Static Ads Masterclass 2026 (Full Guide) | The Easiest Ads to Scale FAST

0:00If you're running any kind of e-commerce brand and static ads aren't part of your overall approach, then you are leaving money on the table. Over the past 12 months, myself and my agency, Fraggle, have made over 10,000 ads for 7, 8, and 9 figure DTOC brands. 20% of those were static ads. Yep, you heard that right. No fancy UGC, no videos, no transitions, just plain static pixels. And these ads have helped many D2C brands that we work with absolutely slash their CPA, some of them up to 40%. I'm Fraser. I'm one of the founders here at Fraggle. And we make ad creative for DTOC brands. So

0:37when I talk about this stuff, I know what I'm talking about. I promise. In today's video, I'm going to show you the exact process that we use to make static ads for our clients and also going to reveal a little cheat code for you at the end so that you can do it yourself at scale. So let's get into it. Why do static ads still work in 2025? Well, simply put, they're the easiest way for you to rapidly test messaging imaging to

1:01your customer at a affordable budget. You can probably crank out 20 statics in the time it takes me to make a video. And the reason for that is just, you know, there's 24 images in a second for video and there's only one frame in a static ad. But none of this matters if you don't make them correctly. So, there's three key learnings that I want to teach you throughout this video. And the first one is that whenever you make static ads, you need to ensure that they are easily skimable. And what I mean by that is people are bombarded by ads every single day. If they watch a video

1:31ad, they have to commit to, you know, 5 seconds, let's say, to understand what that video is about. However, with a static ad, they can skim the text and the image in like a second. But that's only if you make it skimable. If you make the text really difficult to understand or difficult to see, then it's going to take longer for people to realize what the ad's about and you've lost them and they'll scroll on by. And that's why the most successful statics

1:54are the ones that are just simple. Another key thing that you need is you need to deal with objections. Because of the way that meta works, often enough these static ads are sitting at the bottom or middle of the funnel. And this is the point in the sales journey where people are deciding whether they're going to buy or not. So, it's the perfect opportunity to address the objections people might have. Perhaps it's price that is stopping them from purchasing. Well, why don't we break down the price to a daily figure to anchor it at a lower figure? Or maybe it's trust. They don't know you. They

2:25don't know why they should buy from you. So, social proof would be perfect. And in fact, that leads me into the next point that should be in every single static, and it is social proof. A review, a star rating, a trust pilot icon, whatever it is, including some social proofing your statics is the key to their success. The brands that are doing statics really well simply don't miss any of those three things. So, let's break down some of our most successful static ads that we've made at Fraggle, and I'll show you why they work. So, this first one is from one of our clients called The Black Stuff. It's

2:56a soap brand, and this is such an incredible performing static. I posted it on my Twitter recently and I compared the different variations and I asked people which one they think won out and this was the winner. It's so incredibly simple. It's literally hands holding their different soaps. It's great here because their soaps are really colorful and eye-catching anyway. And that's actually one big point to why this

3:18worked is the imagery is eye-catching. If your product looks cool or you can make it look cool, go to the extra effort because it will make your ads stop the scroll way easier. And then we go on to break down the three most popular SKUs and explain them in word terms of what they smell like. For example, citrus cedarwood scrub is orange, peppermint, and cedar wood. And it's citrusy and exfoliating. The static isn't anything groundbreaking. It's literally three of their SKs, images of them, and then we're just explaining what they smell like. And then finally, at the bottom, we have the copy, which is calling out their offer, which is the

3:53clean crack offer. So, we're calling out that it's an offer. might get people's attention if they are on the fence about purchasing. And then just a little bit of copy as well just to seal the deal. Smells so good you'll distract yourself. And then finally, a shop now CTA and the logo. Nothing crazy. And yet this performed incredibly well. You'll actually notice on this we don't have any social proof, but at the top I said that every ad needs to include social proof. And that is right. Okay, don't get me wrong, but I think it's worth testing sometimes if removing that social proof or having it makes any

4:25difference. maybe do a variation. This was another really popular ad that we made for Freya. And you can see the imagery is probably the reason why it did so well. The idea behind this is that we want to sell bone broth as a natural way to get better bowels, healthier joints, increase your hormone

4:42balance, and stronger skin and nails. And so, what's the best way to do that? Well, to put a patch of grass, cuz that says natural, it says organic. So, our designer put this together. They generated the little grass patch with Mid Journey. And then they literally just put one of their product images, added a shadow, and now it looks like it's floating. And in this one, we have social proof. 2,000 plus five-star reviews, love it, or money back. That's another main factor of why ads, static ads in particular, often work. It's guarantees. If you can make someone feel safe in their purchase, then they are going to purchase. How much more

5:14confident would you feel if someone said, "Spend four grand on this product, and if you hate it, I'll give you your money back." You have nothing to lose. So, why would you not purchase it? That's the same thing we're doing here. We're saying, look, try it out. If you don't like it, no worries. You can have your money back. Walk away. Nothing lost, nothing gained. And that's all about your offer. It's not necessarily to do with static ads, but the way that

5:36you present it in your ads is important. And then at the bottom here, we just have some main benefit call outs, what Freya is going to help you achieve if you use them. Now, this static ad from Misa is probably one of the best static ads in terms of performance that we've ever made. And I am so proud of this cuz our designer did an incredible work cuz all they had to work with was an image cut out of the hand and the product. The rest is all completely generated and stitched together. And that's what's so great about static ads is you can you

6:05can really make anything possible. Particularly now with the rise of chat GPT and the image generation model that wasn't around when we made this. However, you can see how easy it would be to make that even now. And the important part that I want to draw your attention to in this ad is the copy. Upgrade your heating and control it from your phone. Often enough, any kind of technology product, it just feels complicated. You lose people because they're like, "Am I actually going to be able to use this?" And so, what we wanted to do with a copy in this is simplify as much as we possibly could

6:31do. The Misa allows you to control your heating from your home. That's it. That's how simple it is. But for a lot of people, it's a major upgrade from the regular old thermostats that they have. And so we wanted to include that this is an upgrade from what you already have, giving people a reason to click and find out more. So upgrade your heating and control it from your phone. Simple. And then a bit of color theory comes into this as well. We have, you know, the red drawing our attention to like the pinky red text. And then the background we have the purple color which matches the

7:00purple which is on the phone. Everything kind of ties together. Design is actually pretty important when it comes to static ads. you can go down like the ugly static route like post-it note ads and all that. However, I normally push people towards like the well-designed stuff because it just separates you from a bit of the noise really. I always say ad creative is your moat. If you can deepen your moat with better ad creative, then people are going to have a harder job copying you. Okay, so we've gone through some of our best performers, but how can you replicate them for yourself? Do you have to hire a

7:28designer? Do you have to spend all this money on graphics and photography? No. A great service that I founded with a couple of friends a while back was Creative OS. If you've never heard about this, this is a tool where it's an absolute sea of templates for your ads that you can open up in Canva and Figma and within a couple of clicks, you have some wellperforming static ads. And now

7:47it's even easier because of chat GPT. You can generate your images in ChatGpt. You can take those and add them to a Creative OS template. Within seconds, you've got a bunch of ads to test. There's a link down below if you want to check out Creative OS and you want to support what we're doing. Go and have a look. There's a free trial. You can try it out. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. So to recap, the first

8:06thing, research your customer deeply. You need to understand your customer so that you can speak to them. Number two, start with some kind of objection. It can normally spiral a couple of ideas. So start with a popular objection that you get to why your customer hasn't purchased your product. Number three, build in social proof where you can. Any opportunity to increase customer trust is worth it. Number four, design for the scroll. Think about when people are scrolling past. Is this eye-catching enough? Can I skim read this? Think before you design. Test fast, test messy. The best thing about static ads is how many you can make and how many

8:39you can test at speed. Rapid testing of statics will result in learnings. If you want static ads like this or maybe even video ads, then I would love to chat. Scan the QR code on the screen if you want or check out the link down below to book a call with me. But until the next one, hit subscribe, hit like, leave a

8:56comment, and I'll see you soon. Bye-bye. [Music]