Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords - Brilliantly Innovative!
January 9th, 2008 by Vishen Read more about ArticlesSixt, 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.
Thanks to BannerBlog.Com.Au for bringing this to our attention.
About the Author
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
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[…] Original post by Vishen […]
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!)
[…] via MindValley Labs […]
[…] via MindValleyLabs […]
[…] 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. […]
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.
ASCII art has also been used to meme-spread mind-diagrams of artificial intelligence.
doesn’t work just the normal sixt results are shown.
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.
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.
Did you ever read the adword TOS?
may be this can help
http://services.google.com/awp/en_us/breeze/7338/index.html
fake. doesn’t show up at all on google.de etc. “THIS” is their way to market.
Looking for it at 2:30 pm EST, on 9 Jan, I don’t see it.
Removed?
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.
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.
[…] (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….). […]
[…] 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 […]
doesn’t appear that way in search results currently
excellent idea! smart marketing
Looks like it’s been taken off
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”
Well it was really interesting I must say.
Google is quite smart. They know what is going on
)
Cheers!
http://ComputerVideos.110mb.com/
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.
[…] ВзÑто тут. […]
[…] Sixt, a major car rental company in Germany, makes different Google Adwords ads. […]
[…] Via here via here. […]
[…] You can see the ad screen cap here and the actual video here just in case one link gets slammed this morning. […]
HOAX? I assume it must be, AdWords would reject these things instantly for “repetition” and “punctuation” and who knows what else.
[…] Source: Digg. […]
But it doesn’t work with adwords, moderators don’t approve it
real or fake, i got a kick out of the article, thanks
Hi
That’s nice…
can someone help me with eyeglasses ASCII art?
[…] Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords - Brilliantly Innovative! Now that’s what I call Branded Content (tags: adsense advertising adwords ascii genius) […]
[…] 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. […]
I am sure, this can happen. I have tried such thing but without a doubt they were disapproved
Very original!
interesting for branding, not roi.
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!
PS one of them is really bad (I did multiple) but I can’t pause it as google is undergoing maintenance. aaargh!
:D
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.
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
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[…] Using ASCII Art on Google Adwords […]
[…] הכריש הסב ×ת תשומת ליבי לפוסט ×ž×¢× ×™×™×Ÿ, שעוסק בשימוש ב××•×ž× ×•×ª ASCII ×‘×§×™×©×•×¨×™× ×”×ž×ž×•×ž× ×™× ×©×œ גוגל ×’×¨×ž× ×™×”. קישור לסרטון שמציג ×ת הפרסומות הללו. ×× ×™ ×ומר ×œ×›× ×”××™× ×˜×¨× ×˜ ×”×–×” ×”×•× ×ž-ש-×”-ו. […]
[…] SIXT warb offenbar eine Zeitlang mit ASCII-Arts-Anzeigen bei AdWords: Einfach genial! Leider aber nicht mehr live […]
[…] 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? […]
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 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.
[…] Thanks for the pointer, Paul. […]
[…] 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 … […]
[…] 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. […]
[…] 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. […]
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/
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/ ).