[tomkin]

I love this kind of social experiment. There are a few theories as to why this resulted in a higher CTR. The obvious ones to me are:

1) "Look at the pretty picture!!"

2) "What the hell? EA is allowing this ad? Did they make it? I gotta see where this goes!"

3) Alternate to "Banner blindness", as @jonnathanson pointed out.

In 1 & 2, I feel like the higher CTR wouldn't matter because people are acting on curiosity of the implementation rather than the product. Once the outcome was revealed, and the banner is seen as no more than a trick, I'd be willing to bet that the orders or pre-orders of the game (in this case, playing for free) stayed roughly the same as if using the other banner. Just a hunch.