I challenge you to look at the girl on the left for more than 10 seconds. Difficult, right? That’s the brain being confronted with something so fundamentally wrong, it actually feels like it hurts to look at it.
[And by the way I screen-captured this from a display ad for an online intelligence quiz / aka information-capture site]
Sometimes all the smart targeting you do can be ruined by making the message too disruptive or too much like hard work in the first place. Some examples, more from the world of usability than sophisticated targeting:
- Calling the checkout something novel like “shopping bag”, “purchase receptacle”, etc.
- Designing call-to-action buttons that look like “danger, radioactive waste” warning signs
- Putting the most important information in the smallest font
- Making your links have different colours, some underlined, some italics, some just plain hidden
So next time you make a creative that appeals to any audience, try not to make our brains hurt.
My thoughts about targeting, psychology and data - all things that drive my company, 
