Good lesson on the value of in-market testing. That said, would love to see some theory and analysis about why the MS Paint ad outperformed the standard ad. My hunch is that the first ad -- while it obviously looks a lot more professional -- looks like every other banner ad on the internet. It reeks of ad-ness, and it may set off some psychological barrier to receptivity amongst viewers precisely because their brains have been trained to filter out ads. (Banner blindness, as one of the other posters has pointed out).
Conversely, the MS Paint ad is, if nothing else, novel. It looks pretty different from most display ads out there. It catches the brain's attention, rather than being caught in the brain's passive ad-filtering heuristics. This may be, if nothing else, a story about attention and awareness.
I think you're absolutely right. I would wager that if every ad on the internet was changed to a five-minute MS Paint scrawl, click-through rates would rapidly go back to where they were originally, if not drop even further.
The novelness lies in the lack of polish. People who work in advertising like ads, and well-polished ads are more pleasing to their eyes.
To the rest of us, advertisements are used as something we don't want to see, but are willing to see, in order to see something we DO want to see. Many of us can pick out the disparity between the polished, targeted ads and the less-focused content it intersperses.
The MS Paint ad was much more readable, IMO. Too many adds try to cram too much into their restricted screen real estate, with the result that they're much less clear.
Factor in that most ads are competing with others alongside (and they all look the same); also as others have mentioned, we've adapted to filter out 'obvious' ads.
Actually, it's more likely because 80+% of Google users couldn't (and probably still can't) tell the difference between the advertisements and the results:
This is absolutely true. The background colour is slightly different, but on my laptop screen that's hardly visible at all, unless I tilt the screen at an extreme angle[1].
I have to say I kind of feel cheated by that trickery, every time, and it is one of the reasons (though not the most important one) that I use Google much less recently (in favour of DDG).
[1] no I'm not particularly happy about this screen, the rest of the machine is great but if I had known it would be this bad I might have picked a different model (I got an Asus EEE 1215B)
I've seen pages where the Text Ads have the same Style as the overall page. The only thing that sets the Ad apart is a small grey text 'Ads' or the like.
I've may have seen far more of such pages. But obviously i can't tell since they're near-impossible to spot the Ads.
The trend is keeping things "by the book" from search engines point of view, And manipulate humans in subtle ways
by confusing contents and ads.
I think that my comment still applies. We've gone from a smaller number of people with a high concentration of those that are 'tech literate,' to a larger number of people with a smaller concentration of the 'tech literate.'
That's probably some of it. I could be wrong but I think the ratios have gone up more than that. Anyway, I don't think the "techies don't click ads" effect is really as strong as a lot of people assume.
My guess is that (a) Google has optimized the ads for more clicks (b) advertisers have gotten beter at attracting clicks & (c) People are more aware of when to click on ads. If you're looking for a babysitter, you are more likely to have one booked ten minutes from now if you click an ad than an organic result. People have, consciously or unconsciously become aware of that and they click the ads when they want that kind of content.
> I don't think the "techies don't click ads" effect is really as strong as a lot of people assume.
I kind of doubt that myself and would like to see some numbers before coming to that conclusion. Especially if just talking about CTR instead of conversion rate. For the latter I'm willing to believe that if the techie clicks the ad, they're more likely to buy. Though that is a guess I'd also like to see supported with numbers :)
It might also be very different in the USA. If I see an ad with my search results, a lot of the time it's a US company and even if I would want to use a service on the other side of the ocean, I can only pay with either my creditcard or PayPal. I won't use PayPal and my creditcard is tucked away in some drawer somewhere. Actually, for any non-Dutch company (say, German), a creditcard or PayPal is usually the only option. On a Dutch site I can pay with iDeal via my bank card (zero transaction costs, authentication via text message on my banking account's site).
It might also have something to do with giving the impression that the game is going to be something novel, quirky or even bizarre, as opposed to another polished but bland EA title.
Conversely, the MS Paint ad is, if nothing else, novel. It looks pretty different from most display ads out there. It catches the brain's attention, rather than being caught in the brain's passive ad-filtering heuristics. This may be, if nothing else, a story about attention and awareness.