
Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads - tylerrooney
http://blog.ads.pof.com/2012/04/03/throw-everything-you-know-about-ads-out-the-window-pics-inside/
======
ender7
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
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.

~~~
p4bl0
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.

~~~
specialist
Adaptable, not stupid. The ability to filter noise is a huge advantage.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Conversely, the tendency to filter out important signals as noise is a severe
disadvantage...

------
jonnathanson
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
Yep, it's the same as when Google came out with their text ads. They were
different, so people clicked them.

~~~
Alex3917
Actually, it's more likely because 80+% of Google users couldn't (and probably
still can't) tell the difference between the advertisements and the results:

[http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Search-Engine-
Users....](http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Search-Engine-Users.aspx)

~~~
tripzilch
This is absolutely true. The background colour is _slightly_ different, but on
my laptop screen that's hardly visible at all, unless I tilt the screen at an
extreme angle[1].

I have to say I kind of feel cheated by that trickery, every time, and it is
one of the reasons (though not the most important one) that I use Google much
less recently (in favour of DDG).

[1] no I'm not particularly happy about this screen, the rest of the machine
is great but if I had known it would be this bad I might have picked a
different model (I got an Asus EEE 1215B)

------
alain94040
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
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 :)

------
bgilroy26
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
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.

~~~
bgilroy26
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/>

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

------
joblessjunkie
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
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
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.

------
abeppu
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.

~~~
Cor
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
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.)

------
lucasvo
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
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
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
But did you click it?

~~~
RegEx
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.

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

~~~
patton01
And that is the rub....you clicked on it.

------
acangiano
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
>>"invented by a local mom"

That is the first flag that it is a scam.

~~~
benpof
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
> 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.

------
eob
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"

------
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?

------
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?

------
valhallarecords
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
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>

------
jcampbell1
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
> 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 %-)

------
tomkin
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.

------
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...](http://acapella.harmony-
central.com/showthread.php?2332472-Ads-on-
somethingawful.com&s=9dfc7757e20a520bc2b906e7e2ba17b3)

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.

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

~~~
tripzilch
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".

------
Cor
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/>

~~~
benpof
Also, [http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-
plent...](http://www.mrgreen.am/plenty-of-fish-ads/what-works-on-plenty-of-
fish-images/)

Some good lessons to be learned from that post.

------
Shpigford
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.

------
gghootch
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/>

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

------
ilamont
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.

------
benmanns
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.

------
dclowd9901
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.

------
mk_fox
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.

------
Father
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.

------
tnash
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.

------
K2h
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?

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

------
TelmoMenezes
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.

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

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

------
SeoxyS
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
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.

------
powermeat
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.

------
mbesto
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'.

------
methoddk
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.

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

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

~~~
garethsprice
Not for social. <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
Perhaps. However the standard deviation for a Bernoulli trial is sqrt(N _p_ q)
where p = 0.00049 and q = 1 - p.

The two trials are not significantly different.

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

~~~
terrellm
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.

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

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

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bgruber
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
Which is conclusion of the article/post.

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J3L2404
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
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.

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wilfra
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>

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zackattack
So the question becomes:

How do you blend novelty with timeless sophistication?

