MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

I am always fas­ci­nated by the huge vari­ance in results that I see in our Google AdWords ads due to chang­ing the cap­i­tal­iza­tion of our ad copy. Here is a very fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple that I wanted to share with you.

We wrote one ad copy where we cap­i­tal­ized every sin­gle word and one iden­ti­cal ad copy where we only cap­i­tal­ized the title and the key­word that the ad was opti­mized for (clairvoyance).

The results:

- The click-through-rate of the ads was 37% lower for the ad with the cap­i­tal­ized copy

- The con­ver­sion rate (sign-up rate) was 197% higher for the ad with the cap­i­tal­ized copy

Here are the detailed findings:

What explains such a big difference?

Here is our hypoth­e­sis. The ad with­out the cap­i­tal­iza­tion look less like and ad and more infor­ma­tional. Not cap­i­tal­iz­ing every word makes the ad look like the rest of the organic search results where most words are also not cap­i­tal­ized. Since vis­i­tors tend to be turned off by ads, they are more likely to click on the copy that looks less like an ad. So, the ad with­out cap­i­tal­iza­tion attracts more vis­i­tors. How­ever, this might also explain the drop in the con­ver­sion rate because the ad attracts far more casual browsers that are not really inter­ested in tak­ing action (sign­ing up and buying).

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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