How an inline ask in place of a midroll ad affects clickthrough
Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family is a global Christian ministry dedicated to helping families thrive. We provide help and resources for couples to build healthy marriages that reflect God's design, and for parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 10/30/2017 - 11/09/2017
Focus on the Family currently uses DoubleClick for Publishers to manage ad fill throughout their website. Most of the ads are for their own resources, giving opportunities, and some third-party offers.
One such placement is a mid-roll banner targeting long-form article pages. They hypothesized that a value-focused inline donation ask may garner more clicks that the ad banners due to the limited amount of value proposition copy in the ads and the effects of “banner blindness”—a web usability phenomenon where visitors consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information. Since the value of a donor is higher than the other offers in rotation, they also saw significant value if clickthrough could be increased.
Research Question
Will replacing the mid-roll advertising banner with a value-focused inline donation ask increase clicks for this placement?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Click Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Mid-roll Ad Banner Rotation | 0.19% | ||
| T1: | Inline Donation Ask | 0.05% | -74.9% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 4,551 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 29,652, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.
Flux Metrics Affected
The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:
74.9% decrease in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The inline ask saw a 74.9% decrease in clicks compared to the normal banner ads. While there were broader appeal offers mixed into the ads that makes the comparison indirect, we hypothesize from low donor conversion rate that the original motivation of this audience may not align well with a direct donation ask. This result stands in stark contrast to the results of our similar test of an inline email acquisition offer in this same placement.
We’re reminded that motivation is both the strongest factor of conversion as well as the most difficult to influence. We plan to continue testing the placement and type of offers used on these long-form article pages to improve alignment with the content and visitor motivation.