Maybe you find it too much of a hassle to include animation or some other sort of movement in your advertisements.  Perhaps you’ve wondered if it increases the amount of click throughs?  There was a study done in 2004, in tech years, that’s a couple of centuries, but it seems to provoke some interesting thought into the question of animated advertisements.  You can read the full text here… and when you’re sick of all the complex mathematics and ridiculous symbols, you can just take my word for it when I say they did conclude that it is valuable, that it did grab attention better and increase click throughs.  But there are a few caveats to this.

• After a while, they found, especially with U-shaped patterns, the test subjects began to get annoyed and irritated with the ad.
• Another limitation involved the fact that there was a short interval between the time the banner is displayed and the time that the researchers asked the subjects to identify the product.  This article really said nothing about whether or not there was a longer term product recognition because of the ad.
• There was a small sample size involved in the study.

So, while there is limitations to the use of Animations in advertisements, it does seem like an altogether valuable piece of information.

So, you’ve heard what the scientists have said.  What do all of you in affiliate-marketing-land have to say about animated ads?

I’ve mentioned Facebook a lot in the past couple of blog articles, mostly because most of my social networking experience comes from the ‘Book.  I had joined up at the request of a friend in 2006, rarely checking it at first, but became addicted after a while.  Now I check my Facebook at least three times daily, where about 100 of my more intimate friends are constantly chattering away.  But I still have yet to play FarmVille…

Make no doubt about it.  Countless people are in the same boat.  Which makes it a powerhouse of marketing strategies, but also offers a megaton of blunders.  It has been said that the person who fails to learn their history must repeat it… or at least repeat the 11th grade.  Let’s try to NOT make the same mistakes as these guys. It’s possible to make gaffes and faux pas of apocalpytic proportions on Facebook, take, for instance:

• Molson Canadian wants to know if your school knows how to party. Molson Canadian offered a contest to see which school is the “Top Party School”, targeting 19-24 year old college kids.  They were to send in photos showing the way they get the party started.  Apparently, parents, universities and other concerned individuals called in to complain about this ad, saying that it promoted binge and/or underage drinking.  They took the ad off a week early.
• Walmart’s Gaffe of Only Allowing Wall Posts. This article can be summed up by Walmart not understanding how Facebook worked, i.e. how users communicate with one another, and how to keep a conversation going on a page.

To sum up this post, perhaps it would be best to say, Facebook is a great tool, but it can also be damaging to yourself and your image.  Be careful what you put up on the web, as it can bite you in the backside.  With that said, with care, go get ‘em!