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Shoe company tricks people into swiping Instagram ad with fake strand of hair (medium.com/shanghaiist)
65 points by fredley on Jan 8, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 29 comments


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.


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.


> 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.


>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.


That's why I wrote I am not that exposed anymore as I pay for what I see and don't visit that many websites. The few I visit a lot I still use ublock origin but donate or have a subscription or something like that (patreon for some).

Bottom line is, I would much rather pay than view the damn ads and be tracked.

I could probably tolerate a few ads on a page if they didn't break your commandments above, but we all know it won't happen, especially the 1st and 3rd ones.


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"


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


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.


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.


Maybe because they finally realized that advertising (on the internet) has gone too far in their ridiculous hunt to steal attention driving people to Ad-Blockers?

No, that would be crazy.


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


At least it is the first few times..

I think similar tricks have been played before.


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.


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.


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


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


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.


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


No it isn't, that's just another ad


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


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.


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


I'd imagine you should put the hair near the right edge, so people would swipe right since it's the smallest moving distance. Consider how one might hold a phone and the "area of easiest access" for one- and two-handed holding.


If the phone is in a case with a ridge around the screen, they're more likely to swipe up, meaning a super-like.


A "super" like?

They are gonna be soooo disappointed!


Congratulations, you have beat the "80% of men competing for the 20% of women"* statistic.

*My numbers may be off.


[flagged]


what racism are you referring to?


It's the new Hitler. It's a highly welcome guest you can bring to any argument and make lots of new friends!


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




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