If you run campaigns on Facebook, PlentyofFish, Myspace, do media buys or run any image based creatives, this will benefit you.  I don’t know if this is old news or new news. It doesn’t matter, it’s still frikin awesome! Riley Pool touched on it in one of his blog posts but this is so sick I had to break it down into detail.

How many times when starting new campaigns have you struggled to find the right images?

Have you ever been scouring Google images for hours looking at page after page of bad image results?

In my experience finding the right images is the most consuming part of creating a campaign. You can’t automate this process. You can’t write a script that will do the job for you.

  • Google images is crap full-stop.
  • Flickr.com is ok but you get a lot of irrelevant results.
  • Sxc.hu is very limited.
  • Yahoo images is the worst of all.

I now introduce to you a solution that will make your heart flutter…Bing Bing. Ching Ching! A.k.a Bing.com image search.

Even though I love Bing image search, I didn't search for an image of Bing image search. I used a thing called a "screenshot" (new technology.

Even though I love Bing image search, I didn't use it to search for an image of Bing image search. I used a thing called a "screenshot" (futuristic technology).

Bing’s layout allows you to view all image results on one page. You can scroll down ’till the end of the Internet. They don’t clutter the page with descriptions about the image. You can just hover over the images if you want to find out more. I’m not exactly sure what they have added to their algorithm but image quality and relevance seems to be so much better the Google images.

A feature I find awesome which is actually on both Bing and Google images is the ability to search for just faces.

affiliate image search

More faces than Dennis Yu.

Faces are extremely important.

Faces are the first type of image I look for when setting up new campaigns. They are nearly always the most clicked images. People’s faces are more appealing than plonking an image of a product that everyone has already seen. On a more psychological level (at least my own personal unqualified analysis…but hey it seems to work) I think human faces better communicate a sense of trust and engage the user in a more emotional connection.

So now you can quickly gather a bunch of images for your new campaigns. But it doesn’t stop there. You will see a trend of which types of images work best. Pick out your top 3 and head on down to istockphoto.com. They have a HUGE gallery of insanely crystal clear professional photos. Investing in these images will make your CTR go from good to great. Plus if you’re running a large campaign with images that you don’t have rights to, you could get screwed

Now go impress the internet with your brand spanking new high quality images!