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ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Brilliantly Innovative!">Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Brilliantly Innovative!

January 9th, 2008 by Vishen Lakhiani Read more about Articles

Sixt, a major car rental com­pany in Ger­many made head­lines in the mar­ket­ing world when it exper­i­mented with a new way to make its Google Adwords ads stand out from the crowd.

Enter “Miet­wa­gen” into Google Ger­many and you see this.

Picture 3-3

In a word only envi­ron­ment, this made their ads cer­tainly standout.

But more impor­tantly — it lead to a 47% more clicks than before.

Thanks to BannerBlog.Com.Au for bring­ing this to our attention.

Last 5 posts by

About the Author

Vishen Lakhiani Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley. Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.

Check out other posts by Vishen Lakhiani

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60 Responses to “Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Brilliantly Innovative!”

  1. January 9th, 2008 at 4:30 am Olympic Version » Blog Archive » Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords - Brilliantly Innovative!

    […] Orig­i­nal post by Vishen […]

  2. January 9th, 2008 at 5:49 am Tom

    I read the com­ments on BannerBlog.com.au and they are men­tion­ing that this ad would never have been accepted with mul­ti­ple punc­tu­a­tion marks in the ad. I remem­ber get­ting my ads rejected (not even able to save) when I clicked on sub­mit. Do you guys know if there was a work-around on this, or per­haps this is a hoax (albeit a great idea!)

  3. January 9th, 2008 at 6:13 am Sixt wirbt mit ASCII-Adwords-Anzeigen

    […] via Mind­Val­ley Labs […]

  4. January 9th, 2008 at 6:58 am Adwords ASCII Art

    […] via MindValleyLabs […]

  5. January 9th, 2008 at 7:22 am ASCII Google AdSense Werbung

    […] Über Mind­Val­ley­Labs wurde ich auf Sixt’s sehr geile AdWords Wer­bung fündig. Der Ban­ner lang­weilt die User nicht mit einem monot­onenem Text, son­dern stellt euch ger­ade ein sehr nettes ASCII Bild zur Ver­fü­gung. Ob da ein .nfo Maker am Werke war? Ein Bonus: Schaut nicht nur faszinierend inno­v­a­tiv aus, es wur­den mit dieser neuen Tech­nik auch die Klick­raten um bis zu 47% gesteigert. […]

  6. January 9th, 2008 at 8:09 am john

    The Ger­man ad approval team must be a lot more lenient than in the US. I’ve tried sev­eral sim­i­lar tac­tics and have been dis­ap­proved every sin­gle time.

  7. January 9th, 2008 at 9:14 am Mentifex

    ASCII art has also been used to meme-spread mind-diagrams of arti­fi­cial intelligence.

  8. January 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am jens

    doesn’t work just the nor­mal sixt results are shown.

  9. January 9th, 2008 at 9:46 am Jack @ Tech Teapot

    How did they get the same web­site URL onto 3 seper­ate ads at the same time. I thought you could only have one at a time? Nice idea though. Sur­prised that the adwords mod­er­a­tors allowed it though.

  10. January 9th, 2008 at 10:23 am Geo

    But clicks for cute­ness hurt your cost of sale ratio! You Don’t wnat casual click­ers or enter­tain­ment click­ers.
    You usu­ally don’t want clicks unless some­one is click­ing because they will buy your prod­uct when they get to the land­ing page.
    I would click that too but not because I wanted to buy a car thus I would cost that com­pany a need­less 10 cents. It’s exactly what you DON’T want.

    The beauty of google adwords is you can describe specif­i­cally what you are sell­ing and only get fil­tered peo­ple who click on it. You don’t want unfil­tered peo­ple to click.
    Thus google pays to deliver all the ads that don’t get clicked and you only pay for ones that will likely make you sales.

    This pic­ture thing likely destroys that click sale ratio because peo­ple will click purely for novelty.

  11. January 9th, 2008 at 11:36 am Sam

    Did you ever read the adword TOS?

    may be this can help
    http://services.google.com/awp/en_us/breeze/7338/index.html

  12. January 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm Detlev

    fake. doesn’t show up at all on google.de etc. “THIS” is their way to market.

  13. January 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm TJIC

    Look­ing for it at 2:30 pm EST, on 9 Jan, I don’t see it.

    Removed?

  14. January 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm Dan Perry

    Wow! How come I’m not smart enough to think of that? I’ll be the CTR is through the roof, just for the cool­ness factor.

    Maybe use ASCII for the land­ing page too? NOW we’re get­ting somewhere.

    Thanks for sharing.

  15. January 9th, 2008 at 12:42 pm Detlev

    lit­tle more indept on my pre­vi­ous post:

    1. google would not allow it.
    2. “THIS” is their mar­ket­ing move. to bring this fake ‘ascii’ act to the media/world and make every­one go “wow, cool” while they spam their SIXT name all over.

  16. January 9th, 2008 at 12:59 pm Thinking outside the box: German edition

    […] (Found the story here, they got the word from here and they got from where-else-but Aus­tralia (watch the movie). See how I give credit? Ahh…. I’m such a cool blogger….). […]

  17. January 9th, 2008 at 1:09 pm ASCII Art on Google Adwords - BlackHatCrew - Elite Webmaster SEO Forum

    […] ASCII Art on Google Adwords Sixt, a major car rental com­pany in Ger­many made head­lines in the mar­ket­ing world when it exper­i­mented with a new way to make its Google Adwords ads stand out from the crowd. Enter “Miet­wa­gen” into Google Ger­many and you see this. In a word only envi­ron­ment, this made their ads cer­tainly stand­out. But more impor­tantly — it lead to a 47% more clicks than before. source: Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Bril­liantly Inno­v­a­tive! __________________ My Ratios :: My Blacklist […]

  18. January 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm livejamie

    doesn’t appear that way in search results currently

  19. January 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm chris

    excel­lent idea! smart marketing

  20. January 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm Ash Haque

    Looks like it’s been taken off :-(

  21. January 9th, 2008 at 1:53 pm Jyothirmayee

    Ter­rific stuff! But I won­der if Google really let this ad approved.

    As far as my under­stand­ing goes Google’s ad ver­i­fi­ca­tion algo­rithms which can detect errors in spelling, punc­tu­a­tion and even gram­mar should have warned/alerted/rejected this ad, if not for any­thing the trade­mark “exces­sive use of punc­tu­a­tion” ;)

  22. January 9th, 2008 at 2:55 pm ComputerVideos

    Well it was really inter­est­ing I must say.

    Google is quite smart. They know what is going on :o )

    Cheers!

    http://ComputerVideos.110mb.com/

  23. January 9th, 2008 at 3:29 pm ME@Zeta

    Maybe I am miss­ing some­thing but I run my pro­grams based on ROI so a high CTR with low con­ver­sion is an irre­spon­si­ble way to run your busi­ness. While I do agree it shows inno­va­tion I would not even con­sider such an effort in run­ning a paid program.

  24. January 9th, 2008 at 3:51 pm Блог для тех, кто хочет отрастить живот » ASCI-символы и Google Adwords

    […] Взято тут. […]

  25. January 10th, 2008 at 5:08 am the new shelton wet/dry

    […] Sixt, a major car rental com­pany in Ger­many, makes dif­fer­ent Google Adwords ads. […]

  26. January 10th, 2008 at 7:00 am middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins » Blog Archive » ASCII Art on Google Adwords

    […] Via here via here. […]

  27. January 10th, 2008 at 7:07 am Innovative marketing goes back to ASCII art | TechWag

    […] You can see the ad screen cap here and the actual video here just in case one link gets slammed this morning. […]

  28. January 10th, 2008 at 8:28 am abbottsys

    HOAX? I assume it must be, AdWords would reject these things instantly for “rep­e­ti­tion” and “punc­tu­a­tion” and who knows what else.

  29. January 10th, 2008 at 9:37 am Emarketing Blog | Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords - Brilliantly Innovative!

    […] Source: Digg. […]

  30. January 10th, 2008 at 1:11 pm Alex

    But it doesn’t work with adwords, mod­er­a­tors don’t approve it

  31. January 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pm Dito

    real or fake, i got a kick out of the arti­cle, thanks

  32. January 10th, 2008 at 3:58 pm optometrist

    Hi
    That’s nice…
    can some­one help me with eye­glasses ASCII art?

  33. January 10th, 2008 at 5:33 pm links for 2008-01-11 « Zero influence

    […] Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Bril­liantly Inno­v­a­tive! Now that’s what I call Branded Con­tent (tags: adsense adver­tis­ing adwords ascii genius) […]

  34. January 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm ASCII Art In My Adwords Campaign | Sweet Rock Media

    […] After the story broke about the Ger­man car rental com­pany adding clever ASCII Art to their AdWords cam­paign, I decided to give it a try, and I’m guess­ing thou­sands of oth­ers tried it out today as well. […]

  35. January 11th, 2008 at 12:49 am dominating_seo

    I am sure, this can hap­pen. I have tried such thing but with­out a doubt they were disapproved

  36. January 11th, 2008 at 3:28 am Mike | AdWords Consultant

    Very orig­i­nal!

  37. January 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm bill

    inter­est­ing for brand­ing, not roi.

  38. January 12th, 2008 at 11:11 am Will

    I saw this and tried it for our adwords, just for fun. It’s hard to get it to work, for the rea­sons above (“exces­sive punc­tu­a­tion”. I got a few up, but not a lot and they don’t look great because of hav­ing to try to get round google’s rules. also, with two lines, it’s pretty hard to draw a flower!

    (look for the are­naflow­ers ads on the right hand side).
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&adtest=on&hl=en&safe=off&q=send+roses&btnG=Search&meta=

    i def­i­nitely agree with the “you’ll get nov­elty (non con­vert­ing)” click­ers comment.…I guess i’ll find out soon enough if any clicks con­vert. googles key­word inser­tion tool is a bit like that.…lots more clicks but con­ver­sion rate drops.….d’oh!

  39. January 12th, 2008 at 11:13 am Will

    PS one of them is really bad (I did mul­ti­ple) but I can’t pause it as google is under­go­ing main­te­nance. aaargh!
    :D

  40. January 12th, 2008 at 9:23 pm Jenny

    Even if Google allowed it, it would totally get messed up when the ad is placed above organic or if the ad is placed on the 2nd page when users click on “more spon­sored links”. Groovy idea though.

  41. January 13th, 2008 at 3:13 pm SEM Pro

    This ads actu­ally were never accepted by the edi­to­r­ial team as they do not com­ply TOS. These cre­atives were just shown by Jung van Matt(?) for award application.

    That it would lead to a high click­rate, sounds rea­son­able. Good for brand­ing, indeed. Addion­ally, it raises the AdWords Qual­i­ty­fac­tor, which is reduced simul­ta­ne­ously by not hav­ing the key­word in the descrip­tion­line 1 or 2. Kthxbai

  42. January 13th, 2008 at 3:15 pm SEM Pro

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    / .‘
    / .‘
    / ______. .‘
    / / __/_// ‘
    / / / c c
    / \ G > _.-‘
    / \/. — _.-‘
    / .—\ / –. _.-‘
    / / \( \ _.-‘
    / / \ \ (. ) ‘
    / / /\ \ /
    / \ | \ \ __..–”
    / .’ \_\ ) )\\ __..–”
    / .’ ) \ | / \ -”
    / .’ _ ‘///‘ ( /\ \
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    ‘\ \ -..__
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  43. January 14th, 2008 at 3:10 am Agafix Blog » Blog Archive » Weekly Links: 2008.02

    […] Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords […]

  44. January 14th, 2008 at 6:23 am חדשות ועוד במחירון » ארכיון » שימוש ×‘××•×ž× ×•×ª ASCII בפרסומות Google Adwords

    […] הכריש הסב את תשומת ליבי לפוסט ×ž×¢× ×™×™×Ÿ, שעוסק בשימוש ×‘××•×ž× ×•×ª ASCII בקישורים ×”×ž×ž×•×ž× ×™× של גוגל ×’×¨×ž× ×™×”. קישור לסרטון שמציג את הפרסומות הללו. ×× ×™ אומר לכם ×”××™× ×˜×¨× ×˜ ×”×–×” הוא מ-ש-×”-ו. […]

  45. January 14th, 2008 at 3:57 pm 24/7 - Der Wochenrückblick (KW 02/08) » Allgemein » sumaphil.de

    […] SIXT warb offen­bar eine Zeit­lang mit ASCII-Arts-Anzeigen bei AdWords: Ein­fach genial! Lei­der aber nicht mehr live […]

  46. January 15th, 2008 at 6:05 am Turner Prize for SERP art? • Tim Nash UK SEO Blog

    […] By: Tim Nash Inspired by the idea of ASCII art in Google Adwords I decided to have ago myself in the SERPs. Unfor­tu­nately I’m not much of an artist and with just 2 lines to work with your scope for a mas­ter­piece is lim­ited! Any­thing that makes your Search results stand out is a good thing but per­haps this is not the way to do it. Any bud­ding artists will­ing to give it a go could this be the ulti­mate test of ASCII artists? […]

  47. January 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am Marian

    Hi all, after read­ing about this I cre­ated an ad like that for my site wgich is also auto related (www.boing.ro). You can see the print screen here http://www.boing.ro/Ascii.jpg or you can go to http://www.google.ro and search for “masini” . The ad set to be shown only for roman­ian lan­guage and for that par­tic­u­lar search term. If you find it please do not click on it as it does not have a big bud­get allo­cated. Is made just for fun.

  48. January 18th, 2008 at 4:18 am Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts » Creative With Adwords

    […] Thanks for the pointer, Paul. […]

  49. February 5th, 2008 at 7:15 pm Google adsense : Learn, practice and share

    […] Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords — Bril­liantly Innovative!We did start mak­ing big mis­takes as we attempted to mas­ter other indus­tries how­ever, and after Google made some changes to the Adwords pro­gram that really … […]

  50. February 24th, 2008 at 6:31 am espresso interactif - Blogue de Yannick Manuri » Blog Archive » Comment se démarquer dans les résultats de Google?

    […] Par con­tre, petit bémol, Google ne per­met pas plusieurs de ce genre de caractères dans ses annonces Adwords, alors, selon plusieurs (voir com­men­taires), le tout ne serait qu’un can­u­lar des­tiné à faire du chemin dans les médias. […]

  51. March 4th, 2008 at 10:17 pm Google AdWords et art ASCII: canular ou pas? | La gazette du Hangar

    […] Demandons-nous, comme de nom­breux com­men­ta­teurs sur Mind Val­ley Labs si cette cam­pagne a réellement eu lieu. Per­sonne ne sem­ble avoir réussi à voir ces annonces. […]

  52. April 23rd, 2008 at 2:57 am jeanv

    Hi, that’s true we still do that, i have just made a test: http://www.google-live.fr/adwords/ameliorer-rapidement-son-ctr-avec-des-annonces-ascii/

  53. May 3rd, 2008 at 2:55 am michael goldstein

    The ASCII must be a fake, because it would have been rejected by google.
    My name is Michael Gold­stein, and I have been work­ing on the same issue as this blog
    Check out my com­pa­nies blog STUN MEDIA
    ( http://www.stunmedia.com/whois/michael-goldstein/ ).

  54. May 28th, 2008 at 3:23 pm jocuri

    verry good post good job

  55. June 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm Will - ArenaFlowers.com

    All my test ads got binned very quickly by google, I must say!

  56. June 20th, 2008 at 1:48 am SEO Consultant - Adrian Kelly

    Sounds like a great mar­ket­ing ploy came to fruition. I guess Sixt were well aware that the ‘idea’ would be picked up and talked about. No doubt they helped the PR ‘engine’ along as well.

    An exam­ple of IM out­side the box.

  57. July 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm EZ Rent a Car

    Thanks for the post!

  58. August 25th, 2008 at 7:41 am The Inquirer ES : AdSense con arte ASCII, una idea genial

    […] Mind­Val­ley­Labs // […]

  59. September 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm דיאטה

    thats nice!

  60. January 3rd, 2009 at 1:29 am JC digital

    Uoooww, that’s cool this idea!

    ;)

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