Google explains their interest-based ad program here:

Interest-based advertising: How it works
Many websites, such as news sites and blogs, use Google’s AdSense program to show ads on their sites. It’s our goal to make these ads as relevant as possible for you. While we often show you ads based on the content of the page you are viewing, we also developed new technology that shows some ads based on interest categories that you might find useful.

Here’s an example that hit me square between the eyes recently. On April 26 I read this article about a $.69 iPad stand. It was really a business card holder from Office Depot that someone was now using to sit their iPad upright on their desk.

The post had a link to the product page on OfficeDepot.com which I clicked through to take a look at and eventually left without purchasing.

Fast forward 14 days and look at this ad I saw today on a completely non-office product related site:

Just wow. If you do any type of online advertising your head should be swimming with the possibilities.

Imagine the ability to reach people who you know have checked out your website and your products, and follow them around for days and weeks on the web.

Google explains the ability to do this from the “category” level (ie: someone likes gardening tools, you show them gardening tool ads). But the example I show above takes it all the way down to an SKU. And its not the only instance I’ve seen of this. I’ve got a beverage cooler/cart that I’ve been eyeing following me around the web too.

Some might say this is annoying, and if you’re in that camp you can adjust your preferences.

But for a marketer like me its fun and interesting to see this and think of all the possibilities to use this.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

But basically…  (and this is oversimplifying it greatly) they changed from having people “Become a Fan” of your page or business to having them now say they “Like” your page. Seems like a small change that should not have much of an effect on the amount of people taking the action, or at least it would seem.

Facebook changed forever on April 19, 2010

But my own stats for one of my Facebook pages tells a different story. I’m sure Facebook tested this concept before rolling it out across the entire site and all their widgets. You would think there’s no way they would make a change like this and testing it to make sure there were no ill effects.*

The graphic below shows you stats for one of my Facebook pages which shows how many people visited and how many people “Became a Fan” of my page. For the couple weeks leading up to April 19th, you can see things are pretty consistent. But look what happens right after the 19th. Both visits to the page and the amount of those visitors now “Liking” the page drop significantly. I should note that absolutely no other site changes were made, and site traffic stayed consistent.

facebook Like button stats

Big difference huh? I’ll keep my eye on the numbers over the next couple weeks to see if this persists. If it does, I’d say the “Like” button is a colossal disaster for both Facebook and fan page owners.

Maybe its just taking some time for people to get used to the change. They’ve seen “Become a Fan” buttons all over the place for years and now they see “Like” and aren’t sure what to make of it.

Or maybe its the demographic that my site/fan page is targeting. They tend to be a little older (50+) and maybe the new “Like” feature does not jive with them. Who knows.

Curious though if anybody else has experienced this sudden drop in “fans” or “likes” on their facebook fan page.

* I don’t think Facebook would do this purposely, but…

What if page owners who are not “liking” the drop in fans decide to spend money promoting their pages on Facebook? Could be some big profit in that for Facebook, no? I have to think this would cause more harm to Facebook than the profit would justify though.

Back in 2008 Dan gave a TED Talk and one of the examples he used to highlight just how irrational we are sometimes as consumers was an order page for the Economist. So much thought goes into creating the best copy for subscriber acquisition or renewal pieces that sometimes we forget that we need to make sure we are saying the right things and framing offers the right way all the way through the entire checkout process if we want to achieve maximum conversion.

The Economist order page example offered three choices:

• Online subscription for $59
• Print subscription for $125
• Print and Online for $125

Dan saw this order page and called up the Economist to see what they were thinking and why they would frame the offer in such a way. Clearly nobody in their right mind would choose option #2. Unfortunately by the time Dan got to the right person at the Economist, the offer page was replaced.

So Dan decided to test the original page with 100 MIT students. Here is what they chose:

• Online subscription for $59 (16%)
• Print subscription for $125 (0%)
• Print and Online for $125 (84%)

This would seem to make sense right? The third option looks like an incredible bargain and so 84% of the students chose that option.

A natural reaction would be to eliminate the option nobody wants, so Dan eliminated the middle option. It’s amazing the result this change had on what people chose:

• Online subscription for $59 (68%)
• Print and Online for $125 (32%)

What a difference! Which result do you think the Economist would prefer? Clearly the result where 84% of people chose the higher priced option. But they would probably never figure out how to achieve this result without testing.

So, two lessons to take away from this:

1) Always be testing and tweaking your offers, and

2) Don’t hesitate to test offers that seem to make zero sense…those which nobody would choose. The “dummy option” could have a profound (and profitable) effect on what they do ultimately decide.

You can watch the entire Ted Talk embedded below. The example illustrated here begins at the 12:35 mark.