Ingenious Advertising

Usually I completely ignore ads. I whitelist blogs that I read on my adblocker out of common courtesy, but I almost never click on anything unless the ad is really well targeted. Last time I clicked an advertisement was when I saw a really nice set of dice in the sidebar of the Twenty Sided blog. That was actually a perfect example of when Google Adsense works – the ad was perfectly targeted for the audience, and I couldn’t resist taking a closer look at the shiny dice set. That said, I didn’t buy it. But, a click counts.

So I’m pretty resistant to the regular stuff, and most of the stupid gimmicks. I don’t even click those little flash things that pretend to be mini games. I never really felt compelled to click on any of these gimmicky ads… Until today when I saw this on my own blog:

I haven’t clicked on it, because Google doesn’t like that but damn it, I wanted to. And no, it’s not a porn ad – Google doesn’t serve those. So now I’m intrigued. Anyone seen this ad floating around here? What is behind it. I want to know. Damn that reverse psychology.

Anyway, I figured that if you want to use a gimmick to push your questionable goods on people, this is probably the best one. Every other one can be easily ignored. But if you tell someone not to click, they will be strangely compelled to do the exact opposite out of sheer curiosity. Let me illustrate the point:

Here is a button. It links to something. I won’t tell you what it is. In fact, I masked the real URL by using tinyurl so you can’t just hover your mouse over it and find out where it leads. And no, it is not the java based super-poppup that I linked to some time ago. All I’m saying is – do not push it.

Can you leave without pushing it? If you don’t, you will never know what is on the other site. Maybe its something good. Maybe it’s annoying. Maybe you will laugh. Who knows. You won’t find out unless you click. But don’t! Don’t click the red button!

Of course selling stuff using a gimmick like that is a bit silly. You might get a lot of clicks, but I would think that a targeted campaign will probably generate more actual sales. But for generating clicks, there is probably no better way than telling people not to click – and probably never will be.

[tags]ads, advertising, click, clickthrough, adsense, google[/tags]