Wikimedia-l!

Last month you'll remember I told you about an experiment where we used related banner content for fundraising, an idea suggest by User:Wittylama [1], and in that case taking the pop culture line with Game of Thrones. [2]

Unfortunately the content specific large banner saw a drop in performance of 30% compared with the control. This adds to the additional downside in which generating content specific banners is more intensive than the more generic banners we use and when targeting a much much smaller audience (>0.5% of traffic in the US), as you'd expect it results in an added lower relative return for the resources put in.

There is still potentially merit in the idea so we're running a second experiment, focused around the upcoming 4th July celebrations in the United State and playing on the themes of independence. Advantages with this sort of topic is we can test in a more free way without fear of potential appearance of advertising or overt endorsement (Unless you happen to be the United Kingdom in the middle of their own cessation debate).

We are going for a bolder take than our previous attempt which gives a very different feel to the banners, I would like to think more celebratory (even if I am myself a Brit). Here are a couple of the ideas we are working with (please be aware these banners are desktop specific): * Fireworks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_%28United_States%29?force=1&a... * US Flags - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_%28United_States%29?force=1&a...

These *won't *be appearing across the website and will *only* be showing on on pages specific relating to the 4th July holiday and the American Deceleration of Independence [3] and *only* in the United States. All the images being tested were all sourced from Commons and are attributed within the banners. We expect these banners to be going up from the 30th June - 4th July over the holiday weekend.

Again, if you have any ideas you would like to suggest about either our process or banner ideas feel free to contribute on our fundraising ideas page. [4]

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas#Relate... [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/084066.html [3] http://pastebin.com/SVj5Uszd [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas#Related_content_banners