[IAmGraydon]

Not only that, I’m amazed that VCs call the awful ads they tested “marketing”. What they created is simple, uncompetitive, uncreative advertising, and that kind of thing doesn’t stand a chance in today’s world. Of course it performed terribly. Marketing today takes just as much creativity as the product you’re selling. Actually, I would argue it takes more in many cases. It’s like building a race car and putting low grade gas in the tank. Theres a surprising lack of business acumen here.

[anstosa]

We specifically avoid "creative" ads. We know how to make ads more effective but that's for when we have a business we're trying to grow, not for when we are trying to determine if there's a business at all. We want to distill a very specific value proposition and target demographic in each ad. If the value prop resonates, they will click and they will convert regardless of ad "creativity". If we were just trying to juice numbers, we wouldn't learn anything whether and which value propositions are effective.

- Ansel from PSL

[xmprt]

That's why they accounted for much higher CTRs in the long run by optimizing the ads. Also, I'm no expert but I would imagine you shouldn't base your market research on getting lucky with a viral ad.

[briandear]

If the ads were higher quality, the click through would improve but conversions wouldn’t. So it would drive up the acquisition costs even more — further making the point that this was a loser idea.

[lerchmo]

Hmm, this is not how improving ads has ever worked for me. Better ads = better performance.

[rchaud]

higher clickthroughs to the landing page would have zero incremental effect on conversions? How do you figure that?

why would anyone bother to A/B test ad copy or landing page CTAs if this were true?