One of the biggest headaches plaguing Session Notes readers at the moment is… ad creative.
(aaaand not a single person is surprised).
In the new era of Advantage+, the old rules of 4-6 ads per ad set are out the window and the new sentiment is "the more the merrier." Nice advice when you're planning a BBQ, not so helpful when you're co-ordinating design resources with a lean team.
Throw rising CPMs into the mix and now you need better performing ads just to match last year's results - let alone beat them.
So let's try to keep that headache at bay with some crafty ways to produce more ads when you're light on resources.
#1 Make more of what works
When your account starts going stale and you ask yourself "what do we need to make more of?" The answer is usually already sitting in your dashboard.
Feed-driven formats like Advantage+ and PMax shopping have already put in the hard yards to learn which products are most likely to get people clicking and buying.
Export your cost, click and revenue data by product SKU and use it to prioritise what you brief next.
Look for two buckets:
highest performing - high spend, high revenue volume
highest potential - low-moderate spend, higher relative volume
These are my confessions - I was never a fan of the Advantage+ creative format. Some of the placements are genuinely rogue and a risk to brand safety. But I've since made peace with it because it is so powerful for gathering product insights (with ugly placements excluded).
#2 Reuse your organic assets
Organic social is like a focus group for paid. Set a metrics threshold - 25k views, 1,000 likes, 100 shares - whatever makes sense for your business - and any post that hits it goes straight into the briefing doc.
The exception? Make sure the asset works from a messaging standpoint for paid. A “shop more” or “book now” CTA button should seem like a natural progression, not a disconnect.
Source: Unyoked | In the first two posts, the messaging speaks directly to the cabin experience. The last speaks to the benefits of nature and is too many steps removed to work as a paid ad.
These are my confessions - I've worked with a few premium brands who look down on boosting posts as a hacky tactic and I completely disagree. A good piece of content is a good piece of content, the person can’t tell how the ad was set up, nor do they care.
#3 Use assets someone else created
The most conventional UGC approach is seeding product to micro-influencers and small content creators - but it tends to fall down in a few places:
There's no guarantee they'll post
There's no guarantee you'll like what they post
There's no guarantee they'll let you run it as a paid ad for free
The most effective UGC sourcing I've ever seen was Quay Australia's approach - an automated message via Hootsuite to anyone who tagged the brand, asking permission to use their content across organic, paid and the website. They'd go through the opt-ins and cherry pick the best. Nothing says 'everyone wants this thing' quite like a carousel or video montage of real people using it.
These are my confessions - I've worked with brands who think they're above UGC and CMOs who believe it can ‘cheapen’ a brand’s positioning. To which I say: you can absolutely do it in an elevated way. It's the content social media was made for, you won’t regret giving it a go.
#4 Use AI to fill the gaps
Using AI for campaign imagery or fake UGC is not what I'm suggesting.
Where it has gotten very, very good - and where barriers to entry are lowest - is no-model product photography. A traditional ghost mannequin shoot runs $15–$50 per image and takes a week to turn around. AI can do it for a fraction of the cost, same day. And it holds up. Needing to test more products? This is your lowest friction option.
Source: Common Player
These ideas won't fix the root cause of your creative headache. But hopefully they can dull the pain long enough for you to figure out what will.
Because the real conversation worth having is this: whilst we spend so much energy with our agency partners getting bigger media budgets signed off, we rarely talk about growing our creative and content budgets.
So if your numbers are going backwards, stop and think. Maybe you don't need a bigger media budget. Maybe you need to hire another graphic designer, an extra person at shoots capturing smartphone content or a retainer with a UGC agency.
Spending more on media is the easiest solution but is it the right one? (Please don’t let Meta answer that for you).
Cheers,
Sarah Arvela Webb
Brought to you by Panadol Rapid and an Usher reference that no one asked for.
