A/B-Split-Testing

Walk outside your home, and you’re bound to see ads everywhere. On billboards, posters, buses, and even subway platforms. You’ve probably bought something after seeing these ads (as have millions of other people). The reason? These ads are effective. They tug at your heartstrings, make you miss something you never had, or convince you that your life will be better once you sign up for that gym membership. But how do brands know these ads will work? By testing them on various groups of people! In other words: ad testing. ...

As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” One of the keys to success with Display advertising is not what you do once or twice, but rather what you do on a regular basis—specifically, constantly creating, testing and optimizing ad creatives. However, it’s easy to get lazy. It can be hard to come up with ideas for ad creatives on a regular basis. Or you might become content with decent performance instead of going for that slight boost in CTR or conversion rate. ...

The least effective way to A/B test ad creatives – and how most people do it – is by guessing. They change a color here, switch a picture there, try out a new tagline… but it’s all done randomly and with little direction. The better way to test is to see what your competitors and other large advertisers are doing. What colors, layouts, elements and copy are they testing? Which ads have been seen more often? Which ads have they stopped running due to being ineffective? ...