Hello my nerdy friends,
Could the white space around the headline in your text-only ads make them less convincing?
Let’s take a look at this week’s study.
The study:
Researchers tested whether the empty space surrounding a message changes how persuasive people find it.
They ran seven studies with real Facebook posts, compliance tasks, and ads where they compared 2 versions: 1) more space around message 2)less space around the image.
They then asked participants about how they feel about the product and how persuasive the message was (Kwan et al., 2017).
🧪What they found:
Across seven studies, people were less persuaded by copy surrounded by empty space and less likely to act on it.
Why?
Our brains like to use shortcuts to make decisions.
One of those shortcuts is spacing around a message.
If there’s a lot of space, then our brains think: “Huh, the author clearly did not have enough arguments or belief in the message to fill the page. That must mean it’s a bad argument”.
Caveat
First, empty space always made the message feel less persuasive, no if the source felt trustworthy or not. But if they did find the source trustworthy, then reducing space made it more convincing. If they didn’t trust the source, it didn’t matter either way.
Second, if people disagree with your message but are paying attention, empty space can actually help! The message looks less pushy, they argue back less, and they end up more open to it.
Third, if people know the spacing was not a deliberate human choice(for example, randomly generated by a computer), the effect vanishes.
Most studies also measured attitude or preference, not purchase behavior.
💡Takeaway
Test out reducing the white space around the headline in your text-only ads. Technically, in the ad, they manipulated the canvas size, but this is impossible on ad platforms like Facebook, so I think the next best thing is to increase the text, to relatively reduce the white space.
Stay awesome my friend,
Ksenia (the biggest nerd)
P.S. Thank you to today’s awesome sponsor, Roku!
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