Every day, we're trying to find the answer to these questions, but when publishing ads on paid socials there are so many variables you're not in control of, meaning if you conduct the same experiment twice, you’ll basically never get the same outcome. The essential idea was to improve on a series of successful ads for one of our US-based clients that we had remixed a few months back.
Back then, we had some AR-style in-app UI assets placed around the client's debit card and we decided to add some visual spices to make the original ad more exciting to the eye. And it worked, it really did.
- ach so!
- yes, & the question builds up in all of us: Why did it work?
Let's start analyzing by watching the video. Over and over again.. Let’s take notes: what's happening? Second by second – frame by frame. Check the results:
& How about the people? The video was 35 seconds long, did they watch it all? - If you didn't pay much attention to the table, that's about how long it took you to read so far. How long can you hold your thumb without scrolling to the next dose of “you don't know what” that satisfies you on a screen. Or could it even awake the conclusion that you want to change one of the many services you contract without thinking about it so much -
What caught the attention? When did it become boring? Do we have the numbers? Yas! Look:
Data analysis
To organize everything a bit, the idea of a matrix net is quite interesting to see what are the first thoughts that come to mind and how we can link them. 🔵😎🔴
Research time: Google Scholar & scientific papers 🤓
A scientific background is never bad. Is there any research on how any of the connoted terms are linked to advertisements on the internet?
Yes, and much more than you can imagine! Experiments are not always made in a lab with pipes and rats. But when you start to be specific in temporal topics, you'll find a lot of open hypotheses. Time is needed to proof if they'll be verified… or falsified. And probably since yesterday already a new technology exists and we'll discover it in 2 years. Anyway, here we have a few examples, if you want to go deeper:
- “Inpection of play: A study of how augmented reality technology can be utilized in advertising”
Conclusions
After processing and filtering all the info, here are some conclusions about our ad:
1. First seconds are the most important > shorter video
- From sec 0 to 9 we lose 44,13% of viewers (!)
- From sec 9 to 26 is not significant just the 11,9% quit (viewers captivated)
- From sec 26 to 35 we lose 21,52% (significant for the starting total, 43.97%, what means the current half - only the real card is on the frame-)
2. Apply + motion elements
3. Less time of the “normal” card
4. Faster, intriguing, surprising. Concepts:
- “Out of this world” - “incomprehensible“ - “new”
- Futuristic - Abstracts liquify shapes & lightening fxs (proposal)
- Confetti effect “surprise”: diff. brand colors, diff. aesthetics, positive connotations
Storyboards
Some first idealizations about what could happen in the new version.
What is the user doing? How to interact with the card? What do the screens show?
Of course, as in any process, things change along the way. New discoveries and challenges. Feedbacks and requirements. Marketing the art.
Ideas become things - from theory to practice
First steps: Chroma card + tracking movements
A whole world behind the green screen techniques and a universe of tracking systems.
After a hard work of more than a month of filming & editing in After Effects; Photoshop; Illustrator; & Cinema 4D, we finally had more than 20 different versions & hundreds of tests in a project folder of around 60Gb. Wow! & This the final one 🙌
-You may ask: & it worked? Well, it’s right now online & we are waiting for the results! 😬
