In one of their earliest experiments, Tormala and his colleagues ran a Facebook ad touting a real comedian, testing different versions of the ad to see whether messages emphasizing the comic’s potential would garner more interest (as measured by click rates) and liking (as measured by fan rates) than would messages emphasizing his achievements. In one version, the ad contained the tagline “Critics say he has become the next big thing,” while another version of the ad had the tagline reading, “Critics say he could become the next big thing.” In this comparison, the latter ad, which was all about potential, did more than twice as well as the former.
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