Excited by the A/B testing feature with MSN adCenter Publisher, I decided to run an experiment for a 720 x 60 text ad block with 2 variants: a) ad with a border and b) ad with no border.

After about 80000 impressions of the ads, the results were in. Here is Day 10's data from a ten day experiment. The results were like this for all 10 days, every single one:

So, I used a rounded border, 2px, solid. I may run an experiment later to determine if a SQUARE border or perhaps a DECORATED border gathers some different results but I highly doubt it. You see, that was always my gut verdict...people want to see a highly-integrated advertisement..not an obvious advertisement, in my opinion. Well, now it's just more than 'my opinion,' right? It's fact.

Get that damn BORDER off of your Ads and make a whole lot more money.

This is a perfect example of how an STFU Marketer can find data to share that doesn't directly effect his income. So, on that note, I am way stoked. I was really worried that the new STFU paradigm would stifle my ability to offer valuable input to the community. I'll keep my ear out for more cool opportunities like this.

UPDATE: 4/28: Took me a few days to see that I had BORDERED Ads in an article where it clearly says NO BORDERS. LOL.