A few weeks ago I did a post on a split-test I was running on POF ads that revealed some interesting results.  Every split-test that I ran using an image of sensuous lips continually out-performed any other image with a higher click-thru rate (CTR) on the ad.

Thanks for all your feedback and the most common question I received was whether this affected the conversion rate.  This test was for a diet related offer.  One would assume that since the image was not related to the content of the ad, it would have a poor conversion rate compared to the others.

I ended up taking the two most popular images (highest CTRs) and comparing their conversion rates.

Here were the results.

Sensuous Lips – 1,583 clicks and 5 conversions = 0.31585% conversion rate
Fast Food Image – 1,271 clicks and 1 conversion = 0.078% conversion rate

Now, one might argue that these number are not statistically valid because there were not enough sales.

Who really cares?

When I am spending money on paid traffic, I will stick with the sensuous lips after that many clicks.

If you start seeing a bunch of banners running online with different sensuous lips, you will know who is running them. 😉

Tweet, Like or comment if you thought this was cool.

Cheers

Gauher Chaudhry

Last May, I held a media buying workshop here in Toronto and had top media buying experts present the content.  One of the speakers was a good friend and ninja marketer Greg Davis.  I gave him the task of presenting on the importance of your advertising banners when doing any type of media buying.

One of the surprising tactics that he revealed was using images of sensual lips in your ads to increase the click-thru rate (CTR) rate.  He said that in his tests, it worked almost every time and it didn’t matter if the audience was men or women.

I have to admit that I was skeptical, so I put his recommendation to the test on Plenty of Fish ads.  I created a campaign for a weight loss related offer and included an image of sensual lips in one of the ads.

The results were surprising.

I ran multiple ads with the only change in the ad being the image.  These ads were only targeted at women who were between the ages of 40 and 45.  Test after test, the ad with the sensual lips maintained the highest click-thru rate confirming Greg’s own tests.

If you click on the image on the left, it will open up to a full size graphic and you will be able to see the exact click-thru rate of each ad.  The lips ad had the highest CTR rate of 0.058%.  In some cases, this ad beat out other ads 2-to-1.  The closest ad (fast food image) only came in at 0.05%.

If you think about it, it doesn’t make logical sense because lips really don’t have anything to do with weight loss.  I think it is because the image of lips is eye-catching, which leads the prospect to read the ad.

Have you ever had weird results like this in your split tests?  Let me know in the comments section.

Also, I have reopened my Media Buying Sumo course, so if you haven’t had a chance to join you can by clicking here.  You will get access to the entire Media Buying workshop and the video presentations of all the speakers.

Best wishes,

Gauher Chaudhry

A few months ago I held a live workshop on media buying in Toronto.  One of the presentations was on the topic of retargeting, which if used correctly can be very powerful.  Retargeting basically allows you to place a cookie on a prospect’s web site when they come to visit your web site.  This can be as a result of clicking on a banner or just coming as a result of a promotion.  This cookie allows you to retarget banner advertisements to that specific prospect, even after they leave your web site.

Matt Sauls of Sitescout gave a great presentation on retargeting and I have included a portion of his presentation below.

I would love to get your comments on what you thought of the presentation.  If you would also like the version of this video that includes my advanced retargeting strategy, please optin here and forward the video close to the end:

Click Here For The Advanced Strategy

Cheers

Gauher

After learning from the best when it comes to media buying over the last one year, I have successfully launched my own profitable campaigns.

I have learned so much and want to share with you what I have learned in a new PDF report that I recently wrote.

This 50-page report covers the basics of media buying and what you need to successfully get started.

These are the media buying tactics that you need to know.

I would love to get your feedback.

Download The Free Media Buying Guide

I welcome your comments below!

Best wishes,

Gauher Chaudhry

Last weekend, I held my sold-out Media Buying workshop in Toronto and it was a great success.  The attendees loved the content and everything ran on schedule without any hiccups.  Media buying is something that I now believe anyone who is looking for online traffic should invest in.  I am far from a media buying expert, so I had some of the most talented media buying experts fly in and teach their tactics and strategies on profitable media buying.

The attendees were taught all the ins and outs of media buying and some even commented to me that they could not sleep after Saturday’s session.  So much brand new information for many of them to process on just the first day.

The amount of traffic that is available through media buying is absolutely mind-boggling.  For example, Sitescout delivers anywhere from 15-20 billion banner impressions per day and this is just remnant traffic!  This means that there are hundreds of billions of impressions available through media buying on a daily basis.

One of the speakers, Steve Gray, said it best when he referred to media buying as a mechanical process such as with any paid advertising. The secret ingredient to success in media buying is the marketing funnel that starts once a prospect clicks on your banner. Steve delivered stellar content over two presentations and really went into detail on how to work with ad networks and insertion orders.

I have to admit that for the longest time, I thought media buying was limited to big brands and people who had no issue promoting fake blogs and fake articles.  But it was smart marketers like Steve Grey who opened my eyes to the fact that you can make big money promoting real valuable products and services with media buys if you do it right.

He has literally built multi-million dollar businesses in various markets from only display banners in the past few years.

With the advent of real-time bidding networks such as Sitescout, EngageBDR and others, this changes the game for the little guy.  You can now get started with just a few hundreds dollars and start tapping into billions of impressions of targeted remnant traffic on any of these RTB networks.  Got an idea for a new product or service?  Test it with banner ads for as little as $0.05 CPM (every one thousands impression) and see what the response is.

Sunday was another stellar day with the big boys from Sitescout (Ratko and Matt) putting on technical presentations on how real-time bidding networks, retargeting and mobile media buying work.

What really hit me was when Ratko spoke about the explosive growth of RTB traffic and how it is going to grow dramatically over the next few years. For instance, RTB advertising will double in 2015 and continue to be the fastest form of online advertising this decade.

I also had some fun with the attendees and showed them some of my failed media buying campaign attempts. But I also showed them some winning campaigns and with the knowledge gained from the workshop, I hope to scale those winning campaigns up.

I want to personally thank all the speakers, Mike Collela, Greg Davis, Stevy Gray, Matt Sauls and Ratko Vidakovic who shared this wisdom and intelligence this past weekend.

I also want to thank all the attendees who flew in from as far away as Hong Kong for making it a great interactive experience and providing great questions to the speakers.

Feel free to comment below. 😉

Gauher Chaudhry