Loren Baker reports at Search Engine Journal that copy that stands out from the crowd gets higher click through rates. He explains that a campaign which utilized ASCII art (e.g. //~vw^v^vw~\\ and the like) got a 50% higher CTR than without the art.

Barry mentioned in January over at Search Engine Land that such a practice can “spice up your ads,” but that Google may filter out such art because it obviously gives one an unfair advantage over the other. Loren says that Google has been doing the same thing to the individual who reported the findings.

Meanwhile, it’d be interesting to discover if the CTRs are yielding higher conversions or if there’s a higher bounce rate than previously as well. The data there is lacking.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.