My friend Corey Bornmann from Affportal uses the phrase ‘trick to click' to describe landing pages that look like this:
You might have seen variations on this type of landing page or banner and that's because it can work great! Who can resist clicking that ‘play' button?
The basic idea is to take a screen-shot or pic to use as the ‘video still', then use Photoshop (or another graphics editor) to make it look like a video player.When selecting the picture to use, browse around Youtube and see what videos make you want to click on them. Usually you'll find that the image is one that you want to see what happens next. For example, if I see a guy sitting there facing his webcam I am probably not going to be as inclined to click as I would if I saw a big shark just about to bite something (you get the idea!)
You can download the source files for the project above here
Getting creative with this style of LP is the key. The main thing that will influence your CTR isn't the play button, or any of the video player effects…it's the picture you use. It can get tricky because you don't want to mis-represent what you are promoting, yet be provocative enough to get clicked.
One scenario I have seen a lot is using pictures of ‘hot girls' in the video player frame to promote dating offers. This can be a little deceptive, and often traffic from such tactics doesn't back out for the advertiser which can result in getting kicked off the offer….so use at your own risk.
Get creative with trick to click and try something that you haven't seen before.
Don’t forget to put an extual vid on the lander with the same content as your creative in order to be congruent, or prepare for massive bounce rates.
Will it be a copyright violation to take and modify YouTube still images?
I agree with JP. If I was surfing around and clicked one of those I’d want to see something. I’m guessing that is what happens to those “watch ufc 1,435 live online”.
You can also use this to effectively dickroll noobs on wickedfire.
Very interesting David