Our newsletterChanging badge strength (urgency, discount, or scarcity) usually did little for AI recommendations, while the star score was the clearest exception — and the only change that actually boosted recommendations
Optimisation methods
- Reader Note:
- The paper tested stronger versions of the same badges inside a simulator, not real campaign outcomes.
- Evidence:
- Experimental
- Vendor interest:
- None
- Sample:
- Repeated simulated choice experiments using 4 AI models (GPT-4.1-mini, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite) across 4 product categories, with a target of 1,000 choice iterations per product per model; each choice screen showed 8 product cards.
Reader Note:
Evidence:
Vendor interest:
Sample:Good for
Backing budget and pricing decisions in similar situations.
Not for
- Situations far from the one tested, without checking again.
- The source never says when this data was collected. It could be considerably older than the publication date suggests.
- Nobody counted this directly — it's a calculation. The publisher worked it out itself, or took the ad platform's word for what its ads achieved.
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