How Not to Advertise on the Internet

“I’d seen most of the ads up til the last one. As a female player I’d decided by about ad #3 I would never, ever play their game. Browser-based casual games and the female demographic? Pfft, who needs them!”

I’m a female player, too. Someone else got me to play Evony first, back when it had just launched and I’d never seen or registered the ads before. If I’d seen the ads then I doubt I would’ve. :slight_smile:

“there are no women on the interwebs”

While we’re linking xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/322/

And thanks for the interesting article, that’s great. :slight_smile:

I for one wouldn’t mind seeing a scantly clad StackOverflow advertisement every now and theen (ala Irish Girl from DailyWTF and the like).

I know where they got this idea:

Seriously, I played the game for a few weeks and realized that

a) it sucked
b) it wasn’t getting better
c) there were no naked chicks on it

Just to play devil’s advocate … perhaps they’re doing sophisticated A/B testing and following where ever the data leads. In general, we’d consider that a virtue. Only when we see where it leads do we complain.

@James,

"Wait.

That’s a -real- ad for a -real- game?

I’m heading to my bomb shelter now. See y’all after the apocalypse."

Wait, so you think “sex sells” on the internet is a sign of the apocalypse? Where the heck have you been for the last 15 years?

I’d seen most of the ads up til the last one. As a female player I’d decided by about ad #3 I would never, ever play their game. Browser-based casual games and the female demographic? Pfft, who needs them!

Looks like, how to advertise on the internet successfully. All this talk and posting about the ads just generates interest in the product.

Just like the One Rule to Lose Belly Fat (Obey) ads that are out there. Obviously these people wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t work great.

Not that I doubt it’s actually appeared, but I can’t believe that’s not some weird prank. Everything about it screams prank, right down to the “actual-game-name de-emphasized and in tiny font.”

Also, a bit of your chronology doesn’t add up. You make it sound as if all of those other ads came after the first one, but the first one is advertising Evony and the second is advertising Civony, which was the game’s previous name.

I am sick and tired of this advertisement especially in my google reader. People around me may think I am watching adult site or something because of these advertisement. Thank you for this article.

Boobvertising!!

Big up for the Idiocracy reference, that sort of DEVOLUTION is what came to mind. I didn’t watch the ads that closely over time, but was wondering why the most recently one I saw looked so… busty… and that was, well, before the non-fantasy breasts one came to my attention, thanks to Coding Horror. Looks like so many other “support” ads, with the cognitive dissonance of… WHAT’S THIS? A GAME?

Indubitably, while the lesson here is “how not to advertise”, if it IS infact working for them — the piled-on attention is succeeding to their advantage. Especially if they’re well-aware of the psychological reactions it’s causing.

And I’m curious what impact culture is having here? Something lost in translation from the Chinese?

1ST BANNER:
production artist Awesome! and it don’t get much conciser!

old v.p. of marketing We’ve decided to change the name. Put a girl in there and I’ll email you the text.

2ND BANNER:
production artist (Thinking; ~this looks like shit~ ) How’s this?

old v.p. of marketing Love it! Don’t you?

—One Week Later—
old v.p. of marketing We’ve decided to revert back to the old name. Put two girls on there and I’ll email you the text.

3RD BANNER:
production artist (Thinking; ~this looks like shit~ ) How’s this?

old v.p. of marketing Love it! Don’t you?

production artist Uh…not really, but I like the chicks (smile, chuckle).

—One Day Later—
4TH BANNER:
old v.p. of marketing Uh, Simon, Randall and Chen said we need you to change the girls to an animated version.

production artist What? like make them kissing or something?

old v.p. of marketing No no no like a drawn character. They said it was racy. I’ll email you the new text.

—Two Weeks Later—
old v.p. of marketing Conversion rates are waaaaay down. They said I could do whatever I want. Put a real girl back on there and I’ll email you the new text.

5TH BANNER:
production artist (Thinking; ~this looks like a porn ad~ ) This looks like, …uh, what do you think?

old v.p. of marketing Looks almost like an adult ad, let’s try it.

—One Week Later—
old v.p. of marketing Conversion rates are up, let’s try something new. I’m going to go ahead and do this next ad myself.

6TH BANNER

“Since I can’t see the page 11 chart in that link, I’d be interested to see what they define as “online games”, because any chart that says women play more online games than men is a complete fabrication.”

Remember, Yahoo Spades and Diner Dash are “online games” too…

Here are some boobs. Give me your money! All hail freemarketism. Damn communists. What’s more to understand?

This I feel reflects the “Dark Side” of the advertising industry. Contrary to popular belief the entire industry is not full of shady practices and narcissism, though for some it may certainly feel that way. Sex appeal is what some companies try to use as a means to attracting new buyers to their product. And it makes perfect psychological sense, if you subscribe to Sigmund Freud. These however are examples of it being done in a tactless fashion, which is harmful to the industry image as a whole.

This series of increasingly offensive, misleading ads is one more reason to have Adblock Plus : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Hey, now the Evony “team” is spamming comments, too!

http://brokentoys.org/2009/07/10/save-the-cheerleader-spam-the-world/

http://westkarana.com/index.php/2009/07/10/evony-and-irony-why-i-will-never-play-this-game/

Ah, so that game is made by some guys associated with WoW gold selling. It all makes sense now.

Lol my husband plays that, ever since I saw the third ad we’ve all been teasing him about how he’s off to “save his lover!” :stuck_out_tongue: