9 ms·

Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads

407 points by tylerrooney 14y ago

aoprisan 14y ago
there's a difference between high CTR and high conversion..
- terrellm 14y ago
  Agreed - particularly if you are the advertiser paying for a ton of "curiosity clicks" from people wondering where the ad goes. 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.
lucasvo 14y ago
The 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...
ankeshk 14y ago
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 however that while your conversion rates will increase, the number of complaints you receive will increase too.
- RegEx 14y ago
  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.
  - aith 14y ago
    But did you click it?
    - RegEx 14y ago
      No, but my mom probably would have, and it got my attention enough to where I can describe it precisely _and_ still remember what it was advertising, though the image and the product have nothing in common. Woah.
TechNewb 14y ago
The second example fits POF's aesthic more, he should do all ads like that, along with some simple GIFs. Very cool!
J3L2404 14y ago
Curiosity. 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.
- ekalvi 14y ago
  I think obfuscation is a factor. However, I think there are two other factors that should be considered: 1) the call to action is much clearer in the MS Paint ad "Play Free", and 2) the polished ad "looks" like an ad, whereas the MS Paint one doesn't, because "who in their right mind would make an ad that looked like this?" On the second point, if everyone started making MS Paint ads then users over time will get used to the style as well, and stop clicking. People have an internal ad blocker that takes time to "learn" from existing patterns. We once did an experiment with Google Adsense. Directly above the ad unit, if you used a large, clear heading "Sponsored Ads" and then compared the results with no heading, the clickthru rate differences were very significant. I don't have the exact number, but something like 3-5X in favor of no heading. To improve CTR, you can either make a very compelling, contextual ad, OR trick your users into not knowing something is an ad. Tricking is easier and more effective in the short run, but will get you in trouble once your advertisers start looking at their conversion rates and ROI.
- csomar 14y ago
  Calculate the final conversion before clicks. For example, the typical ad has 10% conversion but only 1500 clicks. You end up with 150 sign-up. The MS paint version has 5% conversion but 3 times more clicks, so you end up with 225 sign-up.
jonnathanson 14y ago
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 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.
- NameNickHN 14y ago
  Yep, it's the same as when Google came out with their text ads. They were different, so people clicked them.
  - netcan 14y ago
    People click on the ads more now than they did.
    - pyre 14y ago
      There are also more people online now than then.
      - robrenaud 14y ago
        I think netcan was referring to ratios (CTR) rather than raw counts of clicks.
        pyre 14y ago
        I think that my comment still applies. We've gone from a smaller number of people with a high concentration of those that are 'tech literate,' to a larger number of people with a smaller concentration of the 'tech literate.'
jcampbell1 14y ago
Is 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.
- RegEx 14y ago
  > Is 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. Is there some sarcasm I'm missing? Calling the first ad terrible is one thing, calling the second one "quite good" seems a bit of a stretch %-)
  - shawabawa 14y ago
    The second one isn't artistically good, but I think as an ad it is quite good. It's funny, and it makes me want to see what the game's like. I haven't clicked an ad (intentionally) in about 4 years. I might have clicked that one.
TelmoMenezes 14y ago
Cool, but I prefer the second one because I don't care about cars. To me the first one is very boring, the second I could click out of curiosity (just because it made me smile). Problem is: do you really want me to click that ad? Because I won't care about the game.
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corin_ 14y ago
Possibly one of the most exaggerated headlines I've ever seen, and that's saying something.
- patton01 14y ago
  And that is the rub....you clicked on it.
bgruber 14y ago
i think this says more about testing than about ads. update: i'm trying (and apparently failing) to imply that this article makes me question the idea of "test everything" rather than bolster the idea (the article's conclusion).
- inerte 14y ago
  Which is conclusion of the article/post.
Father 14y ago
There's a perfectly good explanation for this. Eye tracking tests show that people ignore images and read around them (unless there's a human face in it). That's why text ads work better, in most circumstances anyway. The color of the second ad is lighter, and probably matches the background of the page better, making it less of a block and lowering the barrier to crossover and read the text.
Shpigford 14y ago
I question _conversion_ though. Sure, the first ad had a lower CTR, but if you click on it, you almost certainly know what you're getting. With the second it's very much "Haha, I wonder what this stupid ad goes to?" and then you just abandon it. CTR means nothing without a conversion of some sort on the other side.
droob 14y ago
That first one has some serious hierarchy problems, and the type is really hard to read.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  I agree, the second is clearly better, the type is much clearer and better-designed, and the guidelines are clean and straight.
tomkin 14y ago
I love this kind of social experiment. There are a few theories as to why this resulted in a higher CTR. The obvious ones to me are: 1) "Look at the pretty picture!!" 2) "What the hell? EA is allowing this ad? Did they make it? I gotta see where this goes!" 3) Alternate to "Banner blindness", as @jonnathanson pointed out. In 1 & 2, I feel like the higher CTR wouldn't matter because people are acting on curiosity of the implementation rather than the product. Once the outcome was revealed, and the banner is seen as no more than a trick, I'd be willing to bet that the orders or pre-orders of the game (in this case, playing for free) stayed roughly the same as if using the other banner. Just a hunch.
joblessjunkie 14y ago
I suspect this is all about novelty. Users haven't seen an ad like this one a thousand times before. Some might not even think this is an ad. Some will be curious enough to actually click. The MS Paint banner ad is not inherently more effective. If every banner ad on the internet was hand-drawn in MS Paint in 5 minutes, the joke would quickly grow old, and the CTR would vanish.
- rlpb 14y ago
  He also looked only at CTR and not CPA. The sort of people who click (due to the novelty) may not be the sort of people he can convert. His overall CPA may well be lower with the other ad.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    Yes. It's your basic revenue vs. profit error reworked. CTR is a poor measure of effectiveness - a lower ctr can be better on ppc if you're converting better.
- gghh 14y ago
  I agree on the relevance of the novelty factor. It also came to my mind that this kind of childish MS Paint graphics are becoming somehow pop-culture, a meta-internet-meme if you want. Yesterday I spent half an hour on Christopher Poole's http://canv.as/ http://canv.as/ (just because I ain't brave enough to go to 4chan) and noticed a lot of these graphics; after some time lurking, I started considering them kinda cool. It's like... well, a brand.
shingen 14y ago
For this to be a valuable lesson, you'd want to know who clicked on each ad and what the follow-on action was. If a bunch of idiots that will never buy anything clicked on the ridiculous ad, what good is it?
jitbit 14y ago
In addition to some great points in the comments - don't forget the "ad-filter" every web-surfer has. Trained by zillions of ADs like the 1st one. When I first loaded the page and saw the banner in the center, I thought I'm on some affiliate/malware/viagra/MLM site. My first intention was to close the page and get out. The MS-Paint ad breaks that filter. Also, the first ad is kinda... sucky (in a way I described above). Sorry, nothing personal.
ender7 14y ago
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 visual flow
- div 14y ago
  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.
  - gravitronic 14y ago
    Definitely agree the fancy ad is filtered out subconsciously as it's an obvious ad. 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".
    - wisty 14y ago
      It's harder to filter out simple ads, which is why Google sells text ads.
  - p4bl0 14y ago
    This is what I wanted to say. I kinda mentally block ads* and I saw the Paint drawing in the article before the "actual" ad, even if it is in the reverse order in the page flow. * A few years ago I missed a question in an exam that was framed and underlined. The goal was to emphase the question because it was important. When I learned that I missed the question (while discussing the exam with other student), I took a new look at the question and my only guess can be that it looked too much like a Google Ad at that time and despite the fact that it was on paper I unconsciously ignored it… This is how stupid I can be.
abeppu 14y ago
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 0.09%), your confidence intervals will keep overlapping until you have OOM 1M impressions. This is all just to say that running a whole lot of tests can quickly become expensive an impractical. While testing some radical, weird treatments can give you valuable perspective, or shed light on the assumptions you've been making, testing every idea is rarely feasible. I would not, for instance, guess that that the author should test different versions of the second ad with colors or number of exclamation points changed.
- michaelbarton 14y ago
  I agree with your point, however I would like to highlight your use of confidence intervals: "If two statistics have non-overlapping confidence intervals, they are necessarily significantly different but if they have overlapping confidence intervals, it is not necessarily true that they are not significantly different." http://www.cscu.cornell.edu/news/statnews/stnews73.pdf http://www.cscu.cornell.edu/news/statnews/stnews73.pdf
- Cor 14y ago
  As someone who has spent $100,000 on advertising over the last few years, at least $10,000 of which was on the Plenty of Fish platform, you're very wrong. 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.
  - gjm11 14y ago
    Yes, test everything. But what exactly do you mean by "get a feel"? Suppose your CTR is known to be either 0.09% or 0.11%, you've had 10,000 impressions, and you've got 11 clickthroughs. (This is of course the most likely number if your CTR is actually 0.11%.) The likelihood ratio between the two possibilities is about 0.81. So if you thought those two possibilities were equally probable before, you should now think it's about 55% likely that the CTR is 0.11% and about 45% likely that it's 0.09%. So if by "get an idea" you mean something much stronger than 55%:45% then I fear you may be fooling yourself, no matter how much you've spent on advertising over the last few years. (Whether that means you should reconsider "test everything" depends on the costs of testing -- the actual cost of doing it, and the cost in running something other than the currently-believed-best version.) And with 1000 impressions? Forget it. You expect to see 0.9 clickthroughs on average with a 0.09% CTR and 1.1 on average with a 0.11% CTR. You can probably get some extra information from (e.g.) when that expected single clickthrough happens, but it's not going to take you near to that 55:45 ratio. (I might believe 52:48.)
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eob 14y ago
I think the first ad says "I'm just another giant corporation who wants your money." The second ad says "I'm a human being, probably with a sense of humor"
chops 14y ago
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 actually increase his CTR by 300x? Edit: Why is this being downvoted? It's a legitimate question.
- jdkramar 14y ago
  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.
  - benpof 14y ago
    Whoops, my bad, it's been fixed with the % sign.
    - tripzilch 14y ago
      You might also want to consider using promille (per 1000) or something similar, when dealing with such tiny percentages. (I don't mean they're tiny for a CTR figure, just that small numbers like that are harder to get a gist of than "1.37 clicks for each 1000 views".
warrenmiller 14y ago
0.137 CTR is seriously low regardless, 0.049% CTR is incredibly low!
- garethsprice 14y ago
  Not for social. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/page-post-ctr/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/page-post-ctr/ quotes an average click through rate for Facebook ads of 0.05% (not the headline 0.14% which is about Facebook Pages CTR), so 0.049% is close to average and 0.137% is an excellent CTR for Facebook ads.
  - jgoodwin 14y ago
    Perhaps. However the standard deviation for a Bernoulli trial is sqrt(Npq) where p = 0.00049 and q = 1 - p. The two trials are not significantly different.
bgilroy26 14y ago
I think the comments in this thread about ctr vs actual conversions are a bit silly. 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.
- klbarry 14y ago
  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) People look to other people's decisions when making decisions. 7) People will believe things more easily that fit their pre-existent mindset. The converse is also true. 8) People handle one idea at a time best. 9) People want more choices, but are happier with fewer. 10) People decide first, then rationalize - If people are stuck with something, they will like it more over time. 11) Experience is memory, the last part of the experience is weighted heavily.
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Cor 14y ago
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/ http://www.mrgreen.am/affiliate-marketing/the-ugly-truth/
- benpof 14y ago
  Also, http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plenty-of-fish-images/ http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plent... Some good lessons to be learned from that post.
zackattack 14y ago
So the question becomes: How do you blend novelty with timeless sophistication?
SolarUpNote 14y ago
I'm a big fan of "mistakes". They really jump out at you.
mk_fox 14y ago
The second ad is more "entertaining" in my opinion. Also "Ad Blinded-ness" might have caused the first ad to just go unnoticed among all the other ads. Being untypical helps on the web. But also, the point is that you cannot expect patterns to predict success always. The first ad was based on a pattern. Now, if we study the second ad for a pattern it might not work as well. Man, I love the web for this.
benmanns 14y ago
I think it's critical to not lose track of buyer motives and end goals when testing ads. If I were clicking on the first ad, I would do so with the intention of downloading Need for Speed. The second ad, I would click to answer the question, "Who made this crappy paint ad? It's pretty unique." If you are paying per click, the first ad is going to perform better and will give more relevant traffic. If you are paying per impression and just care about traffic, the second wins.
gghootch 14y ago
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 guys, we just threw it up as a test, and it quadrupled the conversion rate of anything else. After that, I think we made every banner in Paint." http://mixergy.com/teitelbaum-whatrunswhere-interview/ http://mixergy.com/teitelbaum-whatrunswhere-interview/
- benpof 14y ago
  Max and I are good friends, and no, I didn't rip off his idea :)
alain94040 14y ago
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. So I'm also much more likely to press the back button as soon as I understand what I'm being sold. How does the math play out in the end and which ad is betetr? There's no way to tell from that data.
- benpof 14y ago
  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 :)
- larrys 14y ago
  Excellent point. We find with domains with landing pages you can have thousands of visits per day that result in no revenue if the reason for the visit (domain typed in on browser bar) is not related to what the person is actually looking for.
- jczhang 14y ago
  Both ads advertise Free, and it's clear that it's a car game in both ads... Also you need to consider the fact that higher CTR means higher relevancy score and potentially lower costs if you're paying by the click.
acangiano 14y ago
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.
- felipemnoa 14y ago
  >>"invented by a local mom" That is the first flag that it is a scam.
  - benpof 14y ago
    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.
    - tripzilch 14y ago
      > 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. 800 pounds indeed. It's because of this incredible weight-loss that "local moms" have an extremely short half-life and are in fact rarely observed outside laboratory conditions.
  - swivelmaster 14y ago
    For you and I it is, but we are not its target audience.
    - acangiano 14y ago
      Actually, this is a scam not just because it doesn't work. It's a scam because they make it sound like it's something free or extremely cheap, when in reality it often initiates a costly recurring billing (rebill) agreement through careful wording in the fine print. Gullible people often end up paying hundreds of dollars in the end.
cmillllllls 14y ago
Not only is it simplistic, its different. On all of the major sites, yahoo, big blogs, etc, you see these polished ads that all look very corporate and very much the same. This is so different that it makes you want to check what is behind the door.
mbesto 14y ago
I know that Ads are all about attention gathering and the first one largely suffers from ad-blindness. Don't need to 'throw out everything I know'.
user2459 14y ago
I think the main problem with this article is the assumption the the first AD is anywhere near a 'standard good' ad. It is not. It's absolutely hideous with the call to action at a much lower hierarchy than the shitty pixelated in game screen shot, it has far too much content, and it looks like work EA would never release themselves. Essentially it looks like a scam/spam effort and people are trained to avoid those. The second image looks cute and personal and much less threatening with the call to action... well... calling you to action. Seems like the standard advertising conclusion to me. I would suggest not throwing away anything you know about advertising, unless youre a spammer that makes shitty ads and a looking to boost your CTR.
creamyhorror 14y ago
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 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-Ads-on-somethingawful.com&s=9dfc7757e20a520bc2b906e7e2ba17b3 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 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.
hkuo 14y ago
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?
benpof 14y ago
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 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?
methoddk 14y ago
The EA logo is why they weren't clicking the first ad. I don't know about other people, but I avoid EA at all costs.
valhallarecords 14y ago
I work with many MBA colleagues and whenever they encounter an ugly, but effective (ie. converting) ad, they can never drop their egos to accept that such an ad can work. They just feel they cannot "stoop that low" to adopt these techniques. They would often blindly push for "simplicity", "sparse text", "nice picture", and when these ads go out to market, they get absolutely crushed. One of the tragedies of a big wealthy company is that marketers can continually go out with these crappy creatives that don't sell and there really is no big consequence. It is often written off as a "learning opportunity". Whereas if you look at the ads of people whose lifeblood depends on selling their product, they may not be the most attractive ads, but the ads that persist over time tend to be effective (ie. they sell). These guys need to eat, and they can only afford to make stupid ineffective ads for so long before they starve! So there are definitely some practical lessons that can be learned from them. They often knowingly or unknowingly follow the principles of advertising legend David Ogilvy. Their ads tend to hit on direct marketing best practices: - headline states in plain language what the product does (ie. no MBA jargon/buzz words) - headline also hooks the reader to read a bit more - it is clear who the product is for - copy combats any objections in reader's mind - no distractions that divert reader from clicking the "Join Now" button - contains customer testimonials reader can relate to (ie. social proof) - gives reader enough information on the page to make a decision (ie. none of this sparse text BS if it doesn't make sense)
- nosse 14y ago
  I'd like to warn people about cheesy customer testimonials. Nothing says "scam" just like testimonials can. http://www.nuratrim.com/before-and-after-photos-21-c.asp http://www.nuratrim.com/before-and-after-photos-21-c.asp
SeoxyS 14y ago
I remember seeing this ad (or one similar) in the Draw Something game a few days ago. The context here helps immensely, I think. Draw Something is a game that's about crude drawing, showing an ad that's a crude drawing is the ultimate targeted ad.
- cheath 14y ago
  I did a quick search through the thread for this. I don't think we should discount the popularity of Draw Something. It's in the forefront of peoples minds and this associates it with that as well as being a fun game. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a strong correlation with the popularity of that game.
K2h 14y ago
Is no one worried about the image and association you create by the advertising campaign? I kind of feel like you dilute the overall brand value by going with low stupid tactics - it may create value in the short term, but does that translate into a stronger brand in the long run just because it has more people?
tnash 14y ago
I think this goes to show that we like low information density. Simple things are easier to absorb, high density things get blocked out naturally. When we're presented with an large amount of information, our brain blocks it out rather than expending the energy to parse it. PTSD is an example of this which shows our tendencies to block overwhelming information.
ilamont 14y ago
As joblessjunkie mentioned, novelty is a huge draw. I've seen ads on Facebook, Yahoo and MSM sites (probably delivered by ad networks) that feature eye-catching faces with some ridiculous or unusual element (long beards, tattoos, elongated teeth etc.), but are advertising something that's pretty mundane (loans, online education, etc.). They are much more noticeable than ads that use standard art or photographs. Judging by the fact that the advertisers are still using weird face ads, the CTRs must be superior ... but the interesting questions would be around the type of customer or conversion rates.
dclowd9901 14y ago
I kinda take issue with his thesis: "Every idea that you have is worth testing, no matter how crappy you think it is." It took him all of 45 seconds to put that new test ad together. That is a very, very small time investment, thus making such a test worthwhile. For instance, if one wanted to create some sort of live-action commercial with actors, lighting, equipment and CG, and test it as an ad, the investment of time and money would be so great that negative results would be disastrous.
vagarwa 14y ago
post facto analysis - easy. (business types need jobs too!) predicting consumer behavior - hard.
wilfra 14y ago
I bought a mini-site that monetizes with AdSense and made over 300% more than the previous owner by making the ad units ugly. The only reason I did it was because I didn't know how to customize the ad units to match the rest of the page like the previous owner had, so I just left them with the standard white background that made them look terrible. I kept meaning to figure out how to fix it but after about a month I noticed the huge spike in revenue and left it. The gains have stood for several years. Conclusion: Ugly ads that catch your attention have a far superior CTR. Here is the site: http://www.starbuckslocations.com http://www.starbuckslocations.com
yaix 14y ago
To me, overly styled ads just look like there will be some sort of marketing lie after clicking it, so why bother.
Porter_423 14y ago
It might have been just a novelty affect. Users must have just been curious and clicked on it. The real test is the conversion rate. How many of those that clicked took further action.
powermeat 14y ago
I have been running facebook ad campaigns for over a year now and consistently found that by hand writing something in paint on a relevant image, i get much better ctr than just the relevant image.

407 points by tylerrooney 14y ago

aoprisan 14y ago

there's a difference between high CTR and high conversion..

terrellm 14y ago
Agreed - particularly if you are the advertiser paying for a ton of "curiosity clicks" from people wondering where the ad goes. 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.

lucasvo 14y ago

The 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...

ankeshk 14y ago

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 however that while your conversion rates will increase, the number of complaints you receive will increase too.

RegEx 14y ago
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.
- aith 14y ago
  But did you click it?
  - RegEx 14y ago
    No, but my mom probably would have, and it got my attention enough to where I can describe it precisely _and_ still remember what it was advertising, though the image and the product have nothing in common. Woah.

TechNewb 14y ago

The second example fits POF's aesthic more, he should do all ads like that, along with some simple GIFs. Very cool!

J3L2404 14y ago

Curiosity. 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.

ekalvi 14y ago
I think obfuscation is a factor. However, I think there are two other factors that should be considered: 1) the call to action is much clearer in the MS Paint ad "Play Free", and 2) the polished ad "looks" like an ad, whereas the MS Paint one doesn't, because "who in their right mind would make an ad that looked like this?" On the second point, if everyone started making MS Paint ads then users over time will get used to the style as well, and stop clicking. People have an internal ad blocker that takes time to "learn" from existing patterns. We once did an experiment with Google Adsense. Directly above the ad unit, if you used a large, clear heading "Sponsored Ads" and then compared the results with no heading, the clickthru rate differences were very significant. I don't have the exact number, but something like 3-5X in favor of no heading. To improve CTR, you can either make a very compelling, contextual ad, OR trick your users into not knowing something is an ad. Tricking is easier and more effective in the short run, but will get you in trouble once your advertisers start looking at their conversion rates and ROI.
csomar 14y ago
Calculate the final conversion before clicks. For example, the typical ad has 10% conversion but only 1500 clicks. You end up with 150 sign-up. The MS paint version has 5% conversion but 3 times more clicks, so you end up with 225 sign-up.

jonnathanson 14y ago

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 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.

NameNickHN 14y ago
Yep, it's the same as when Google came out with their text ads. They were different, so people clicked them.
- netcan 14y ago
  People click on the ads more now than they did.
  - pyre 14y ago
    There are also more people online now than then.
    - robrenaud 14y ago
      I think netcan was referring to ratios (CTR) rather than raw counts of clicks.
      - pyre 14y ago
        I think that my comment still applies. We've gone from a smaller number of people with a high concentration of those that are 'tech literate,' to a larger number of people with a smaller concentration of the 'tech literate.'

jcampbell1 14y ago

Is 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.

RegEx 14y ago
> Is 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. Is there some sarcasm I'm missing? Calling the first ad terrible is one thing, calling the second one "quite good" seems a bit of a stretch %-)
- shawabawa 14y ago
  The second one isn't artistically good, but I think as an ad it is quite good. It's funny, and it makes me want to see what the game's like. I haven't clicked an ad (intentionally) in about 4 years. I might have clicked that one.

TelmoMenezes 14y ago

Cool, but I prefer the second one because I don't care about cars. To me the first one is very boring, the second I could click out of curiosity (just because it made me smile). Problem is: do you really want me to click that ad? Because I won't care about the game.

deleted 14y ago

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corin_ 14y ago

Possibly one of the most exaggerated headlines I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

patton01 14y ago
And that is the rub....you clicked on it.

bgruber 14y ago

i think this says more about testing than about ads. update: i'm trying (and apparently failing) to imply that this article makes me question the idea of "test everything" rather than bolster the idea (the article's conclusion).

inerte 14y ago
Which is conclusion of the article/post.

Father 14y ago

There's a perfectly good explanation for this. Eye tracking tests show that people ignore images and read around them (unless there's a human face in it). That's why text ads work better, in most circumstances anyway. The color of the second ad is lighter, and probably matches the background of the page better, making it less of a block and lowering the barrier to crossover and read the text.

Shpigford 14y ago

I question _conversion_ though. Sure, the first ad had a lower CTR, but if you click on it, you almost certainly know what you're getting. With the second it's very much "Haha, I wonder what this stupid ad goes to?" and then you just abandon it. CTR means nothing without a conversion of some sort on the other side.

droob 14y ago

That first one has some serious hierarchy problems, and the type is really hard to read.

StavrosK 14y ago
I agree, the second is clearly better, the type is much clearer and better-designed, and the guidelines are clean and straight.

tomkin 14y ago

I love this kind of social experiment. There are a few theories as to why this resulted in a higher CTR. The obvious ones to me are: 1) "Look at the pretty picture!!" 2) "What the hell? EA is allowing this ad? Did they make it? I gotta see where this goes!" 3) Alternate to "Banner blindness", as @jonnathanson pointed out. In 1 & 2, I feel like the higher CTR wouldn't matter because people are acting on curiosity of the implementation rather than the product. Once the outcome was revealed, and the banner is seen as no more than a trick, I'd be willing to bet that the orders or pre-orders of the game (in this case, playing for free) stayed roughly the same as if using the other banner. Just a hunch.

joblessjunkie 14y ago

I suspect this is all about novelty. Users haven't seen an ad like this one a thousand times before. Some might not even think this is an ad. Some will be curious enough to actually click. The MS Paint banner ad is not inherently more effective. If every banner ad on the internet was hand-drawn in MS Paint in 5 minutes, the joke would quickly grow old, and the CTR would vanish.

rlpb 14y ago
He also looked only at CTR and not CPA. The sort of people who click (due to the novelty) may not be the sort of people he can convert. His overall CPA may well be lower with the other ad.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  Yes. It's your basic revenue vs. profit error reworked. CTR is a poor measure of effectiveness - a lower ctr can be better on ppc if you're converting better.
gghh 14y ago
I agree on the relevance of the novelty factor. It also came to my mind that this kind of childish MS Paint graphics are becoming somehow pop-culture, a meta-internet-meme if you want. Yesterday I spent half an hour on Christopher Poole's http://canv.as/ http://canv.as/ (just because I ain't brave enough to go to 4chan) and noticed a lot of these graphics; after some time lurking, I started considering them kinda cool. It's like... well, a brand.

shingen 14y ago

For this to be a valuable lesson, you'd want to know who clicked on each ad and what the follow-on action was. If a bunch of idiots that will never buy anything clicked on the ridiculous ad, what good is it?

jitbit 14y ago

In addition to some great points in the comments - don't forget the "ad-filter" every web-surfer has. Trained by zillions of ADs like the 1st one. When I first loaded the page and saw the banner in the center, I thought I'm on some affiliate/malware/viagra/MLM site. My first intention was to close the page and get out. The MS-Paint ad breaks that filter. Also, the first ad is kinda... sucky (in a way I described above). Sorry, nothing personal.

ender7 14y ago

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 visual flow

div 14y ago
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.
- gravitronic 14y ago
  Definitely agree the fancy ad is filtered out subconsciously as it's an obvious ad. 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".
  - wisty 14y ago
    It's harder to filter out simple ads, which is why Google sells text ads.
- p4bl0 14y ago
  This is what I wanted to say. I kinda mentally block ads* and I saw the Paint drawing in the article before the "actual" ad, even if it is in the reverse order in the page flow. * A few years ago I missed a question in an exam that was framed and underlined. The goal was to emphase the question because it was important. When I learned that I missed the question (while discussing the exam with other student), I took a new look at the question and my only guess can be that it looked too much like a Google Ad at that time and despite the fact that it was on paper I unconsciously ignored it… This is how stupid I can be.

abeppu 14y ago

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 0.09%), your confidence intervals will keep overlapping until you have OOM 1M impressions. This is all just to say that running a whole lot of tests can quickly become expensive an impractical. While testing some radical, weird treatments can give you valuable perspective, or shed light on the assumptions you've been making, testing every idea is rarely feasible. I would not, for instance, guess that that the author should test different versions of the second ad with colors or number of exclamation points changed.

michaelbarton 14y ago
I agree with your point, however I would like to highlight your use of confidence intervals: "If two statistics have non-overlapping confidence intervals, they are necessarily significantly different but if they have overlapping confidence intervals, it is not necessarily true that they are not significantly different." http://www.cscu.cornell.edu/news/statnews/stnews73.pdf http://www.cscu.cornell.edu/news/statnews/stnews73.pdf
Cor 14y ago
As someone who has spent $100,000 on advertising over the last few years, at least $10,000 of which was on the Plenty of Fish platform, you're very wrong. 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.
- gjm11 14y ago
  Yes, test everything. But what exactly do you mean by "get a feel"? Suppose your CTR is known to be either 0.09% or 0.11%, you've had 10,000 impressions, and you've got 11 clickthroughs. (This is of course the most likely number if your CTR is actually 0.11%.) The likelihood ratio between the two possibilities is about 0.81. So if you thought those two possibilities were equally probable before, you should now think it's about 55% likely that the CTR is 0.11% and about 45% likely that it's 0.09%. So if by "get an idea" you mean something much stronger than 55%:45% then I fear you may be fooling yourself, no matter how much you've spent on advertising over the last few years. (Whether that means you should reconsider "test everything" depends on the costs of testing -- the actual cost of doing it, and the cost in running something other than the currently-believed-best version.) And with 1000 impressions? Forget it. You expect to see 0.9 clickthroughs on average with a 0.09% CTR and 1.1 on average with a 0.11% CTR. You can probably get some extra information from (e.g.) when that expected single clickthrough happens, but it's not going to take you near to that 55:45 ratio. (I might believe 52:48.)

deleted 14y ago

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eob 14y ago

I think the first ad says "I'm just another giant corporation who wants your money." The second ad says "I'm a human being, probably with a sense of humor"

chops 14y ago

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 actually increase his CTR by 300x? Edit: Why is this being downvoted? It's a legitimate question.

jdkramar 14y ago
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.
- benpof 14y ago
  Whoops, my bad, it's been fixed with the % sign.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    You might also want to consider using promille (per 1000) or something similar, when dealing with such tiny percentages. (I don't mean they're tiny for a CTR figure, just that small numbers like that are harder to get a gist of than "1.37 clicks for each 1000 views".

warrenmiller 14y ago

0.137 CTR is seriously low regardless, 0.049% CTR is incredibly low!

garethsprice 14y ago
Not for social. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/page-post-ctr/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/page-post-ctr/ quotes an average click through rate for Facebook ads of 0.05% (not the headline 0.14% which is about Facebook Pages CTR), so 0.049% is close to average and 0.137% is an excellent CTR for Facebook ads.
- jgoodwin 14y ago
  Perhaps. However the standard deviation for a Bernoulli trial is sqrt(Npq) where p = 0.00049 and q = 1 - p. The two trials are not significantly different.

bgilroy26 14y ago

I think the comments in this thread about ctr vs actual conversions are a bit silly. 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.

klbarry 14y ago
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) People look to other people's decisions when making decisions. 7) People will believe things more easily that fit their pre-existent mindset. The converse is also true. 8) People handle one idea at a time best. 9) People want more choices, but are happier with fewer. 10) People decide first, then rationalize - If people are stuck with something, they will like it more over time. 11) Experience is memory, the last part of the experience is weighted heavily.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- 14y ago

Cor 14y ago

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/ http://www.mrgreen.am/affiliate-marketing/the-ugly-truth/

benpof 14y ago
Also, http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plenty-of-fish-images/ http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plent... Some good lessons to be learned from that post.

zackattack 14y ago

So the question becomes: How do you blend novelty with timeless sophistication?

SolarUpNote 14y ago

I'm a big fan of "mistakes". They really jump out at you.

mk_fox 14y ago

The second ad is more "entertaining" in my opinion. Also "Ad Blinded-ness" might have caused the first ad to just go unnoticed among all the other ads. Being untypical helps on the web. But also, the point is that you cannot expect patterns to predict success always. The first ad was based on a pattern. Now, if we study the second ad for a pattern it might not work as well. Man, I love the web for this.

benmanns 14y ago

I think it's critical to not lose track of buyer motives and end goals when testing ads. If I were clicking on the first ad, I would do so with the intention of downloading Need for Speed. The second ad, I would click to answer the question, "Who made this crappy paint ad? It's pretty unique." If you are paying per click, the first ad is going to perform better and will give more relevant traffic. If you are paying per impression and just care about traffic, the second wins.

gghootch 14y ago

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 guys, we just threw it up as a test, and it quadrupled the conversion rate of anything else. After that, I think we made every banner in Paint." http://mixergy.com/teitelbaum-whatrunswhere-interview/ http://mixergy.com/teitelbaum-whatrunswhere-interview/

benpof 14y ago
Max and I are good friends, and no, I didn't rip off his idea :)

alain94040 14y ago

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. So I'm also much more likely to press the back button as soon as I understand what I'm being sold. How does the math play out in the end and which ad is betetr? There's no way to tell from that data.

benpof 14y ago
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 :)
larrys 14y ago
Excellent point. We find with domains with landing pages you can have thousands of visits per day that result in no revenue if the reason for the visit (domain typed in on browser bar) is not related to what the person is actually looking for.
jczhang 14y ago
Both ads advertise Free, and it's clear that it's a car game in both ads... Also you need to consider the fact that higher CTR means higher relevancy score and potentially lower costs if you're paying by the click.

acangiano 14y ago

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.

felipemnoa 14y ago
>>"invented by a local mom" That is the first flag that it is a scam.
- benpof 14y ago
  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.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    > 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. 800 pounds indeed. It's because of this incredible weight-loss that "local moms" have an extremely short half-life and are in fact rarely observed outside laboratory conditions.
- swivelmaster 14y ago
  For you and I it is, but we are not its target audience.
  - acangiano 14y ago
    Actually, this is a scam not just because it doesn't work. It's a scam because they make it sound like it's something free or extremely cheap, when in reality it often initiates a costly recurring billing (rebill) agreement through careful wording in the fine print. Gullible people often end up paying hundreds of dollars in the end.

cmillllllls 14y ago

Not only is it simplistic, its different. On all of the major sites, yahoo, big blogs, etc, you see these polished ads that all look very corporate and very much the same. This is so different that it makes you want to check what is behind the door.

mbesto 14y ago

I know that Ads are all about attention gathering and the first one largely suffers from ad-blindness. Don't need to 'throw out everything I know'.

user2459 14y ago

I think the main problem with this article is the assumption the the first AD is anywhere near a 'standard good' ad. It is not. It's absolutely hideous with the call to action at a much lower hierarchy than the shitty pixelated in game screen shot, it has far too much content, and it looks like work EA would never release themselves. Essentially it looks like a scam/spam effort and people are trained to avoid those. The second image looks cute and personal and much less threatening with the call to action... well... calling you to action. Seems like the standard advertising conclusion to me. I would suggest not throwing away anything you know about advertising, unless youre a spammer that makes shitty ads and a looking to boost your CTR.

creamyhorror 14y ago

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 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-Ads-on-somethingawful.com&s=9dfc7757e20a520bc2b906e7e2ba17b3 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 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.

hkuo 14y ago

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?

benpof 14y ago

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 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?

methoddk 14y ago

The EA logo is why they weren't clicking the first ad. I don't know about other people, but I avoid EA at all costs.

valhallarecords 14y ago

I work with many MBA colleagues and whenever they encounter an ugly, but effective (ie. converting) ad, they can never drop their egos to accept that such an ad can work. They just feel they cannot "stoop that low" to adopt these techniques. They would often blindly push for "simplicity", "sparse text", "nice picture", and when these ads go out to market, they get absolutely crushed. One of the tragedies of a big wealthy company is that marketers can continually go out with these crappy creatives that don't sell and there really is no big consequence. It is often written off as a "learning opportunity". Whereas if you look at the ads of people whose lifeblood depends on selling their product, they may not be the most attractive ads, but the ads that persist over time tend to be effective (ie. they sell). These guys need to eat, and they can only afford to make stupid ineffective ads for so long before they starve! So there are definitely some practical lessons that can be learned from them. They often knowingly or unknowingly follow the principles of advertising legend David Ogilvy. Their ads tend to hit on direct marketing best practices: - headline states in plain language what the product does (ie. no MBA jargon/buzz words) - headline also hooks the reader to read a bit more - it is clear who the product is for - copy combats any objections in reader's mind - no distractions that divert reader from clicking the "Join Now" button - contains customer testimonials reader can relate to (ie. social proof) - gives reader enough information on the page to make a decision (ie. none of this sparse text BS if it doesn't make sense)

nosse 14y ago
I'd like to warn people about cheesy customer testimonials. Nothing says "scam" just like testimonials can. http://www.nuratrim.com/before-and-after-photos-21-c.asp http://www.nuratrim.com/before-and-after-photos-21-c.asp

SeoxyS 14y ago

I remember seeing this ad (or one similar) in the Draw Something game a few days ago. The context here helps immensely, I think. Draw Something is a game that's about crude drawing, showing an ad that's a crude drawing is the ultimate targeted ad.

cheath 14y ago
I did a quick search through the thread for this. I don't think we should discount the popularity of Draw Something. It's in the forefront of peoples minds and this associates it with that as well as being a fun game. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a strong correlation with the popularity of that game.

K2h 14y ago

Is no one worried about the image and association you create by the advertising campaign? I kind of feel like you dilute the overall brand value by going with low stupid tactics - it may create value in the short term, but does that translate into a stronger brand in the long run just because it has more people?

tnash 14y ago

I think this goes to show that we like low information density. Simple things are easier to absorb, high density things get blocked out naturally. When we're presented with an large amount of information, our brain blocks it out rather than expending the energy to parse it. PTSD is an example of this which shows our tendencies to block overwhelming information.

ilamont 14y ago

As joblessjunkie mentioned, novelty is a huge draw. I've seen ads on Facebook, Yahoo and MSM sites (probably delivered by ad networks) that feature eye-catching faces with some ridiculous or unusual element (long beards, tattoos, elongated teeth etc.), but are advertising something that's pretty mundane (loans, online education, etc.). They are much more noticeable than ads that use standard art or photographs. Judging by the fact that the advertisers are still using weird face ads, the CTRs must be superior ... but the interesting questions would be around the type of customer or conversion rates.

dclowd9901 14y ago

I kinda take issue with his thesis: "Every idea that you have is worth testing, no matter how crappy you think it is." It took him all of 45 seconds to put that new test ad together. That is a very, very small time investment, thus making such a test worthwhile. For instance, if one wanted to create some sort of live-action commercial with actors, lighting, equipment and CG, and test it as an ad, the investment of time and money would be so great that negative results would be disastrous.

vagarwa 14y ago

post facto analysis - easy. (business types need jobs too!) predicting consumer behavior - hard.

wilfra 14y ago

I bought a mini-site that monetizes with AdSense and made over 300% more than the previous owner by making the ad units ugly. The only reason I did it was because I didn't know how to customize the ad units to match the rest of the page like the previous owner had, so I just left them with the standard white background that made them look terrible. I kept meaning to figure out how to fix it but after about a month I noticed the huge spike in revenue and left it. The gains have stood for several years. Conclusion: Ugly ads that catch your attention have a far superior CTR. Here is the site: http://www.starbuckslocations.com http://www.starbuckslocations.com

yaix 14y ago

To me, overly styled ads just look like there will be some sort of marketing lie after clicking it, so why bother.

Porter_423 14y ago

It might have been just a novelty affect. Users must have just been curious and clicked on it. The real test is the conversion rate. How many of those that clicked took further action.

powermeat 14y ago

I have been running facebook ad campaigns for over a year now and consistently found that by hand writing something in paint on a relevant image, i get much better ctr than just the relevant image.