The Psychology of Advertising

The Psychology of Advertising [+ favourites]

I have always had an intriguing outlook on advertising. It is a beautiful science because the optimal methods of advertising generally are at some "equilibrium" point.

What I mean by this is you cannot overstimulate the audience because they then shut off their sensory inputs. An example of this is going to a website with a lot of blinking advertisements. You automatically gravitate towards the most stable text on the page

If you go to a site with large text ads everywhere, you gravitate towards anywhere that there is smaller text.

However, if you blend in your ads too much with the content, you will not reach enough of an audience. Especially if you are competing with other advertisements on the page. Sometimes the blinking red text will get you.

And another aspect of advertising is that it is constantly evolving: What worked yesterday will be saturated by the market tomorrow and that method will no longer be useful because all of our sub-conscious minds are already equiped to reject those tricks.

Because, after all the trick of advertising is to interest the viewer. To attract them. But attraction is such a variable thing that as more of those attractive things become available, they all become less attractive. The law of diminishing marginal utility (one of the most accurate economic theories applied to psychology... ever)

So the question then becomes... how do you create an advertising method that will lose its utility at the slowest rate... yet begin with a large amount of utility. In this case, we'll use "utility" as attraction.

Take the icons listing the forums for example. Originally, they were all the same icon that lighted up the same way when a new message entered.

But now they are all unique icons pertaining to the subject of the forum, and they all light up in their own unique ways. They are also pleasing to the eyes because they are graphically beautiful.

When you observe them and see a new forum lighted up... you are prompted to click on it. Something attracts you. You want to turn that light off.

Why?

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

The icon lights give people a sense of accomplishment. They are a very obvious visual representation of a (small) achievement. Changing their shape and then adding complex visials to further identify them with their corresponding subjects reinforces the viewers coherence of a particular discussion. People crave appraisal, the lights validate their worth on a subconscious level.

one of the basic rules of effective advertising is being able to identify the product with the user. Here, the lights in addition to the topics do just that.

"I am Akba-Atatdia"

I have no problem not clicking the icon...Something blinking almost turns me away...it appears too eager. I ask myself "Why do you want me to click you so bad?" But everything is like that for me. I go to the grocery store. Somethings on sale I immediately look at the expiry date. See if the discount is really worth it.
People like to see different. On a page of all large adds a small one is appealing because it's not like the other ones. It's special.

"I love to see people struggling for their purpose in life..."

i didnt find that the icons had any real effect on me, i stopped to look at them, and see what the pictures were, but i still looked for the same forums that i usually lok in.

advertising is a very interesting science, the one thing i find amsuing is how wrong it can go, in britain there were a series of adverts for an insurance company called e-sure, and they were loathed accross the whole country, with people even saying that they didnt want to use that company purely because of the annoyance caused by the adverts. yet someone must have thought it an attractive formula, to commision it in the first place. the other ones everyone hates are claims company adverts, how did the american culture of sueing people at the first chance ever get across here.

i would also agree with decius, that the form and style ofthe adverts are very important, for example does anyone actually notice the google ads that appear on these pages? they are often there, but they are just plain text links, and not the ones we are looking for. and then pop-ups i usually close with out waiting for them to load, if they get past the pop-up blocker. the best adverts are the ones which are inoffensive, arent annoying, and are funny.

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"

Okay... here's an interesting project.

I want to maximize the number of click thrus on this site with the google ads. I will explain the way I have implemented the ads thus far. Users can then give me their idea of what I can do to optimize it. We'll discuss the ideas and whatever we conclude as a group are the optimal changes I'll implement. We'll run them like that for a week and I'll report the changes.

Before I give that information I need compliance by at least three members that will actively participate in this effort.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

I will. As much as I can anyway.

"Wht cry for those that often cry? Instead, help them smile, and smile for those that smile."

I'm game.

"I am Akba-Atatdia"

You know I am in, what do we need to do?

"My mind is tearing me apart, then it constructively puts me back together again."

how do you mean maximise the clikc thrus? do you mean, increase the number of people who follow the advertising llnks on the site?

i'm game to try the experiment

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"

Okay. I will make a seperate thread for this.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."