Boys Town

How the right kind of image can strengthen and reinforce the value proposition of a Facebook ad

Experiment ID: #6100

Boys Town

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 05/17/2018

Boys Town offers a free email series for parents on bullying. Through previous testing, they had found that long, story-based copy works best in their Facebook ads to acquire more names through the series. To build up on that learning, they hypothesized that a different photo might also impact conversion. They developed a treatment ad that showed the face of a child who looked sad – as if he had been bullied and tested this against the original image that showed a child who was sad, but you couldn’t see their face. They didn’t change any other element of the ad.

Research Question

Would a new image increase conversion?

Design

C: Full image of boy
T1: Image of boy's face

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Full image of boy 0.10%
T1: Image of boy's face 0.35%259.2% 100.0%

This experiment has a required sample size of 3,957 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 113,456, 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:

    0% increase in traffic
× 259.2% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

By simply changing out just the image of the Facebook ad, they were able to increase name acquisition by 259%! In addition to that, this also decreased the cost per name acquired by 64%. The treatment image, in this case, reinforced the hurt that comes from bullying as described in the copy. This experiment really shows the significant impact that the right kind of images can have on conversion rate and cost and how images can be used to strengthen and reinforce the value proposition to increase the appeal of the offer.


Experiment Documented by Courtney Gaines
Courtney Gaines is Vice President at NextAfter.

Question about experiment #6100

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.