World Vision PPC Competition –Result

By: Rich

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who entered the competition. The response was excellent and you can be sure that your efforts will have been of real benefit in assisting World Vision in their Relief work.

After the cull last month, we were left with four adverts battling it out for top spot. Here I should make the admission that the volume of traffic was so low for the original keyword, that we had to add more keywords to raise traffic levels and see significant results. As the top two spots were taken by DKI titled adverts, I think it is fair to assume that this gave them an advantage. Third and fourth spots were taken by ads with titles that matched exactly the original keyword choice – Myanmar cyclone appeal. I am sure that had you all known that more keywords were going to be added then a few more of you would have used DKI, so apologies for that.

Also if you looked at your adverts during the competition and noticed that there were some differences to what you had sent, we did have to run them by World Vision so there were minor editorial changes.

It was interesting to see the different styles that made up the top four. Fourth place was this effort from Stu. A simple but effective appeal with a mixture of capitalised and lower case words, strong call to action phrases, so that the overall effect is an ad that is easy on the eye and allows the ‘Donate Now’ call to action plenty of space on that second description line.

Myanmar Cyclone Appeal
Help those affected by Cyclone
Nargis - Donate Now
www.WorldVision.org.uk

Clickthrough rate: 0.38%

Third place was this advert from Kinoti. Only Myanmar is capitalised, every other word is lower case which, with so many heavily capitalised adverts out there, will surely have made it stand out. The call to action phrases are very strong and again they are given plenty of space, each getting a line to themselves. Of all the adverts this one was the shortest, on both lines, and stood out by being low-key in appearance. I think this was an excellent use of a different appearance as well as a beautifully written body of text.

Myanmar cyclone appeal
help rebuild lives now
make a contribution
www.WorldVision.org.uk

Clickthrough rate: 0.46%

Second place went to this advert from Jon Clark. This was the only advert to put a figure on a donation amount and I would love to see conversion data for this advert in particular. Did people donating follow the advice of £25? Unlike the last two adverts this one went for almost all-capitalised words and longer sentences, using almost every character possible. The use of the charity’s name, World Vision, within the body of the text was also interesting. Only three adverts used this tactic and two of them were in the top two, while the other was the highest ranked advert that didn’t get through the cull. The lesson from this would seem to be that if you have a brand which is highly recognised then it is a very useful tool in the PPC armoury and shouldn’t be ignored.

{KeyWord:Myanmar Cyclone Aid}
Help World Vision Rebuild Lives in
Myanmar with Just £25. Donate Today
www.WorldVision.org.uk

Clickthrough rate: 0.85%

But, [drumroll] in the end the winner was…Leslie Chacon with this effort. DKI title again, the World Vision name appearing in the body of the text, and the affirmation that they are ‘trusted experts’ all build up to the very strong call to action phrase of ‘Make A Life-Changing Impact’. I think that all factors are important in the success of PPC ads but the call to action phrase is the bedrock of a winning advert and this one is a beauty. This advert led the way almost from the start and, using the marvel of statistical significance, we can be 90% confident that it would have beaten the second placed advert over time. With such close competition, this was a handsome victory.

{KeyWord:Myanmar Cyclone Relief}
World Vision, Trusted Experts in
Relief. Make A Life-Changing Impact
www.WorldVision.org.uk

Clickthrough rate: 1.04%

There may be some of you looking at the clickthrough rates and thinking ‘If those were the CTR’s for the ones that got through the cull, what were the others like?’ but in truth all CTR’s went down after the cull, even our winner. The lapse in time since the Cyclone will no doubt have led to the lower traffic levels and lower clickthrough.

Leslie is our very worthy winner and gets the bundle of goodies, as well as our admiration for some outstanding ad writing. Congratulations and thank you to every one for getting involved.