that blog post was very good, but it didn't mention the obvious dynamic tags insertion of profile data that has helped to bring my CTRs up. It used to work way better when POF first came out, but it still is a way to grab attention by displaying things about the user in the ad to make them go "huh".
This little block is taken from the pdf you can get right from the plenty of fish advertising site, very useful document:
Available in Tags:
{gender:default} --> Replaced by Male or Female
{age:default} --> Replaced by exact age of the logged on user
{state:default} --> Replaced by name of the state or province of the residence of user. (Works for UK
users as well.)
Note: The word ?Default? should be replaced by what you would like the ad to say, if certain information is
not available. Ex. Woman, California, etc.
How do I use these tags?
Simply enter the dynamic tag into the description or title
portion during the ?Add A Creative? process.
Example 1: ?Cheap Insurance in {state:the US}!?
- If the user was from New York, the ad would appear as:
?Cheap Insurance in New York!?
If the State was not available in the user profile, it would
show up as ?Cheap Insurance in the US!?
Example 2: ?Are you {age:25}, and single??
- If the user was 25, the ad would appear as:
?Are you 25 and single??
Example 3: ?{age:25+}, {gender:female}, from {state:the US}??
- If the user was a 31 year old, female from Oregon, the ad would appear as:
?31, female, from Oregon??
This is nothing new, but no one has posted it and it seemed like an obvious thing that should be in the thread.
Like I said back in the day this was like printing money, but now... still effective when used with good targeting and offer / demographic matching and session depth / login count / good image on the ad / common sense / lots of testing budget. Also I found that when doing dating offers targeting women, they respond much better to pics of couples as opposed to pics of just a dude.
With men, its all about boobs and hotness. CTR is king like you mentioned, no ctr means no campaign. I try for at least 2-3% CTR which may seem high but its not that hard to get with some testing, market research and common sense along with a nice testing budget. Some people get way better CTRs than that but I have even been profitable with a 1% CTR so whatever.. below one percent definitely sucks.
