Power up your creative during digital advertising changes

Creative elements have the power to capture people's attention, make human connections and, as a result, help drive campaign performance. When running ad campaigns, it's important to test elements such as text and images to learn what best resonates with your audience. We observed over 14,700 ad campaigns that tested 2 different creative assets. The tests showed that the campaign creative that performed better – meaning those that inspired people to take action more often – saw on average:

• 19% lower cost per link click.
• 21% lower cost per website conversion.
• 27% lower cost per app install.¹

It's important to remember that even slight differences in the creative elements that you include in your ads can have an effect on campaign performance.

We understand that developing and managing your ad creative can be challenging, expensive and time-consuming. It's important to keep best practices top of mind as you develop your ad creative and campaigns.

Here are some tips and tools that you can use to help apply them:

1

Connect with your audience through video.

Adding video to campaigns can increase performance, whether your goal is to drive an action such as sales, increase reach or followers or lower your cost per action (CPA). People spend 50% of their time on Facebook watching videos, and Reels are growing on this platform as well.² We've learnt that campaigns that added video to static have proven to outperform static or image-only campaigns. In an analysis conducted by Meta, we found that in 7 out of 10 lift studies, meaning studies that looked at the impact ads had on driving an action, campaigns that include video drove more conversions, including increased app installs, online purchases and leads.

2

Be discovered with entertaining storytelling using Reels.

At the end of last year, we found out that Reels is the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram, and people are spending more than 20% of their time watching reels on Instagram.³ Different from regular video, short-form video for Reels is formatted vertically for mobile phones, combines video and music, is immersive and, most of all, entertaining. We analysed over one million Reels ads and found that ads that were intentional about Reels had a lower CPA – and going vertical made them even stronger, with an additional 48% lower Reels CPA on average.

3

Capture people's attention on mobile.

Connect with your audience on mobile. Creating ads for a mobile-first audience, whether you use new or existing creative, can lead to increased engagement.

• Use a clear message. Tailor a single message that aligns with your ad objective to make sure that it gets across to your audience. To help drive leads and messages efficiently, experiment with shorter video ads and quick message delivery. We found that shorter videos significantly correlated with lower CPAs. If you're not sure what best resonates with your audience, you can create multiple versions of a post to see what performs best with A/B post testing in Meta Business Suite.
• Tailor ad creative for your audience. If you're using a single image or video in a campaign, you can show personalised variations to each person based on what they're most likely to respond to with standard enhancements in Meta Advantage+ creative. This tool bundles a set of creative optimisations into a convenient single entry point. We found that using this feature can result in, on average, a 3% lower CPA in campaigns optimising for link clicks, landing page views and off-site conversions.⁵
• Brace for visual impact. Engage people with your content by drawing them in and then standing out. Make your content vertical and add captivating elements that show off your business colours and personality to grab your audience's attention. If you're advertising on Instagram Stories, you can use automatic Stories templates to transform any non-9:16 media to fit vertical, full screens.
• Highlight your brand. Showing your logo and another brand element – for example, colour or typeface – will help you stand out from others and build trust and recognition from your customers. In an analysis of 35 lift studies, campaigns with mobile-first creative saw twice the brand awareness lift compared with those running non-mobile-optimised creative.
• Be action-oriented. What do you want your audience to do? Make sure that your ad clearly leads your audience to the next step that they should take. It can be as simple as using the right call to action.

Remember to keep creative best practices top of mind whether you are a video pro or experimenting with your very first reel. As the ads ecosystem continues to evolve, we will share more learnings and best practices to help drive campaign performance and continue to invest in ways to make it easier for you to build creative assets.