In the past few days, both while reviewing other people’s ads and also while writing my own, I’ve been thinking about titles and headlines.

On a typical Ad Exchange there are text ads, html ads, traffic links and solo emails.  Some, including Text.AdMastery, also include a word cloud and others have various forms of classified ad.  The great majority of these require some kind of title or headline.  It may be as little as one or two words on a word cloud or a lengthy phrase or sentence on a traffic link. In other areas of Internet-based marketing, such as email advertising, the title is of equal importance.

The headline or subject line (different terms are used in different contexts) is what people see first. In many cases the title is the only thing they see, and whether or not they click on it to explore further depends on the degree to which it has captured their attention and piqued their curiosity.

Headline writing, as a branch of copywriting, is both an art and a science – or maybe it’s a “scientific art”. Whatever, we all who try to earn our crust on the web need to get better and better at it.  We’ll never be good enough because although there are certain unchangeables about human responses there are also rapidly shifting patterns of fashion and public interest. It’s yet another essential field demanding life-long learning and continual improvement.