Article

13 Ways To Improve Your Ad Creative

Advertising Analytics Creative Marketing

October 9, 2023

Let’s start with the obvious: creative is one of the most powerful levers advertisers have in today’s ecosystem. Compelling creative is often the difference between a sale and a scroll on social, or a click vs. a re-query on Google. Your ads are the interface between your brand and your audience; the point at which the rubber meets the proverbial road. Creative has become so critical that many media buyers have dubbed it a “silent” targeting signal.

But, unlike account structure and bidding, which are a one-to-one optimization problem (your brand + the platform), creative is a dynamic, one-to-many optimization problem. Not only is there not a single piece of creative that will resonate with your entire target audience, the rate at which high-performing, segment-specific ads degrade in performance is accelerating.

All of this boils down to the following: making compelling creative is a Sisyphean task; the work is never done. That may sound like a message of doom-and-gloom, but I think it’s actually a message of hope. There are no fixed winners in the creative game; the only durable advantages are data, process and mentality. If you build those, you’ll win out over time.

That’s what today’s issue is all about.

1. Get Clear On Your Metrics

There are four core metrics I think every creative must nail in order to be successful; the exact ratios of these will depend, but it has to be good at each of them:

Thumbstop Rate / Hook Rate: If your ad is unable to capture your audience’s attention, the probability that it will eventually result in a successful outcome (a sale, lead, etc.) is exceedingly low.
- How To Calculate It: (3s Video Views / Impressions)*100%
- Benchmark: 25% to 35% is a good benchmark; if the ad is below 20%, find a new hook; if the ad is above 35%, you’ve found a massive winner.
Hold Rate: Capturing attention is great; holding it is better. There is a strong, positive correlation between how long someone spends on your ad, and how effectively your ad will eventually convert into action and results.
- How To Calculate It: (30s Video Views / 3s Video Views)*100%
- Benchmark: 35% is a solid place to start – roughly 1-in-3 people who you hook should go on to watch at least 30s of your ad.
Unique Outbound CTR: The primary function of the ad is to sell a qualified click + transport people from the platform (Meta, Google, Amazon) where the ad appeared to your desired destination (your site, a lead form, etc.). We measure this on unique outbound CTR (for Meta), or unique CTR (Google, Amazon).
- How To Calculate It: (Unique Clicks / Impressions)*100%
- Benchmark: 1.25% (Social); 3.0% (Google Search). There is substantial variation in these across brands + industries, but the above is a great place to start.
Contribution Dollars Per Impression: While the ad’s primary job may be to get people to your desired destination, clicks don’t pay the bills. At the end of the day, we want creative to be a contribution dollar generator; if clicks aren’t converting to contribution dollars, that either means (a) the creative failed to accurately communicate the value of our offer; (b) the landing page + creative were misaligned or (c) the landing page simply failed.
- How To Calculate It (eCommerce): (Attributed Ad Revenue – COGS – Ad Costs) / Impressions
- How To Calculate It (Lead Gen): ((SQL Value * Close Rate) – COGS – Ad Costs) / Impressions

If you don’t start your creative process with a shared understanding of what makes a successful ad, you’re going to be in for a rough time. Take the time to create, share and educate everyone involved in the creative process on your evaluation framework, then be transparent in your ad reviews with your data.

2. Do Your Homework

This comes in four forms – at least one of which every brand I’ve audited has neglected. You can’t expect to win on gameday (when you’re running the ads) if you haven’t scouted or practiced.

Consumer Research & Insights: how well do you know your target audiences? For most brands, consumer research is a once-and-done activity; that’s great for capturing a moment in time, but we live in dynamic times. I recommend continually running prospective surveys. A 100-person survey on Pollfish costs ~$100. Do it every month and eliminate the oldest cohort. You’ll be able to spot trends, notice changes in customer behavior, and better understand what’s top-of-mind for your target audience, all for less than the cost of a few stock images.
Customer Feedback: Why are your current customers choosing to buy from you today? What about your brand, product, messaging and offer speaks to them? What don’t they like, or wish you offered? Have your CMO/CEO/President reach out to 1 new customer every day via email. Ask things like, “Why did you choose us?”; “What other brands did you consider?”; “Do you remember what ad you saw? What about it stood out to you?”; “What could we do better?” You’ll be flat-out amazed at the response rate from a generic, one-to-one email from a senior leader. Take each response, drop it into a Google Sheet, and share it with your creative team. The nuggets of absolute gold you will get will blow your mind. This can be supplemented with customer surveys and testimonials, but the simple reality is this: people will share far more if they feel that the person soliciting the feedback is genuinely interested and that it will make a material difference moving forward. Direct outreach from a senior leader pushes those things up to an 11.
Competitive + Alternative Understanding: Virtually every ad platform is emphasizing transparency. That’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has never been easier to spy on your competition. On the other, it has never been easier for your competition to spy on you. Fortunately, most brands do this once in a blue moon. You can gain an advantage by making it part of your standard creative process. Set aside 1 hour each week (or better yet, delegate it). Review the creative for each of your major competitors on each platform + link to it on a Google sheet.
Marketplace Trends: Competition isn’t industry-exclusive. Every time you see something that catches your eye or stops your scroll, screenshot it and upload it to a shared Google Drive. It doesn’t have to be in your (or your client’s) industry; in fact, it’s better if it isn’t. If you want to take this to the next level, use Google Drive’s “Labels” feature to tag each upload with the things you like about it, the style of creative, etc. With 3-4 people uploading 2-3 pieces of creative content a day (a task that takes less than 10 minutes a day), after a month you’ll have a sortable inspiration hub with 250+ pieces of content. After a year, that’s 3,200+ pieces of content – a real competitive advantage, created in less time than it takes to start a brainstorming session.

There’s power in the mere act of doing this research day in and day out; but the real magic comes when you start to use it to jumpstart your creative ideation and focus your creative energy. Seek out the commonalities and patterns across those different feedback types (prospect, consumer, etc.) – then design new creative based on that.

3. Have A Litmus Test

Your customer isn’t a mystery; it’s your significant other, your neighbor, your friends. Before you throw a bunch of money behind an ad creative, share it with people you know who fit the target audience profile. Ask for their candid feedback.

My wife has probably saved our clients thousands of dollars at this point, just from me showing her ads and her saying, “Yeah, no.”

Bottom line: if a creative concept isn’t good enough to (a) make it into your creative inspiration hub or (b) earn the approval of a significant other/friend/non-connected colleague, then it probably isn’t good enough to win. Have a litmus test before you go and put money behind ads. And if you don’t have that, post it organically first. If it works, then throw paid dollars at it. If it flops organically, 95 times out of 100 it’ll flop when it’s promoted.

4. Creative Diversity Is Key

I’m continually astounded by the number of brands that live or die by a single type of creative – whether that’s UGC or branded statics or glamor shots or boomerangs or press mentions or reviews. While it’s great to double-down on top performers, creative decay comes for us all. If you aren’t innovating + proactively discovering other formats that resonate with your audience, you will lose. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to justify experiments while you’re still winning, than it is after your campaign performance has collapsed.

If you need inspiration, here are 20 different types of creative to get you started. Think of it like Pokemon – you gotta try ‘em all.

5. Recruit Creative Ringers

Creative is one thing (out of many) that you do; it’s all most creators do. Find the individuals who have built followings that align with your target audience (preferably the ones with 5,000 to 25,000 followers), and contract them to make ads for your brand. The cost will be minimal ($50 – $500 per creative). Pay more (if necessary) for perpetual usage rights.

Then, get out of their way. Most creators in their “tier” know what they’re doing when it comes to their specific audience – they are small enough that they’ll put in genuine effort, and they are close enough to their audience to still have a finger on the pulse of the audience.

I’m not going to sugar-coat this: you’re going to get some bad stuff. You’re going to get some brilliant stuff. And you’re going to get a lot in-between. Run the brilliant, ditch the bad and mash-up the in-between.

6. Design For The Platform

So many otherwise brilliant creatives fall flat because they’re designed for an environment that does not exist. If your video only makes sense with sound on, or critical components of your ad are in a horizontal frame (vs. a vertical one), your ad isn’t going to be as impactful.

Each ad should be designed for the platforms where it will actually run. That means designing videos for vertical, sound-off environments, and statics for the exact placements in which they’ll appear. If you can’t make a concept work across multiple placements, then either (a) exclude those placements or (b) move on to the next concept. Resist the urge to run the horizontal ad in the vertical box; if a creative concept is worth doing, it’s worth doing brilliantly well.

7. Keep It Simple + Straightforward

Clear beats clever every day of the week. Resist the urge to use jargon-filled ads or clever-sounding but ultimately meaningless or hopelessly generic phrases in your ads. If your ad doesn’t simply and clearly explain what your product/service is, then it isn’t an ad. Likewise, if you show your ad to someone unfamiliar with the brand and they can’t articulate back to you what it’s selling, what you have is failure-in-waiting.

The bottom line: confusion is the enemy of conversion. Clarity always wins.

8. The Ad Is About Your Audience

Hard truth time: no one cares about your brand. They don’t care about what you do for the environment, or your shiny new product feature, or your 5* star reviews. What they care about is what those things mean for them.

Lean into that.

Your audience does not care about what you do for the environment, but they care about being perceived as “green.”

Your audience does not care about your shiny new product feature, but they care deeply about how their life will improve after using it.

Your audience does not care about the 5* reviews you’ve received, but they are highly invested in making a good choice and de-risking their investment.

Your audience doesn’t care about your product or service. They care about how your product or service makes their life better.

Your target audience should be the hero of your creative. Make it about them. You’re just Excalibur – here to help King Arthur shine.

9. Nail One Thing:

It is better to do one thing brilliantly well than it is to do 3 passably. Each ad you create should have a crystal-clear focal point. If the ad focal point is using social proof, don’t have stats AND a quote AND a star rating. Pick ONE. Do it brilliantly well. Likewise, if your ad’s focal point is a product feature, then: (1) transform it into a benefit and (2) focus the entire ad about that benefit.

Nail one thing. Don’t try to be all things to all people, or you’ll end up being nothing to everyone.

10. Design For Variation

A huge unlock for us is scripting ads for variation, using the following formula:

3-5 Hooks – we shoot 3-5 different “hooks”; these could be challenges/problems, bold statements, social proof, etc.
2-3 Benefits + Proof Points – 0:15 to 0:20 of each ad is focused exclusively on a single benefit that our product/service provides, along with a “proof point” to back it up.
3-5 Endings – same as the beginning; this could be different calls to action, a re-articulation of the offer, creating FOMO/Urgency, etc.

Doing this takes a minimal amount of time – set up time is a sunk cost, the talent is already there, you’re already shooting, etc. Where this turns into something magical is in the compounding – instead of a shoot where you get 1-3 assets, using this formula, we get up to 75 different ads from a single shoot (5*3*5).

11: Low-Tech & Ugly

Most brands are doing 2020s marketing using 1980s thinking. Brands crave beautiful, curated images, overly-scripted, traditional narrative arcs, high-production-value videos and wildly, stupidly expensive photo shoots.

The reality is that simple, low-tech, shot-on-your-iPhone ads work. Our data shows that, time and time again, ads shot on smart phones with amateur talent out-perform shiny, uber-produced, “traditional” creatives.

I firmly believe that most brands should be shooting 90%+ of their ads using iPhones and lighting you can get off of Amazon. You don’t need insane production value or perfection. In fact, those things are the enemy of clarity, authenticity and reliability.

A major reason the ugly, low-production-value ads work is because they force brands to get back to the principles I’ve outlined in this newsletter – they’re consumer-obsessed, not branded; they are simple and clear; they address a real pain point; they make the consumer the hero; they don’t “feel” like an ad – they feel like something the consumer could’ve actually made. The other major reason is that contrast – stands out. YouTube and Social feeds are chalk-full of overproduced ads. In a sea of sameness, the brands that dare to be different stand out.

12. Lean Into Trends + Current Events

Some of our top-performing ads have piggybacked on trending formats, topics and stories. There’s no “magic” in this – it’s all about finding the broader moments that you can convincingly tie into, being fast to market, and riding the wave.

A great example of this was Maximum Effort’s (Ryan Reynolds’ Agency) placement of Jake From State Farm with Mama Kelce on last weekend’s Chiefs-Jets game – the entire thing was organized in a few days, and resulted in staggering results for State Farm.

While most brands can’t quickly call up Jake From State Farm, you can lean into trending topics, current events and other pop culture moments. It won’t always hit, and you do have to be conscious of not over-riding the wave – but when it hits, it hits big.

13. Make It Easy To Take A Next Step

This is one that always bothers me – make it stupidly easy for your audience to take your desired next step – whether that’s clicking on a link or adding a product to cart or filling out a lead for or whatever. If you’re running billboards or TV ads or OOH, include a QR code (don’t make people type in your URL).

Be clear on what you want your audience to do, and make it so easy to do that a toddler could accomplish it. The same holds true for search ads: ads that include relevant CTAs have staggeringly (20%+) higher performance than those with just benefits, features and/or branded statements. Even if it seems obvious, tell people what to do.

14. BONUS: Embrace Failure

I’m ending with this one, because it is often the highest mental hurdle for brands to get over. You’re going to fail. It’s going to hurt your feelings. You’ll feel frustrated, depressed, anxious and confused. There’s no worse feeling than creating what you think is a banger ad, only for it to fall completely flat.

Creative is a Sisyphean task. The work is never done. The thing that separates the brands who succeed from the brands that fail is a willingness to embrace failure, learn from it, and move on to the next.

At the end of the day, creative is the mechanism by which we rent our audience’s attention. And rent is due every day.

Until next time,

Sam

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