Disgusting Animated GIF Tips for High CTRs (16)
Want to score higher CTRs with your adult dating ads? It's a competitive space, and with so much flesh hanging from the typical Tube page, you need to make your ads stand out.
One of the best ways to do this is with an animated gif.
In my previous post on Juicy Ads Direct Buys (http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ys-on-JuicyAds), I mentioned two popular CTR boosters:
- Animated GIFs of arses swinging like they've been hit by a hurricane force wind.
- Animated GIFs of titties having a seizure.
If you are like most affiliates, you will have seen these banners on your daily whack-off, and you will have noted how awesome the CTRs must be, but you've probably stopped short of producing them for your own ad campaigns.
I am a Photoshop amateur, but even I can splice these GIFs together if I know where to look. Here are some resources and tips to help you along the way!
Animated GIF resources:
Note: NOT. SAFE. FOR. WORK.
http://freegifsex.com/
http://www.gifsy.com/
http://gifmeporn.com/
http://xxx-porn-gif.tumblr.com/
http://fapgif.com/
http://xxxsexxx.tumblr.com/
http://hot-porngifs.tumblr.com/
...you don't need me for this. Google 'porn gif' and say goodbye to your afternoon.
Stealing is bad, but unless your missus is willing to share your home videos on Traffic Junky, it's a damn near inevitability in the adult niche.
Giving the GIF a CPA makeover
Flying titties and swinging arses are great for your CTR, but they are not going to be much cop for your conversion rate if the user is clicking in anticipation of a full length video.
Once you have a good animated GIF, you will want to modify it so that it bridges the jump to your dating offer. This can be as simple as pasting a call-to-action in the bottom of the graphic, or as complex as going full-blown Tarantino and adding your own frames to the GIF.
GIF editing tips
One of the problems you're going to run in to with the best GIFs is that the file size is way, way too big for many ad placements.
Just this morning, I spent a full hour crafting the most majestic of bouncing Polish knockers only to find that the file size limit was 175 kb instead of the 470 KGB I ended up with.
Thankfully there are ways to edit these GIFs down.
The obvious solution is to remove frames in Photoshop (Once you've downloaded the original file, open it and bring up the animation frames tool. Hack away).
Naturally, the more frames you have, the bigger the file is going to be.
If I'm way over the file size limit, I will start deleting every second frame. This can lead to some slightly choppy animation, so you will want to add an extra 0.05 second to each frame. Slowing down the animation is a good compromise.
Next up, you can reduce the colour palette when you're saving the file. Reducing the colour from 256 to 64 is a major difference in file size. You're going to lose some picture definition, but you're making a porno banner, not designing for the PS4. People are not going to care.
Finally, upload the file to GIF Wizard (http://www.gifwizard.com/) and you can shave some extra KBs off the file.
Normal to slow motion
One of my favourite techniques with animated GIFs is to take it from normal speed to slow motion, and then back to normal. The human eye is jarred by small changes in speed, and you will often manage a higher CTR by playing with it.
Remember Tube sites are filled with videos and animations. You have to fight for attention by interrupting.
Slow motion, particularly when emphasising a 'gory' part of the video, is an eyeball magnet.
Not porn inside! I swear!
You may already be familiar with another popular CTR-booster... the play button imposter.
By placing a play button over your image, users are more likely to click, especially if you have camouflaged the advert well.
It doesn't mean the user is any more likely to convert.
If the user clicks your ad expecting a video and gets a dating sign-up form, he's going to be disappointed. I'm not sure if disappointed is even the word for it. Getting ready to beat you with his stick might be a closer assessment.
Note: Not all traffic sources allow use of a fake play button. Check the guidelines if you're going to use it.
If you're going to use animated GIFs with the intention of catching attention, remember to prime the user for the dating site.
You want to put the idea in the user's head that the image is of a dating site member (amateur videos ftw).
Framing GIFs in a static banner
A great way to get the best of both worlds, animated GIF goodness and a dating site presell, is to shrink an animated GIF and frame it within a static banner.
This way you can have your headline and your CTA. But instead of the usual static image, you have a small animated clip.
Adding a chat dialogue
Not every animated GIF has to be of the extreme pornographic variety. You can use an animated chat window to encourage clicks, and then use the dating registration as a gateway.
It sounds really stupid, but people still fall for this - especially in foreign markets where the tactic is exploited less.
I have about 17 windows full of juggling boobs and gaping assholes open, so this all said, I'm going to press 'post' and close this shit down before I get rumbled by the GF.
Happy animating. Chime in if you have some tips. 
Finch! This is a side I do not know of... and I kinda like it LOL. You dog, you 
Another .gif that works are usually those of cartoons.
Not anime; think more stick kind of figures in the color of black. Happy hunting out there.
Remember if your gonna steal .gif's make sure you scrub. Just because most people are OK with it doesn't mean you won't come across that one psycho that will bombard you with legal notices and DDoS's.
Originally Posted by BenPOF
Great tips - particularly speedup/slowdown techniques. There's a reason Hollywood movies use them as much as they do - but I'd never thought of using them in this, erm, context.
One more quick tip here - if you want to add some "jarring" value to an animated GIF, a simple "channel change" effect is a good way to do it.
Basically, you start with a single animation - a short one. Then, add a grey-to-white gradient roughly like this:
for about .15 seconds. (The timing's rather important here, and changes depending on the type of images you're swapping between, so you need to play around with it for maximum oomph.)
Then go to a different animation.
The effect will be like an old-school TV channel change - a flash of whitish-grey that startles the eye. I've seen this used very effectively on gaming banners, and there's no reason it wouldn't work on adult too (that I can see, anyway!)
I'm using JuicyAds quite a bit and find that the 143,750 bytes filesize (for a 300x250) can be quite frustrating. One technique I have found to help reduce the file size is to select all of the layers (not frames) in the GIF file. Then select CTRL+T (free transform) to resize everything (only reduce it a bit at first to see how much file reduction is achieved). When doing a free transform you need to hold down SHIFT (to keep the ratio). You can then re-position the animation (still keeping all of the layers selected). If the text, other features etc have been resized as a result, just add another layer of solid colour underneath everything else (to cover up the blank space), then cover up any old text by adding a layer right at the top, draw a rectangular marquee to cover what you don't want to see and fill with the desired colour. This should give you a nice blank canvas with a reduced in size animation. I would usually try this before deleting frames but sometimes you've got no choice and have to delete some. Then its a case of reducing 1 colour at a time in the 'save for web' area as Finch said.
Don't ever let this seem impossible to do. Was it the film Apollo 13 when they had to get everything down to 5 amps. Seemed like an impossible task but I always think of this and it helps make gif editing fun 
Ha, I loved Apollo 13. One of my favourites.
Nice tips.
straight up disgusting thanks Finch
I've always liked throwing in my CTA right over her cooter and saying "Enter Here". With animated gifs you can really enhance that by waiting for the 'climax' and throwing your CTA right where the money shot will be. If you can get away with it, keep it looping forever. If not, loop it three times and have your CTA be on the last frame. That way, when your gif is done looping, your cta is viewable.
Thanks man, I'll give those gif sites a shot. I'm just a little more worried about grabbing a gif or image from a porn companys shoot and having them go after you, than amateur type uploads.
I've tried the chat ads on mobile, and went super fancy animating out each letter being typed and the cursor blinking, but "alert: new message" ad types worked much better. That was UK, CA, AU though.
New here...my first question: How do you "Framing GIFs in a static banner". I was trying to do exactly that in PS6 today. I was placing the GIF as if it was jpg image, then saving the whole thing as a GIF...didn't work. Can somebody please point me in the direction of a guide on how to do this. I did a g search to no avail.
Try youtube, here's one I used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t5VIaGJQmg It gives a good overview of PS animating.
All I did was download the gifs, open them in Photoshop as Gifs and resize + add text etc
Great guide Finch, Thanks
Did the same as panthary, by first opening the gif - resize - add text etc. Does take a while and a lot more time consuming than just "placing" a .jpg onto a .psd =) Crossing my fingers for great CTRs!
Stian
Originally Posted by rdrdigital
@ rdrdigital - What do you mean by scrubbing? I made a few effects in Photoshop (grains, hue...), added text to a gif - but when I drag it to g00gle search for pics, it succeeds to identify the pic...
Any suggestions? techniques?
Thanks.
Other than slightly modifying the gif he may be referring to remove image tag data e.g. EXIF data (though this is not supported by gif, rather jpg/tif) that contains info on when the image was made and by whom. Passing it through something like smushit generally cleans out any tags.
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