This is why different Wikipedia banners result in different average gifts | Hacker News Reader

This is why different Wikipedia banners result in different average gifts

saperduper.org

30 pointssaperduper8 comments

It was on HN yesterday. "Optimizing Wikipedia's Fundraising Banner Ads" (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/11/annual-fundraiser-checking-banner-results) asked readers to post their thoughts on the difference of average gifts donated by wikipedia users, when shown different banners. I wrote a blog post about the "anchoring heuristic", which explains the phenomenon.

Open articleView on HN

From a very quick scim of the original blog Wikimedia blog post it looks like the total for #18 was higher (with the same number of impressions). What this suggests to me is that the lower amount shown on the banner made people feel there donation would count even if it wasn't very much. If more of these people donated one would expect the average to go down and the total to go up, and that appears to be what happened.

Obviously I skimmed the article far too quickly. Here's the relevant bit:

    Compare the numbers of gifts for the two banners:

    #18: 832 gifts, $15073.47 total
    #22: 301 gifts, $9572.83 total

    Not close right?  But look at the average gift sizes:

    #18:  $15.84 for Paypal, $21.87 for credit card
    #22:  $27.92 for Paypal, $36.58 for credit card

So I was totally wrong in saying that #18 did better overall.

The total amount (not the average amount) is what counts to wikimedia. From the original blog post (less suggested -> more donated):

  #17 suggests $30,   totals $22,000
  #18 suggests $1.95, totals $11,000 (same views)

So, Wikipedia should be showing just large donations? ;)

I wonder what would happen if they changed it to just a $1000 donation all the time?

It would be cool for them to create a genetic algorithm that trawled through a primordial soup of pitches and talking points, mixing various appeals, quotes, images, and quantities to see what would make the most money.

Why not take it to the next level and do a whole campaign like that ? Even ... a whole company ? Called [name to be found by market study], doing [TBF by customer survey] using [TBF by best practices review]. Or by an evolutionary algo :)

It all depends on your 'soup' you start with. Online advertising is a perfect example of punctuated equilibrium: big ideas that get gradually refined, until the highest return on investment comes from creating another big idea.

Reminds me of Teracent, recently acquired by Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/displaying-best-displ...

Evolving ads are very cool. And a little unsettling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com