Are You Making This Mistake With Your Social Ad Creative?

Jan 11, 2022 |

Written by:

Daniel Watts

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We see under the hood of a lot of big eCommerce advertisers.

And one of the barriers to growth that comes up time and time again is creative ambiguity – you’re left with questions having seen the ad.

In the performance world, ambiguity costs money. You want to be maximising the value of each ad impression, so here’s a short question you can ask to help do so:

Does this creative tell the whole story by itself or does it require ad copy to fill in some blanks?”

If you’re clear on everything after just one watch – product, offering etc – publish it. If it needs clarifying even slightly, rework things.

Take a look at this example:

What questions are you left with?

The big one… What is this advertising?

You could surmise that it’s advertising a phone case, sure. But the point is that without supportive ad copy, which isn’t always read, you have to surmise that. And you’re not even clear what’s special about the case – why someone would want it.

Now take a look at this:

What questions are you left with now?

Just 1 – is this something I want?

If yes, great. If no, also great.

The ad’s served its purpose by both qualifying and informing the traffic being sent to site.

How Can We Improve This Further?

Open/ end with the brand’s logo to bump brand recall.

Display an offer if there was one.

…I’m sure you can think of others.

But the big one, the elephant in the room, has been addressed: you’re clear on what’s being offered because the creative tells the whole story. Next time you’re making direct response creative, view your assets through this lens and watch your results improve overnight.

Let me know if you put this into practise. Shoot me an email on daniel@bark.london, and sign up to our growth newsletter if you want more eCommerce tips and industry insights.