Ad design - blend in or stand out?

Blend with design or draw attention?


  • Total voters
    3
  • Poll closed .

vinnypolston

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Getting ready to do my first ad purchase on a website in my niche. What do you guys suggest; Make the advertisement blend in with the design or make it really stand out?

The argument that keeps going through my head is make it blend to look like it is part of the site = more trust? versus make it pop to draw more attention.

What do you normally do? I'm going to test it both ways.. just curious :smile:

The site gets nearly 80k views and only cost $15 for the entire month on a 300x250 advertisement. I'll be sure to update you all with the results!!
 
I'd make it stand out if it were me. Ultimately, you need clicks and eye-balls to your ad. If you were running a pop-up ad or something with CPV traffic, then I'd gear more towards blending into the site you're running ads on. Even just a simple text-based 300x250 banner should be enough to stand out, but not be obnoxious either.
 
Did the poll and then realized it was an ad buy. I can't speak about that. But on my own sites I usually get better results by blending in, but I do place the ads on the parts of the page that get the most eyeballs. Totally different scenario, however.
 
I've done both.

It's not possible to say one is better than the other. It really boils down to split testing the placement and the colors and all that. Some demographics respond differently. Run a month of one kind, then another month of the other and see!
 
I've seen this too with the ghetto ads but then again maybe its the niche....'soft drug paraphanalia' lol
 
Can you let us know which one did better after you've tested, OP?
 
@BANG absolutely! I ended up going with one that popped for this month. Next month I am going to go with a blend in. Have had it running for two days and got these results: http://imgur.com/S30T89r

Nothing ground breaking. I'm getting a .26% CTR on one website and .12% on another. They caught me slipping and didn't have my newsletter popup enabled on the first day. Enabled it the second day and got a sign up --so I'll take that. 17 visits = 1 signup. That doesn't seem too bad. Just need to get more people on the site.

Need to let this run through and then next month run something that blends with each site.

Really appreciate the input everyone! I will be sure to keep you posted. :thumbsup:
 
Rather than testing month - to - month are you able to run them both at the same time? It should give you a more accurate idea of which is performing better.
 
Rather than testing month - to - month are you able to run them both at the same time? It should give you a more accurate idea of which is performing better.

Yes. Yes you can! I didn't even think to look till you said that. Good stuff @aPhillyiate!

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So just giving an update. Right now I'm at 62 visits from the two ads. Second ad performed horribly so I removed it.
 
the one that stands out worked better for me on this one. Going to keep plugging away at it though :smile:
 
Something to think about over CTR is EPC. Earnings per click, which will have to do more with your conversion rate of the traffic. You could be enticing less-interested traffic into clicking a flashy ad, then you pay for the click and they bounce or don't buy, where as a lower CTR and less flashy ad could attract more interested traffic that converts higher. You pay less for higher converting traffic in this case. Are you tracking conversions and/or EPC?
 
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