I hate Tim Burton movies. Hate them. They’re all 45 minutes too long and Helena Bonham Carter’s lifelong search for anti-frizz shampoo has lost its luster. But I’ll be damned if Edward Scissorhands isn’t a gorgeous movie to look at. It’s the only movie that he’s ever made that doesn’t have a dark color palette, and its contrast of the washed out, pastel suburbia against the stark, black leather of Edward Scissorhands (Johnny Depp) is striking.

Tim Burton did that on purpose. He knew that having a central character that stood out from the scenery was vital to keeping to his audience’s interest. At Socialtyze, we’re finding that same approach to contrast is paying off for our entertainment clients. After controlling for contributing factors like the number of people in a photo, the shot type, campaign type, and the gender of the people in the photo, we found that newsfeed ad photos with dark backgrounds performed 12% better. The reason for that is the same reason we couldn’t take our eyes off of Johnny Depp. Check out this Snickers post in the wild.

The (very) light blue background of Facebook provides a frame for the darker look of the Snicker’s photo asset. Your attention immediately is drawn there.

Now some might say that 12% isn’t a huge lift. But I would disagree, Facebook advertising is a game of inches. Any competitive gain has to be pushed, especially when so many of the creative factors didn’t pan out as successfully predictive. Shot type (up close, full body, etc.), for example proved to be essentially worthless when correlating it to its success.Using color psychology isn’t a particularly new trick to advertising, as our VP of Creative likes to remind me, primary colors have been the staple of movie posters for years because they’ve been proven to catch your attention. That same rule doesn’t seem to apply as completely to Facebook ads, but that’s most probably because of context. Where ads are served provides a more definitive opportunity to catch your eye.And at the end of the day, that’s what all of this fancy modeling, testing, and spending is all about. How can you, the entertainment brand, catch the eye of your customer. So be bold and choose dark colors.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.