll find the relevant passage. "Andrew: Give me an example. I’d love to. When we started media buying, we saw stock raising. We saw what all the brands were doing. We needed something really flashy, something really clean. When I made something in Paint, as a joke and sent it over to the g…

Max and I are good friends, and no, I didn't rip off his idea :)
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