For marketers, there are times when your only real goal is to drive traffic to a page, regardless of the overall quality. Simply getting lots of real human traffic can be a good way to start building brand recognition, generating revenue, and maybe stumbling on a few sales.
Speck of Dirt on your Screen
Placing a single brown pixel against a yellow or orange background can look just like a small piece of dirt on the consumers screen. They will try to press it or swipe it to get it off the screen, only to activate the advertisement and bring them to your page. This one needs to be designed well with the right colors to be effective, but when done right, can really get a lot of people to tap.
Inbox Message
Ads that have icons that look like device icons at the bottom can be quite deceptive. Placing a red ‘notification’ bubble on one of them can help to get people to tap to see what it is. This is an older strategy, and isn’t as effective as the others, but it can still get good results.
Hair on your Screen
A curved black line that is a single pixel wide can be positioned to look almost exactly like a hair on the user’s screen. This works especially well on full screen ads where the ‘hair’ can be placed over multiple parts of the ad for the best effect. When the consumer goes to swipe it off, they will be directed to your page.
False Exit Button
Perhaps the oldest of these examples, it is still very effective. On an advertisement, place an X in the top right corner. Users will assume this is to close out the ad, but in reality it will count as a tap and bring the user to your landing page.
While all of these can be effective at driving traffic, they can be equally effective at driving consumers nuts, so use them with caution. In the vast majority of situations, it is better to find a smaller amount of high quality traffic, but it is still good to know effective tricks like these.
