In this instance, the answer is definitively "not;" Schumacher suggests reasons why.

Campaign Details:

Our previous article opened with the concept of getting attention as the first of the four stages of the marketing version of the hierarchy of effects, A.I.D.A. The remaining three include Interest, Desire, and Action. What we're going to assess is the tactic of using animation at the front end of a banner as one form of getting attention.

There are motion type solutions, abstract animations, and any number of other ways to try to make a splash as the reader opens the page. A common tactic is to isolate a particular keyword within the headline. Another method I like to use is to select the most dynamic image from the ad, strip away all the other elements, except for possibly a very short headline, and let that dominate the space for a few seconds.
For this week's test, we went with a rather abstract animation style, hoping to catch the reader's eye with a unique, unusual motion graphic to peak his interest and pull him further into the ad.

Some of our tests have been complex, involving analysis of various segments of the traffic across various strategies and images. Other tests, like this one, and like our test on the effectiveness of a button for a button's sake, are simple, and really only require us to look at a few key performance indicators before we can make a legitimate assessment.
Let's take a look and see how this approach worked.

Test Results

The data is pointing to the static ad quite convincingly. Let's take a look at Chart 1.

We'll look at the Total (under Home) column first. Note that because the impression count between the two ads is so close, we can simply look at the data straight up. Otherwise, we'd use a relative comparison metric like click visits per 1000 impressions. For more on our data and the reasons we use the metrics we do, please consult our metrics overview.

Chart 1: Response Rates

Creative Description	Imp	Clicks	Clickthrough Rate (%)	Home Page Visits
				View	Click	Total	Click-visits/1000i
Strategy 1: Static Café	773,388	1,655	0.214	46	704	750	0.9103
Strategy 2: Animated Café	772,630	108	0.014	67	78	145	0.101
Total:	1,546,018	1763	0.114	113	782	895	0.5789

We can see that the static Café ad generated 750 click-visits (as reported in the Total column), whereas the animated ad generated 145. That's a difference of 417 percent. Quite a remarkable spread, given the magnitude of the differences we have been seeing between different ads' performances.

An additional consideration is whether or not either of the banners performed well overall. A lot of people look at click-through rates for this metric, and the static ad is doing respectably in this area. However, I rely more on either visits per 1000 impressions or click visits per 1000 impressions. It takes a little use to get to know the benchmarks for a new metric, but suffice it to say that I've seen many campaigns that delivered a great CPA come in well below .91 for click visits per 1000 impressions.

Last week I mentioned that for tests like this I typically don't look beyond response data because like the button test, this is really little more than an assessment of attention-getting (the interest component on the back end of the animation being the same concept on both these ads).

To be thorough, though, let's look at the page views driven by each ad, presented in Chart 2.

Chart 2: Page Views

Creative Description	Page Views
	Click Visitors
Static Cafe	1134
Animated Cafe	110
Total:	1244

Here again we see a decisive lead for the static ad. So at this point, we can put away the issue of which ad performed better and start to ask the bigger question of, "Why?"

Summary

Earlier in this article I mentioned that the world of animation opens up infinite possibilities for styles and approaches. This week we chose one approach which consisted of a rather abstract intro animation leading into the same graphic the static ad displayed. We kept the animation around three to four seconds, and the k-size the same for both banners for comparison purposes, although that's becoming less of a factor with the rapid adoption of broadband and high speed internet services.
Testing animated ads against static ads is not something new to me, and in past tests the animated ad has won almost universally. These results are therefore quite unique. Typically, we tend to focus on a key image or word from the ad, and animate it up front. For this ad, I wanted to try to do something that focused more on a simple attention-getting motion graphic, and see if that could pull reader interest. However, it looks like it wasn't enough.
If I were to pinpoint the reason for the animated ad's defeat, I'd say it was the highly abstract style of the animation. I think the motion graphic treatment is unique and compelling. However, we live in an increasingly fast and ad-saturated world. Consequently, an abstract animation that doesn't deliver its message clearly and quickly may fail in the area of relevance.
One of the themes throughout this article series has been that testing should be an ongoing exploration, with the results helping us generate both near-term performance increases while giving us long-term marketing intelligence about who our customers are and what their interests and desires might be. To that end, we'll continue this test for another week, testing a less-abstract approach to the animation to see if that changes anything.
Will a revived animation tactic mount a comeback, or will static win two in a row? We'll run the test in two weeks. Stay tuned.

Doug Schumacher is the president of Basement, Inc.