
Shoe company tricks people into swiping Instagram ad with fake strand of hair - fredley
https://medium.com/shanghaiist/chinese-shoe-company-tricks-people-into-swiping-instagram-ad-with-fake-strand-of-hair-54d8a2d8ec1d
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Disruptive_Dave
For my first music startup (not so much a business as it was a fun service), I
got bored with our product/benefit-focused ads and late one Friday night
decided to get weird with things. I bought woodyharrelsong.com (no longer
mine) and unleashed a series of really quirky FB ads about Woody crying
because of the viewer's shitty music taste. Images of Woody in a bathtub,
extreme close-ups of him making weird faces, and so on. Very vague headline
copy, sometimes none at all. They performed extremely well on clicks. Pure
crap on conversions.

In my early PPC days I had to learn that lesson in real time. Creating
interest in clicking an ad does not equal campaign success. Maybe this company
was doing this for buzz/PR. Maybe they needed to learn the same lessons I did.
Maybe they are simply playing the numbers game.

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tyfon
And people ask me why I have ad blocker running. It's getting to the point
where you have to be tricked into clicking the ad.

It's ridiculous.

Some of us just don't want to click or _see_ ads but somehow marketing
departments seem to think that "if we can get 2 seconds of you, you will be
buying everything we sell"..

The marketing department in my company was flabbergasted when I told them I
actively avoid products I see in ads, although I am not that exposed anymore..
Mostly public billboards and the like.

~~~
letsgetphysITal
> Some of us just don't want to click or _see_ ads

Get off the internet and stop leeching content. If you're not paying for it,
you get to see ads.

Having said that, I run a PiHole and uMatrix. I'll stop when;

\- Tracking behaviour improves. I don't need to be fingerprinted across
domains. Track me through your own site by all means, but no further.

\- 3rd party networks become responsible for the content they serve. If your
network serves up malware or a cryptocurrency generator script, you get
penalised heavily or just dropped entirely.

\- General behaviour improves. This hair-swiping trick, pop-unders, auto-
playing videos, in-text mouseovers, active-content popups demanding email
addresses, tiny X's that are impossible to click without activating the ad
content... No. That stops.

\- Forbes. Making your entire site rely on scripts from third parties to
require enabling a slew of random site's JS is not the answer. Making your ads
less obnoxious is.

~~~
krapp
>Get off the internet and stop leeching content. If you're not paying for it,
you get to see ads.

Ad-blocking isn't "leeching" content. Users have always had the ability and
the right to filter web responses, it's not like television where the
broadcast is one signal and the viewer has to take it or leave it, that's not
how the web was ever intended to work. If sites _send content_ along with
advertising, then _they_ have to accept that their advertising can be filtered
out at will, and their content read for free.

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soneca
Is it ppc? The company is paying for visitors not interested in their product?
This does not make sense, it is not " _growth hacking_ ", it is a " _creative
person trying to be clever at the expense of advertiser 's money_"

~~~
otp124
Instagram is pay per view from what I’ve seen. 500-1000 views for $5 from what
I recall.

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Philomath
I don't understand why Instagram would ban the company from ever advertising
again. To be honest, if I was the one that got tricked, all I would think of
is how awesomely they tricked me.

~~~
tallanvor
Probably because it can be construed as a form of fraud, and while some people
might find it amusing, most people tricked by it would have been upset.

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binaryapparatus
I do hate ads but this is brilliant and creative idea. Respect.

~~~
eru
At least it is the first few times..

I think similar tricks have been played before.

~~~
nasredin
Fake button JPEGs and bug crawling on your screen GIFs?

Yeah it's been done before.

It's funny, every few years people discover something... that has been done
before.

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osrec
A bit silly really, but I suppose it has increased their profile somewhat,
including this article. Though I bet their conversion rates are dreadfully low
as there is little or no intent from the user.

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rajadigopula
Now every PPC providers need to update their terms and conditions to include
"No hair on banners."!

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krisives
I want to be mad but I'm impressed by how clever they were. Completely low-
tech solution.

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paradite
Just to give some context for people not familiar with the Chinese Internet,
it is a pretty popular and well known trick on Chinese social media and chat
apps.

So the company might not have realized how foreign the concept is outside
China.

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midgetjones
Joke's on you, Kaiwei Ni, my screen is cracked.

~~~
martin-adams
No it isn't, that's just another ad

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andrewingram
Brb, doing this on my tinder profile. Are there any studies on hair
positioning to optimise for swiping right?

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lancebeet
I doubt there are any studies, but I reckon people are more likely to swipe it
to the closest edge, with the swipe direction perpendicular to the strand.

You might be able to do even better when it comes to tinder. You could change
the color, length and texture of the hair based on your personal preference.
People with hair similar to the hair in the picture are probably more likely
to fall for it, since most hair that falls on your screen is your own.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
This suggestion is both brilliant and slightly creepy all at the same time. Do
you work in marketing by any chance? ;)

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jamix
I can't believe I just wasted 5 minutes of my life on this "story".

