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).

Recent posts by Mike

• What Does Your Order Button Say?
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analysis Indicates...It Just Might
• Are small businesses dropping out of AdWords?
• How I Got on The First Page of Google With My Last 4 Blog Posts in a Row
• AdWords Conversion Tracking - The Ultimate Guide

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

If you want to see what's in the private lab...

Ask yourself... which part of your business would you most like to improve?

I can send you 7 tactics related to your specific needs, if you like.

You don't have to buy anything, just take it as a backstage pass into our private course.

Will it give you the solution you've been waiting for?

There's only one way to find out.