What Disney Can (And Can’t) Teach You About Dating Ads
There are some interesting points in time in this article but I don't know if I see all of them…
Watching a Disney movie is like wading through all the stereotypes that have been proven wrong since your childhood. It can be a traumatising experience for the Bridget Jones thirty-something who still hasn’t found a man remotely akin to Prince Charming. If you’re a guy, it’s more of an exercise in ninety minutes of wishful thinking.
I’ve never been a Disney fan. It lacks swagger, and I just hate how the annoying brat always wins.
I guess my personality can be summed up by the sweeping emotion I felt at the end of Wall-E (was that even Disney?). My girlfriend shed a tear of happiness. I felt a pang of resentment that the fucker didn’t get crushed.
Alas, Disney movies can still serve a purpose – even for black hearted affiliate marketers such as myself. They can help us explore the visual stereotypes that have been ingrained in to consumers from an early age.
There’s no finer example than the portrayal of a handsome Prince Charming. Check out the chops on this smug bastard:
Everything about the dude screams stereotypical attractiveness, but what features create that image? I think the defining attributes are the pumped macho build, the wide smile and the chin.
Knowing what we know, that girls from a young age are conditioned to view these physical features as attractive and desirable, how would Mr Chinny fare as the lead model for our latest round of dating ads?
Very well is the answer, certainly from the majority of my own tests.
Guys with “the Disney Chin” seem to have a natural advantage when it comes to clickability. Ironically, the effect was amplified when I used an amateur model who also happened to be dark and handsome.
Get chin, get laid.
Another interesting finding was the correlation between images that appear professional, and those taken in the amateur MySpace hobag style. If I used a professional model with a big chin, the CTR was much lower than an amateur quality photo of a male who possessed the same chin factor.
I guess this confirms what most of us already knew. Photos that look “home-made” will routinely outperform the rest.
But does it tell us anything else? Maybe females are banner blind and happy to ignore Disney stereotypes when they’re obvious to the naked eye. But shove the same stereotypes in a natural looking environment and you will frequently reap the rewards.
If Prince Charming is a good marker for your female dating ads, what parallels can we draw between Disney and single males?
I ran a similar test using the classic Princess (blonde, hair-down-to-her-arse…) as my requirements for suitable female models. In nearly all cases, this classy respectable image was outperformed by two twin click factors: tits and ass.
It seems guys don’t want to click on ads that follow the Disney stereotype of beauty. Maybe that’s because beauty is an afterthought to the male instinct of click whatever gets the loins a’pumping. Who knows? But I found in nearly every experiment, the skankier the chick… the faster the click.
Guys respond much more readily to a pose that can be interpreted sexually, heavy make-up, secretary glasses poised at lusty angles (Click BOOM!), and a bit of rough around the edges.
Does that mean they’d date the same woman? Probably not, but it’s an effective formula for attracting clicks.
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Interesting points you raised here regarding Disney. It got me to thinking about how it relates to ads. you definitely have valid points.
Interesting POV here. It also proves how different men and women think.
Point in hand: The adult dating vertical likewise is currently almost exclusively male-targeted (thus the T&A description above)
— Although that may change in the future: I’ve seen some “female-targeted” LPs recently
Good stuff Finch. You’ve got a helluva head on your shoulders, especially for a 23 yr old!
[…] “What Disney Can (And Cant) Teach You About Dating Ads“ – Who would have thought that Disney could teach you a thing or two about dating ads? Find out what “the Disney chin” has to do with dating ads! Tags: contest, Internet Marketing, SEO, Week In Review Posted in Week In Review Tweet ADVERTISEMENT […]
That was an interesting case study with no examples. Every bit of information in this article is not only common knowledge from anyone that’s ever made a dime running ads, but, you’ve managed to back it up with zero stats or samples.
And you’re an idiot, because you’re failing to realize it’s not the “chin” that wins, otherwise you could post pics of fucking Jay Leno all day. Think harder, you’ll eventually get it.
@Right – If it’s common knowledge for people who’ve made money running dating ads, it’s useful knowledge for somebody who hasn’t. Think before you type, dumbarse.
1.) I didn’t say shit about “dating ads” – it works for ANY offer. I could run pet food offers, target blue hairs, throw in suggestive/cleavage and hit an above average CTR.
2.) “…it’s useful knowledge for somebody who hasn’t” – My bad. I didn’t realize I was reading Volk’s blog. I thought you pushed the edge a bit more than that.
stillright – What works for any offer? Cleavage? Well that’s blindingly obvious, and I already posted about it here before you accuse me of “not getting it”: https://finchsells.com/2011/05/26/get-your-boobs-out-affiliate-marketers/
What you apparently don’t understand is that running cleavage ads to a pet offer, although likely to hit a high CTR, is also likely to get you shafted from Facebook (and many other traffic sources for being irrelevant) pretty quickly.
I’m not saying a Jay Leno chin is going to be as effective as a washboard stomach and some ripped muscles for attracting clicks. But if you work closely with these advertisers, you should probably be aware that not many of them like non-PG creatives being associated with their brands. So for affiliates like myself who value that relationship, it becomes necessary to consider less effective attributes that still command higher than usual CTRs. Is that a good enough explanation for you?
Either way, have fun promoting your dog food offers with tits and ass. America’s Next Top Marketer in the making!
[…] What Disney Can (And Can’t) Teach You About Dating Ads – “Watching a Disney movie is like wading through all the stereotypes that have been proven wrong since your childhood. It can be a traumatising experience for the Bridget Jones thirty-something who still hasn’t found a man remotely akin to Prince Charming.” […]
There are some interesting points in time in this article but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There is some validity but I will take hold opinion until I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we want more! Added to FeedBurner as well