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Hello my nerdy friends,
I came across an ad for a face cream with Cordyceps.
I have no idea what Cordyceps is and how I should feel about it in my face cream.
It made me wonder, when people see a word in an ad they don’t understand, how does it affect sales?
Before we get into it, I want to thank today’s sponsor, Roku for providing my readers with a generous offer (BTW if you get ads in Roku city, please PLEASE let me know - I’ll be fangirling hard. I tend to pause shows a lot, so Roku city loops for hours on our TV):
Shoppers are adding to cart for the holidays
Over the next year, Roku predicts that 100% of the streaming audience will see ads. For growth marketers in 2026, CTV will remain an important “safe space” as AI creates widespread disruption in the search and social channels. Plus, easier access to self-serve CTV ad buying tools and targeting options will lead to a surge in locally-targeted streaming campaigns.
Read our guide to find out why growth marketers should make sure CTV is part of their 2026 media mix.
🧪The study:
Researchers tested this. They showed people everyday products such as fried chicken, pens, soap, and donuts, with and without random made-up words before them.
Each person saw a unique 3-letter nonsense word like “zal,” “poq,” or “ced.”
The goal was to see if a meaningless word changes how people judge the product (Baskin & Liu, 2021.)
What they found:
People thought the meaningless-word products cost more. Yay!
But they also thought they’d taste worse or work worse. Whoops.
Why?
When we don’t understand a word, our brain assumes it’s something niche or fancy we just haven’t learned yet.
But that same unfamiliarity also creates doubt. We assume it is not the typical version, so maybe it is lower quality.
Caveat
One of the experiments showed that the opposite thing happens. If the purchase is for someone with unconventional tastes, meaningless words made the product seem both better and more expensive.
The authors of the study also suggest that for status or prestige products, where novelty, exclusivity, and differentiation are valued, the pattern would likely flip from negative to positive as well.
💡Takeaway
If your audience wants to identify as “normal”, avoid fancy words that most people don’t know.
If your audience wants to be “different” or if advertising status-enhancing products , then adding rare or invented terms might work well.
Have a creative day,
Ksenia, the chief nerd
P.S. by the way, if you like my newsletter, you’ll love this one, too:
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