NONE: Re:Ad questions--Deception Ineffective
Re:Ad questions--Deception Ineffective
Greg H. (gregh_at_primenet.com)
Wed, 26 Jun 1996 23:22:39 -0700 (MST)
reply to: owner-online-ads_at_mailserv.tenagra.com
Sender: owner-online-ads_at_mailserv.tenagra.com
Precedence: bulk
At 04:43 PM 06/25/96 -0400, Alan Richmond <WDVL_at_Stars.com> wrote:
[snip]
> An earlier poster advertised something that was almost certainly
>their own site with the words "I found this interesting.." as if it came
>from a 3rd party. I've noticed people posting to usenet about products
>or services as if they had 'discovered' them and were just passing the
>info along...
[snip]
> Why are people resorting to lies to sell their stuff?
This is an excellent question, which prompted me several months ago to
conduct a little test. I had just begun learning to use Usenet to announce
new sites and I noticed that other articles freqently contained ambiguity or
what seemed to be outright misrepresentation regarding the nature of the
relationship between the poster and the site being mentioned.
My hypothesis was that (aside from being unethical) such misrepresentation
was simply unnecessary--I reasoned that the description and subject matter
of the announced site should have much more to do with drawing visitors than
the relationship (hence credibility) of the announcer.
This was just a quick-n-dirty experiment, better for developing pointers for
creating a real study than for seeking statistical significance. Basically,
I sent one version of an announcement to a handful of newsgroups and then
sent another version to a comparable selection of newsgroups a few weeks
later, and observed differences in site access statistics between the two
time periods. The two posts briefly described the site and were identical
except for the last line:
Version #1: Deceptive
(though technically accurate, appeared to come from a 3rd party)
"I highly recommend it."
Version #2: Forthright
"I developed this site and your feedback is highly welcome."
----The Results----
As expected, there was no observable difference between the two posts in
terms of traffic generated (both drew modest traffic). Neither version of
the announcement drew follow-up posts, either positive or negative.
Interestingly, the "forthright" version did, in fact, generate a small
amount of feedback (2 emails, if memory serves) which were useful for
improving the site.
While a real study with a more solid design might show some slight
traffic-generating advantage to deception, the above results suggest to me
that it's doubtful the advantage could ever outweigh the disadvantage of
deception (getting found out) and the advantage of being forthright
(encouraging feedback or participating as the site developer in an ongoing
threaded discussion). I should think that these findings would discourage
deception among that minority (I hope) of online marketers who don't
intuitively avoid such unprofessional behavior.
Comments always welcome.
Greg
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