“Don’t You Like Me”

Believe it or not, a picture of an impossibly adorable kitten isn’t the best way to attract online buyers to your products and services.

PopMarker, a company that offers a platform for in-image online advertising, found that clothing and food are the best images to use to generate page views.

But who can resist a cute kitten or puppy?

Hopefully, the answer is that people don’t associate cute animals with consumption. The sight of them simply doesn’t trigger any impulse to buy.

However, pictures of things that people do consume generate views.

PopMarker put things to the test recently, in its network of more than 1,000 publishers. The company has developed an image tagging advertising platform that, it said, “…allows publishers to monetize images by overlaying additional content and links on top of an existing image.”

The company reports that style and fashion photos were tagged with advertising 20,000 times. Images of food were tagged 16,000 times and photos of chocolate 14,000. Even veggies were tagged 9,000 times.

Kittens and other pets were “…nowhere to be found,” the company said, in a statement.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t love adorable animals, just that they don’t necessarily trigger our consumer impulses. This is probably a good thing.