🥗 Ad Diversity University: How to Score an A+

Hey there,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

On Wednesday, we talked about vanity metrics to avoid, 

And how measuring success in your ad accounts all the way to contribution margin is the key to scaling faster. 

Today, we’re digging into why creative diversity in your Meta account is so vital. 

We’re breaking down all the static ad formats we think you should be running,

And sharing our biggest spenders! 🙌

But - before we get into the meat of this newsletter, let’s give a quick shoutout to our Tool of the Week 🚀

Tool Of The Week

We’ve gotten more than a few questions as to why we don’t use Shopify's native integration for server-side tracking anymore…

Since the 2021 iOS update, we've been using Elevar - let us explain why we made the switch:

(Reason #1 being that the IOS-update killed our tracking capabilities)

The Short Answer -  While Shopify's integration is good, it's not great (by any stretch of the word) 

We needed something a lot more robust and much more reliable to handle the data demands post-iOS update.

Elevar provides our channels with EXACTLY what they need to perform - reliable, accurate data.

And unlike typical attribution tools, it's a conversion tracking tool ensuring nearly 100% of your conversion data is tracked and sent back to Meta, Google, etc. 

This means you're capturing significantly more data—potentially up to 40% more conversions than without reliable server-side tracking.

Why It Matters - The more accurate and comprehensive the conversion data you send to these platforms… 

The better they can optimize and perform. 

This directly translates to improved ad performance and ROI.

And as an added bonus - Elevar’s session enrichment capabilities stand out. It recognizes AND identifies returning users, enabling us to send more effective and personalized abandonment campaigns.

This feature alone makes Elevar worth it, but the added security of knowing your data is accurately fed back to platforms like Meta is invaluable.

While Shopify’s integration is okay, the comprehensive data capture and user session enrichment capabilities of Elevar make it the greater and (Obvi)ous choice for us.

Alright, break’s over. Back to the newsletter 👇

Diversity 101

A wise person once said, “Creative people are like glitter—they bring sparkle to everything they touch, and you never really get rid of them!” 

With Meta ads, it’s not enough to be creative. You also have to be comprehensive in your approach. 

Why? 

Because different ad formats resonate with all different types of people. 

Most brands have a gap in creative diversity.

There are 2 types of ads you should be looking at 

-Statics 

-Videos

And then within those 2 types of ads they should be broken down into

-Low fi ads

-Polished ads

Every one of these ad types will resonate with somebody. But who likes what differs greatly up and down the funnel.

We thought we had it all covered.

Then we did the following … and the results took us by surprise. 

We were pretty stoked to realize we had gaps to close and more glitter to throw at our ad account. 

So, how do you know what your gaps are?  

Creative Diversity Hack: Roll up your sleeves and map it out:

Here’s how: 

1. Evaluate your asset types by category

2. Look at the types of messaging you’re running. 

Then, grab all of your ads and populate this quadrant. Fill it up so you can visually see exactly where you’re lacking:

At Obvi, we were over-indexing on Lo-fi video ads. 

We were running like a 5 to 1 ratio of this type of content. Oops.

So if you’re only running one type, you are missing huge segments of your potential audience on Meta.

When you're trying to scale a campaign, you need to find the right messaging and ad formats to reach all different types of people. 

With Meta's broad audiences and Advantage+ placements, the right creative can find the right person. 

That’s why plugging the holes is very important. 

Before we tried this, we sheepishly followed the industry research that video ads perform better overall. 

We’d just never realized how important it was to test alternative formats.

This mapping exercise revealed that static ads actually perform way better for us. 

And as a result of implementing more static ads, we’ve been able to scale our Meta spend to $1M / month. 

If you take one thing away from this newsletter, prioritize this exercise! 

Let’s get into the different types of messaging you should be trying.

Most brands are also missing the boat on how different messaging can reach new and different audiences. 

For example…  

If your prospect is unaware of their problem, how can your brand possibly resonate with them?

You need both problem aware/unaware messages that address the customer segments you are totally missing

For the group that’s problem aware - they know their pain. 

But they don’t know the solution. 

These are folks at the very top funnel. 

This is where a lot of brands mess up and fail to make enough creative - because let’s face it, historically it was expensive. 

The CAC is higher for people you’re trying to pull into your overall funnel because they need to be educated about the product. 

Most brands only market solution-aware messages. 

The other group of people are aware multiple solutions exist but still aren’t convinced that you’re the right fit for what they need..

They’re not sold yet.

That’s where doing the comparison ad format comes in. 

These four segments are at completely different parts of your funnel, 

So there’s just so much to work on when it comes down to creatives.   

As mentioned, we got a huge bump when we rolled out more static ads.

So let’s look at some of the static ad formats you should be running and we’ll reveal our biggest winners! 

Static ad formats you should try:

Lifestyle ads

This Lifestyle ad crushed it for us - we started with high quality imagery from a photo shoot and overlaid different message tests. 

As you can see, we have this pretty massive headline on it that says, FUPA killer.

And if you don't know what a FUPA is… 

Google it. 😊

How did we even come up with this headline? 

The top comment on one of our older ads was “Will this help my FUPA?” and that comment had 100+ likes. People loved it. 

So two points here – if you're not reviewing your comments for little gold nuggets of how your customer or potential customers are talking, do that because you can find crazy phrases like this.

So instead of competing with everybody else who's saying the same thing about weight loss and metabolism, we’re connecting with customers in an engaging, authentic way. 

UGC ads

Moving on - the UGC banner…

Kind of your no-brainer.

We layered in a strong headline along with benefits and reviews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 

Super clean ad that, when it hits the right audience…

Can really scale the ad account. 

It’s our top performer and has been working for 18 months now.

Why this formula works:

-The UGC provides that element of social proof

-We believe Meta now favors ads with headlines and callouts - remember when they lifted the limit on text on images? –It works.

Creative diversity pro tip

When brands say they struggle to test only 10 ads a month, it’s obvious they aren’t on the AI train. 

What are you waiting for? You can use AI to generate 20 new images/day. ChatGPT Dalle, Midjourney, and Limewire are all good platforms to try.

We had an idea for an image. Burning fat is kind of like melting butter. We literally typed in “butter on fire” into the image generator. 

Render banner ad example

This is a scroll interrupter, for sure. Butter on fire, what does that even mean? 

Take your product renders and pair them with AI-generated context to give visual meaning to what you are saying in your messaging. 

Review ads 

This one’s a no-brainer since the product is colorfully described in your customers' own words. Highlight the font on the main benefits to make them easy to read.

Community Ads

This Community ad is ripping for us. 

If you are in a Facebook group, and somebody posts in there, this is how the post organically appears. 

So we just take this post and turn it into an ad. People engage with it thinking it's an actual organic ad - worth testing out.

Problem vs. Solution ads

For this format, you want to call out the right user. How do you do it? 

Okay, a lot of our customers who take this product suffer from PCOS (a hormonal disorder).

In the ad, we’re not giving too much context on how our solution helps, but if these problems all resonate, they’ll click the ad and the landing page will sell them. 

News Media ads

Cheap traffic, but also tricky.

Picking a topic that’s popular in the media will give you really cheap traffic but at a lower conversion rate. 

The person who clicks will expect to see a story, right? This format works really well with listicals or advertorials. Try testing it. 

That’s a wrap on static ads and our best performers. We hope this gives you lots of inspiration for your creative diversification efforts.

Upcoming Events

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Don’t miss out on the biggest event we’ve ever thrown. Get on the list here.

Thanks for reading along

Got any questions or want to share an ad creative that’s working for you? 

Reach out and tweet us - Ron’s Twitter - Ash’s Twitter

When it comes to ad creative, we love seeing what’s working - and failing - for brands so don’t be shy.

Ron and Ash