The Subtraction Principle

The Subtraction Principle

How the tiniest change in where you position your offer can make all the difference.

Where to Place Your Sale Offer in Copy

When you're advertising at scale, even the tiniest changes can make a big difference. 

Just ask Google, which once tested 41 different shades of blue for its search engine links.

The same goes for copywriting. The placement of words, offers, and calls to action have been studied and tested and debated for decades.

Now, research has been unearthed about one of those elements — the offer.

The marketing science newsletter Ariyh this week focused on where to place the discounted price — to the left of the original price or to the right. (For example, which is more effective: "Was $45, now $30" or "Now only $30, was $45.)

🤷🏻 The answer: It depends.

Researchers found that when offering a moderate discount of around 30%, writing the discounted price to the right of the original price (e.g., "Was $45, now $30") is most effective. People perceive the discount as bigger compared to when the new price is on the left, making them more likely to buy the item.

🚫 There are exceptions

But this effect disappears when the discount is only about 10% or if the discount is clearly presented as a percentage. 

It also reverses for very low discounts (e.g., 4%), which the study said people find opportunistic, and very high discounts (e.g., 85%), which make people question the product's quality.

💭 Why does this happen?

The researchers speculate that consumers find it easier to calculate the difference when the larger number appears before the smaller one, matching the typical format for subtraction. For moderately sized discounts that aren't easy to calculate mentally, we often skip the math and assume the discount is around 10%.

So, for your product with a 33% discount, displaying "Was $45 now $30" should yield the best results, making the deal seem more attractive to potential buyers.

The research was published in the Journal of Marketing.

X Sues Advertisers for... Not Advertising??

1) Usage of the beleaguered platform X is at an all time high. [fact check]
2) Also, X's ability to thrive in the future is threatened.

Both those conflicting statements came in a video by X's CEO Linda Yaccarino [LinkedIn] this week, after the company sued an advertising trade group.

X says the Global Alliance for Responsible Media conspired with its industry members to boycott X, depriving the platform of ad revenue. So they're suing them, along with former advertisers like CVS Health, Mars, and Unilever.

🎲 The case is likely a longshot

Of course, there's no requirement for advertisers to buy ads on any platform. 

X's majority owner Elon Musk himself earlier this summer told an advertising audience at Cannes that:

Plus, it was only a month ago when X proudly announced:

💥 So, will this backfire?

It might have already. Adweek is reporting that:

📉 X’s ad revenue dramatically lower

Axios reports that X will make $2 billion in advertising revenue this year.

In the last year in which X reported earnings publicly — 2021 — that number was $4.5 billion.

Brand Safety Technology Faces Scrutiny

A new report from Adalytics claims hundreds of brands appeared next to unsafe content on user-generated content websites, despite using new AI brand-safety technology from providers like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.

A piece on Digiday today reports that industry players believe brand safety tools may be over-promising and under-delivering.

🤔 Puzzling inconsistencies

Sources quoted in the piece were puzzled by inconsistencies in how the AI tools categorized web pages for risks. 

🗣️ DoubleVerify responds

For its part, DoubleVerify accused Adalytics of selectively searching for problematic terms without proper context.

One of the web sites studied, Fandom, a large user-generated content site, said the examples were from old, low-traffic wikis and that's "why it was not flagged via our current moderation systems or Google’s Ad Server, both of which monitor our active wikis.”

Amazon Black Friday Deadline Moved Up

Heads up if you sell through Amazon — the company has set an Oct. 19 deadline for third-party sellers to send their Black Friday inventory to its fulfillment centers. This is one week earlier than the deadline last year.

The company says it needs the extra time to ensure they meet Prime delivery promises during the Black Friday ordering rush.

Amazon warns that sellers who miss this deadline may have difficulty finding space at Amazon's fulfillment centers. It added it will have limited slots to accept shipments in November and December.

One bit of good news: Sellers that exceed capacity limits this peak season won't have to worry about an inventory storage overage fee. Amazon eliminated the fee last month.

Uber's Ad Business Booms

Uber's advertising business is growing faster than expected, with its annual revenues expected to hit $1 billion by the end of the year.

Uber sells ads across its ride-hailing and food delivery apps, Uber and Uber Eats. In June, it began selling in-app ads programmatically through partnerships with major ad platforms.

📱 Ad formats

One of those formats is called a Journey Ad, which runs in its mobile app while a user is on a trip. 

The company also has digital screens inside some cars (often just an iPad) with T-Mobile selling ads there.

🌍 Global scale attracts advertisers

Uber's global scale is attracting advertisers, particularly large consumer packaged goods brands interested in multimarket campaigns. Uber Eats has seen strong momentum in this area.

In addition to restaurants, Uber is attracting advertisers from categories like financial services, social networks, tech, entertainment, and luxury.

📚 Case study: L'Oréal

L'Oréal, for example, ran a successful campaign on Uber's platform, targeting travelers at London airports with a perfume ad. The campaign outperformed benchmarks for view time, swipe rate, and click-through rate.

Shopify Beats Revenue Expectations

Shopify's revenue grew 21% year-over-year in the second quarter, beating the company's own outlook of high-teens growth. The strong performance sent Shopify's shares soaring more than 20% this morning.

Shopify's CFO [LinkedIn] told analysts the company expects to end the year with "minimal headcount growth" compared to the approximately 8,300 employees it had at the end of 2023.

When ask if the company had been seeing any signs of a downturn in consumer spending, he said the company "didn't see any significant deterioration or improvement."

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