The Highest-Grossing Display Ads on the Web | Hacker News Reader

The Highest-Grossing Display Ads on the Web

capitalandgrowth.org

43 pointsjkuria16 comments

The content goes from fairly interesting to weak very quickly as you scroll through the PDF (why PDF?). It starts out with 'A outperformed because...' on the first few examples and gets to 'we have no idea why, just make sure you test' halfway through the document. If it were me I would have stopped at the last proper example and left the rest out. Quality over quantity. You'd think that a marketing agency understood that.

Also: low quality PDF rather than a normal website? Fine, you can send PDFs to people, but it makes for a poor experience. Are there viruses in that PDF?

They also called the PDF an “infographic” which it is not. If that PDF is anything, I’d call it a “report” maybe.

But, did they call it an infographic to get me to click it? Did I just prove signs work?

Actually, I'm glad they did because the take away message is different.

By all mean follow all the guidelines but the only rule that really works is hindsight. So test and don't bet the house on a single very expensive headline.

> why PDF?

It started out as presentation sides? It's better as a pdf then it would have been had it been an RSI-inducing multi-page web presentation where you're clicking next every 10 seconds.

It's a bit amusing that he misspelled his email address in the pitch at the end ("jasper@TheConverionWizards.com"). I wonder if there will be a follow-up article by The Conversion Wizards on why that particular document failed to attract new customers for their own business ;)

Doh! Will fix that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Looking at all this stuff feels kind of weird to me. I've been using an adblocker since forever really - I almost never see ad content on the web. I can see why this stuff works, but on some level it's kind of scary that it does.

Is there a document similar to this for blog headlines?

I just started to write a blog and have struggled coming up with good headlines. Most tend to follow the content in the blog. So if I am talking about x, y and z - the title is "x, y and z" which seems really dry.

"You won't believe what happened when these people changed from x to y" /s

While I included the /s tag, the sad truth is that these headlines would probably get you the highest number of visitors. Creating curiosity works well, maybe you can find a headline that accomplishes that without clickbait.

I'll recommend a book published in 1957 The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. Although some of the examples are dated, it takes you through a stream of consciousness about how to "stoke the hivemind"

Pay particular attention to Packard's 8 hidden needs and factor it in structuring your headlines.

https://www.schneems.com/

Recently his headlines have become very clickbaity... if that's any inspiration, particularly the Python one...

Email me and ill help with them and show you how to aporoach the problem. I do tech copywriting. No bs or strings attached.

It's weird that you have to click on a link that contains the same webpage and all of the actual information on High Grossing Ads. Here it is:

http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/wp-content/33-Highly-Effect...

My guess: PDF is a great punt for complex web design.

This seems a slightly more upscale (but also less insightful) version of the classic analysis of "chum box" ads: https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...

Having these examples are nice, but this isn't too useful without a bit more data than that, such as click percentages. I would warn to anyone taking conclusions from this, since the differences might not be statistically significant.

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