Topic: [Discussion] A Bug in Bounty Campaigns – Subconscious Perception (Read 397 times)

avatars are difficult to manage and in your opinion can't be clicked or the size of the image is small but in my opinion the avatar here accentuates a logo from the project which elegant logo can be recognized by people even though it is small

Interesting topic op! I have been doing bounty campaigns since last couple years, and most had mandatory avatar, some even had extra payout for wearing avatars.

Signature only campaigns are certainly missing on promotion, picture speaks more than words.

Oh, didn't remember seeing one. But some of the most recognised users are identified by their Avatars like vod. Only when they use identical avatars we look at their names like LoyceV and Suchmoon. So I guess that almost noone will disable avatars, but I know quite a few have disabled the signatures. Even I had them disabled for quite some time.

Avatar only bounties would be a little complicated to manage. As stated, they're not clickable and cannot redirect the user, also the image size is small and cannot give sufficient information asides from the websites name, if it's not self explanatory viewers will not be able to determine it's use at a first glance, and this makes them unlikely to Google search it. People have been known to search up a word or phrase when they know what exactly they're looking for.

If campaigns want to pay me more for my avatar then they can go ahead as I won't complain, but I think it all comes down to the size of them and also the fact that they're not clickable. If they were then I think companies would pay a lot more for them as they would be more lucrative. They're good exposure as merely an advertisement, but the fact that you can literally direct someone to your site with a click of a button in your signature is very effective, and that's why avatars are only really an afterthought for most campaigns as the little extra exposure isn't really worth that much hence why they don't command as much. It would be interesting to see if anything would change in regards to monetary reward if you could click avatars.

You can disable both actually. Avatar's right above signature.

On the other hand, an avatar is often a quick visual means to identify the account that is tied to a given post. When a bunch of avatars are the same (due to a campaign requirement), it may increase the visual awareness of the campaign due to the added exposure, but it goes in detriment to visually identifying the poster quickly.

For accounts that are not rather "well know", that is perhaps not much of an issue, but for those that have a certain personality as a result of their posts, changing a personal avatar for a campaign avatar kind of takes some of that personality away, since the avatar does not stand on it’s own, and you need to reassess that the poster is who you think it is (note: bicycles could have different colours).

Yeah, Avatar is the only and first thing that gains my attention while reading through the forum. I'm also of the opinion that Avatars are a better way of gaining exposure for a new campaign apart from the fact that you can't use clickable links in avatars. There is also the fact that you can disable signatures using a forum option, but not the avatars. And some members use script to block Sig ads.

Btw, when it comes to Signature campaigns paying Bitcoin, I believe only Bustadice and Chipmixer doesn't require you to wear an avatar, all other campaigns already force you to wear an avatar. I don't know about the altcoin bounties though.

Interesting post and good point. I've never thought about it, but probably you're right. Avatars is really eye-catching thing. Usually I recognize users exactly from avatar. First I see avatar, only later I look at nickname. Post content and signature comes to my eyes only later.
I remember times when there was some Avatar campaigns here on Bitcointalk. It was separate from signature campaigns. But their payment rates wasn't high. Probably main reason of it that you can't put clickable link of advertised website on your avatar. Just found old thread with some avatar campaigns:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/overview-of-bitcointalk-complete-avatar-campaigns-15-may-2017-1087042

Hehe, yes, thanks Being not native in english, I thought unconscious would do the trick as well, but subconscious is indeed the better wording.


Yes, sure, I just took your post as kind of random example to visualize what I mean.
But you being forced to wear a CM avatar as well, would give them additional recognition no matter how long or short your post is. And I am wondering, why companies give away some extra visibility so easily (or only pay very few for it), since not being able to wear a personal/private avatar wouldn't be a huge turnoff to join a campaign for most of the people (I guess).


Thats a valid point you both made and which I hadn't in mind.
And I still think that an avatar gets more attention than a signature does. If you see loads of people running around with the same avatar, you probably get people curious and make them google for it. So imo you have the situation non-clickable avatar with lots of attention versus clickable signature with lower attention than avatar (where you can measure engagements though). I think there is some disbalance in payments, because all things considered, these two are closer than one might think.
But as I said, this is more a psychological and marketing consideration, which some bounty managers might have a look into.


Not all campaigns do. There is also a lot of them, where you are not forced to wear their avatar or have some text.

That's true. But check my next post in that topic: it's much smaller, which makes the signature more prominent. But when I create a topic like that, I don't do it for my signature, although I'm pretty sure the signature under my OP gets more exposure than many of my other posts, because that topic gets read more often. Check for instance how many people merited it.

The reason is quite simple: you can add a link to your signature, but you can't click the avatar.

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I think the word you're looking for is subconscious, not unconscious.

Maybe that's why campaigns require to wear besides the signature also their personal text and avatar... To make sure it is very visible...?

That might be a good suggestion for future bounty campaigns but avatars is not enough for over-all marketing, they might be good for branding, but can't be metered by some analytical tools since ads are for marketing purposes it's way more easy to use a signature with URL to measure and/or manage their marketing performance here in the forum for which help them to act their next step, to continue or to stop the campaign.

Not sure, if this thread fits in here, so the mods can feel free to move it to a more appropriate board (Marketplace ? Services ?).

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I noticed that I pay way more (subconscious) attention to avatars than I actually do to signatures. Thinking about the why, I figured out that is has to do with the sequence of eye movement and the ability of peripheral vision when reading a post or going through a thread.

Most posts are left-aligned and not centered, apart from posts in Arabic or Hebrew language of course, so you start reading a post somewhere here normally:



From there the distance to the avatar is pretty short and you will inevitably pay some attention to it by peripheral vision. You often curiously check the author of the post (at least I do) and that will put your attention to the avatar again. Now with most of the people reading from left to right and every sentence/paragraph starting at the left again, you kind of get redirected to the avatar multiple times. Check the difference for a post read from right to left, most of the attention stays right hand:



Signatures are mostly always centered under your post, so there is not a lot of natural behaviour to bring your attention to it. When scrolling through a thread, your focus always lies on the left-ish side of the thread as you want to see where a new post starts and who wrote it.

With the post of LoyceV as an example you don't get to see the signature at all right form the start (at least on my screen); the avatar you see right away; also because it's kind of shiny compared to the other things you recognize. Add to that, that most people don't bother to read walls of text until the end and stop somewhere in the middle or scroll to the next post, it is the avatar that gets more attention than the signature.  

An avatar has a lot of recognition value imo. Users that have the same avatar for ages, you can just identify by that without looking at the nick. In the threads I visit/post the most, there is a whole armada of users wearing a Sportsbet avatar and I always have trouble to distinguish between them, but I always notice their avatars and have to look at their nicks to distinguish. Or look at all the users wearing their beloved hats as avatar.

Now what is the point of all this ? It's maybe more some psychological and/or marketing topic. But with the observations of my own behaviour, I find it kind of odd that bounty campaigns pay good money for wearing a signature, but only some tip for wearing the respective avatar – if that is paid at all. And with everything being so sophisticated nowadays, the companies advertising and promoting via bounty campaigns in here, are missing out on a lot of recognition and optimizing their visibility by not using the option of a) forcing the users to wear their avatar and b) not paying equal money compared to the signature for wearing their avatar. I could even think of avatar-only bounty campaigns, which have been here in the past every now and then, but I haven't seen any for a long time.

So this is maybe just some food for thought for the bounty managers in here, but these campaigns also give some value to bitcointalk - like it or not.

What catches your (subconscious) attention when reading a post ?