OK, I know I just made sure that 6 million Leafs fan want to break my legs next time they see me on Queen st. pretending like I know my way around Toronto, but you HAVE to read this little experiment that an anonymous friend of mine ran (I swear, it’s NOT me, if I had such a clever idea I would not hesitate to brag about it!)
Using Google’s oh-so popular adsense program, he created the following ad:
The ad linked to a small blog created for the occasion which explains why the Habs are so much better than the Leafs. The ad targeted websites and search terms revolving around the keywords “Toronto” “Leafs” “Maple Leafs” and some of the players on this year’s roster (can you name more than 3?)
The ad was served 135,395 times and had a click-through rate of 0.04%, which means 51 users actually clicked on the ad. What’s interesting is that the average CPC was around 0.60$, so for a grand total of 30.60$, my friend was able to piss off close to 150 000 Leafs fans!!! Much cheaper and safer than buying a habs jersey and going to a game at the Air Canada Centre, no? The ad could even be seen on the Toronto Star’s website.
Of course, you’re going to tell me that a lot of people don’t read or even see banners and google ads when they’re navigating through a site, but even if you figure that 1% of users saw the ad, that would still be over 13,500 pissed-off fans for 30$! And just to prove how pissed some of these fans were, read the comments that were left on the blog post.
The experiment was also repeated on Facebook, with AN EVEN BETTER AD (sorry for the poor quality screenshot):
Here the stats were even more impressive:
For exactly 20 euros (don’t ask me why this is quoted in Euros, but this equals to roughly 32 $) the ad was served 265 866 times! Note that the cost-per-click is much cheaper with Facebook (here it was about 8 cents per click).
Three conclusions about this experiment:
- The ad approval system for Google adsense and Facebook ads is really far from being flawless. These ads should never have been approved. They serve no purpose other than to anger a category of Web users (fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs)
- In some rare cases, such as this one, the objective was to have the lowest click-through rate so that the ad could be served more times for fewer dollars, the idea of course being that even if a Leafs fan reads it, he isn’t likely to click on the ad. Maybe there are real-life cases where this could be applied?
- Leafs suck…. science proves it!
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Leafs suck (science proves it)
OK, I know I just made sure that 6 million Leafs fan want to break my legs next time they see me on Queen st. pretending like I know my way around Toronto, but you HAVE to read this little experiment that an anonymous friend of mine ran (I swear, it’s NOT me, if I had such a clever idea I would not hesitate to brag about it!)
Using Google’s oh-so popular adsense program, he created the following ad:
The ad linked to a small blog created for the occasion which explains why the Habs are so much better than the Leafs. The ad targeted websites and search terms revolving around the keywords “Toronto” “Leafs” “Maple Leafs” and some of the players on this year’s roster (can you name more than 3?)
The ad was served 135,395 times and had a click-through rate of 0.04%, which means 51 users actually clicked on the ad. What’s interesting is that the average CPC was around 0.60$, so for a grand total of 30.60$, my friend was able to piss off close to 150 000 Leafs fans!!! Much cheaper and safer than buying a habs jersey and going to a game at the Air Canada Centre, no? The ad could even be seen on the Toronto Star’s website.
Of course, you’re going to tell me that a lot of people don’t read or even see banners and google ads when they’re navigating through a site, but even if you figure that 1% of users saw the ad, that would still be over 13,500 pissed-off fans for 30$! And just to prove how pissed some of these fans were, read the comments that were left on the blog post.
The experiment was also repeated on Facebook, with AN EVEN BETTER AD (sorry for the poor quality screenshot):
For exactly 20 euros (don’t ask me why this is quoted in Euros, but this equals to roughly 32 $) the ad was served 265 866 times! Note that the cost-per-click is much cheaper with Facebook (here it was about 8 cents per click).
Three conclusions about this experiment: