I Made 10,000 Ads, Here's What Works Right Now (in 2026)

0:00Okay, so every time I'm doing a sales call at my agency and I'm meeting with a client for the first time, one of the first questions that I ask them is, "Hey, what percentage of your ad spend is going to partnership ads?" And I'll spoil the story right away, right? I like to see anywhere from 30 to 50% of all ad spend going to this type of format. But this is very topical for me because over the last week, I've had a number of brands tell me that they were spending less than 25% of their overall ad budget on this format. in many cases less than 5%. And I was like, "Wow, you

0:30were well and truly in trouble." But there's a reason why brands aren't always invested in this type of creative. It's not so simple to get and to get right. You have the potentially high cost of working with excellent creators. And you have to develop the brief in a way that allows for creative freedom, but is still really conversion focused. And now, of course, you also have to work at a higher creative volume. And another really interesting thing that I've noticed over the last year is that the old playbook of problem solutionoriented ads feels like aing ad, right? It's not enough to just shoot with your iPhone and work with a creator

1:03and say, "Oh, this feels like you're talking to a friend. It doesn't feel like marketing." No, this actually feels like marketing. So, today we're going to go over how the top creators make content that sells but does not feel like an ad. In fact, when I first start working with a brand or I'm re-evaluating their strategy, I really like to go through this threepart process that sets us up in a great way to work with the right creators who are actually going to convert and scale our ad accounts. So, let's get into it. And a huge thanks to Modash for sponsoring this video. They have been crucial for

1:32helping my team get more partnership ads and client accounts. So, stay tuned to learn more about them. Now, you can see that the number one step right here is personas. But this is actually such a big can of worms that I want to dedicate an entire upcoming video to this. How I discover personas, what personas actually look like. But the TLDDR of this process, right, is the analysis that I always like to do when I first start working with brands is take a look at the ads that are currently running in their ad account and then compare that to their customer reviews to understand, okay, who is their actual customer cross

2:07analyzed with who are they actually targeting? Often times there is a big gap and that gap presents a really great opportunity for a creative strategist to come in and actually work with a creator who represents that persona and scale. But again, getting your persona process locked down is pretty involved. So I want to dedicate an entire video to that. And I also just think that some of you probably already think that you're doing personas really, really well. So I don't want to burst your bubble in this

2:31video. Subscribe so you can see it. Right. But the real meat of this video is step number two, which is to set the diagnosis for the brand. And this is actually the part of the process that I find that most creative strategists completely skip because they don't know to do it. So what exactly is a diagnosis, right? Like why are we doing this? Essentially a diagnosis is a one to two sentence statement that explains the connective tissue behind the ad creative that you are putting on the road map and into production for a brand. It is the why behind the creative that you are actually testing. Without

3:04it, you do not have a real strategy. You actually only have testing. And before this gets too heady, right, I actually want to share with you a few diagnosises that I've given brands over the last 6 months. One diagnosis that we had for a brand was that actually all of their live content was directed towards one persona. And when we went through the persona process and ranked them, we actually found that there were two other personas that showed up more dominantly in the reviews that weren't actually being represented in the ad creative. So our big focus for that ad account was

3:35opening up that new audience for them. And the next one is actually for a current client that we rediagnosed after testing multiple personas for them over the last six months. We actually found that we were getting the best performance from the older age segment and that also had higher retention in their video views and just overall better conversion rates on their website. So for the next quarter, we're actually solely focusing on that age group for them and also working with 40 plus creators. In an old client that I used to consult with about six months ago, when I was going through this process with them, I found, oh, actually

4:05most of their top performing ads are either promotional content or they are product launch pieces of content and they weren't focusing enough on evergreen content that would have more sustainability in the ad account over a longer period of time. And just because I really like y'all, I was actually doing an audit with a consulting client today and one of the biggest thing that I saw for them was, hey, actually you have some pretty good learnings, but you have not iterated enough on those learnings and pulled those into other winning formats. They haven't taken that winning messaging and put it into different formats. They haven't given that to the creators. So, that was a

4:39diagnosis for them. I bet a number of you probably have that diagnosis. Now, here's the process for how you can really figure out the diagnosis for your brand. And I like to think about this as like an onion peeling research process. You're essentially pushing around these stones to understand, okay, is there a potential diagnosis here? First one you want to look at across all of your live ads is the awareness levels. Are your ads pulling into a certain type of awareness? And I'm going to be honest, most of the time when I do this analysis for a brand, what I often find is that they don't have enough unaware or

5:12problemaware type of content. So they are really bleeding their top of funnel. In fact, that consulting client that I just brought on, I saw that most of their ad content that was performing really well was more solution aware or brand aware or like very offer based. So I was like, okay, like we really need to go way more top offunnel here. And then the big one, personas. Again, I actually like to do the persona analysis before I do the diagnosis analysis because oftent times the gap between what is in the ad account and who the customers always are. There's almost always a gap there that I find. So that's why I like to do

5:46that before, but if you didn't do it, do it now. And there's going to be content gaps, right? I always like to do an analysis from a really high level. Okay, what is the amount of ad spend or the percentage of ad spend per month that's going to images, that's going to video, carousel, and partnership ads. partnership ads is really really that big one. And when I'm doing this content analysis as well, this is where I'm looking into if they are really diversifying their creative diversity across their messaging wins. Which brings me to the next one, those messaging pillars, right? Do they have three to four core content buckets that

6:21they are constantly [music] feeding? I'm also looking at their top performing messaging buckets and trying to understand if they're also carrying through that messaging to the landing page. Hopefully by this time I have the Claude code landing page video out with Will. This has saved a number of my clients and is really something that if you have a core messaging bucket and you aren't translating that messaging to the landing page, this is how you're going to do it. Now the final thing that we're going to be looking at is a creator specific diagnosis. Because oftent times I'll hear from brands, oh yeah, our creator content doesn't do as well. UC

6:54doesn't work for us. No. Often times the reasons why this can happen is number one, your creator profiles are not matching the personas. And I'm not saying that there needs to be a direct one to one correlation. Like for instance, my customer is a 55 plus woman. Does that mean we can only use 55 plus creators? No. Oftent times it is more about who your individual feels aspirational towards. Which brings me to the next one. your UGC content is not aspirational enough. You know, if you're just working with a handful of creators on Tribe and you're getting this real like bottom of the barrel bucket type of

7:28creator who's just in it for the money and like has nothing going on behind the eyes when they are doing content, then like yeah, this isn't going to work. You have to work with creators who your audience aspires to in some way. Now, another creator gap that I'm often analyzing to help form this diagnosis, right? Is if they are pulling their budget into just bigger creators or just smaller creators because depending on your niche, sometimes there is really going to be a need for much bigger creators. When I did my ad spend episode with Cody Ploffer last year for Jones Road Beauty, he said, "Hey, actually the

8:05way that we were really getting partnership ads to work and move for us was investing in bigger influencers and more of that celebrity [music] tier creator." Now, I do have a video where I really break down how to best work with creators in 2026 and I go into the different types of creators that you should be working with. But again, this

8:24isn't going to be for everyone. Ironically, actually, when I did my ad spend episode with Caraway, they actually said, "Hey, it's more of the micro, more niche creators that have sub 50K followers that actually do the best for us, which is interesting, right? Because Carowway actually has a much higher AOV. But if you think about these two industries, right, you have beauty hyper hyper competitive and Jones Road is working with creators that beauty people find really aspirational, which

8:51like candidly is a high bar, right? Because there are so many. Whereas Caraway is able to work with aspirational creators who have the right kitchen setup, who have the right aesthetic, whatever, but they don't really need to necessarily borrow from that celebrity [music] image. And this is really common. Actually, a recent Mod Dash survey actually found that one of the best ways to get performance on meta ads is to use partnership ads with those smaller, more niche creators. Now, other reasons why your creator content might be failing is a really weak or poor delivery or there's just low volume or there's not enough personal storytelling. This last

9:28point is actually something that I feel like I'm really repeating ad nauseium at the agency. We are really trying to work with creators who are focusing on a few other things that we'll be talking about later in this video, but can really open up and be vulnerable with the camera and tell a personalized story about why they are using the product that they are. In fact, in that same survey from Modash, they actually found that personal storytelling angles or personal storytelling yappers was the number one ad format that creators were really scaling with and brands were scaling with. This was outperforming the problem solution ad style content because let's

10:06face it, this is an ad now. Now, you've heard me mention Modash a few times in this video and yes, they are the sponsors of today's video. They are a Shopify first influencer marketing program where you can find creators, manage all those partnerships, track performance, and even pay creators in one place. The thing that I really love about it too is you can facilitate partnership ads, gifting, and even affiliates all from one place. And the reason why I think this is so important is because those worlds are really starting to blend right now. And something that my team has been pressure testing with Modash as well is really

10:36pressure testing this platform to find creators who are great storytellers. And the way that they've been able to do that is by using Modosh AI. So for example, they could find creators who are currently going through the process of moving house or are pregnant or whatever. And while being a great storyteller obviously still really remains subjective, it's been really cool for my team to be able to tap into this tech to find creators who are

11:03actively already telling these stories. To try Modash for free and fuel your creator program, check out the link in the description below. Okay, so I know this episode was kind of heady and very strategic and maybe seems like too high level or too like where are the top performing creatives? Let's talk about some ad formats that creators can make

11:21that you can really hang your hat on. And I actually did an analysis across all of the brands that we're working with right now. These are the type of ads that are scaling currently today in September 2026. The first one is that authority angle, right? So, you need to do an analysis on your personas to understand who they admire, who they aspire to be, who do they trust as an

11:44authority. Is it a certain influencer? Is it a doctor? I'm going to show a ton of different authorities here. I often find that authority angles often really help things like brands that are in the supplement industry, the skincare industry. The next ad format is going to be your personal history. Yabers, these creatives always start with a true story that the creator has personally experienced or at least in theory,

12:08right? I'm not verifying all of these. Hell, these are even ads that I have personally made that have worked for the brands that I work with as a creator, even in B2B. And the next one are educational breakdowns. This is one that has scaled like crazy for a brand that we've worked with. And I got to say, being smart is really, really hot right now. This is not just a paid social advertising format that we need to use to work with creators. Now, this is something that creators are actively doing and growing really, really rapidly as a result of just showing up organically on content. I actually think

12:45one of the biggest opportunities right now for brands that want to work with creators that, you know, maybe do not cost 10 grand to work with to make a piece of content is to tap into the education niche or even the brand and marketing niche and look at the creators who are making this type of content.

13:03They are going viral at a rapid pace. And I often find that this content and these creators translate really really well to skincare, beauty, fashion, especially fashion. We actually were able to scale up a fashion brand really nicely with an ad creative like this. And number four is actually one that we started off doing solely as AI, which

13:22are the investigative journalism ads. Now, essentially the premise of this app is that you are going to work with a creator who is going to investigate your competitors or conduct a broad-based investigation that eventually leads them to your product. These are two ads that scaled up really, really nicely for the brand that we worked with. Like, I can't like brag about this enough. Like, my team did so great with this. And yes, these are AI. Insane. If you actually want me to show you how the team was

13:47able to make this with AI, let me know. I would be so happy to show you that process cuz like it blows my mind. But this content feels like something when you're on a doom scroll on reals or on Tik Tok 3:00 a.m. in the morning after three drinks at a bar. Not speaking from personal experience. This is something that like you say these ads 77% hook rate. And then finally, boring got to do

14:10it. Transformations and comparison ads. Actually, when I sat down with my consulting client today, like I don't have enough time. I, you know, broke down the types of ad creatives that we needed to make for our creator program and I was like, "Hey, we need to make sure that we have some authority angles, some personal history yappers, educational breakdowns, and the transformations and comparisons." One was one that, you know, they were a little nervous about cuz it's like, oh, like we feel like we can't show our competitors. You don't have to name competitors. You don't have to name names. I do group these together because a lot of times you end up showing the

14:43transformation through the comparison and often times there's just like [music] a split screen. So like my brain and the algorithm seems to like categorize these as one, especially when I do these tests on LLMs. But you want something to be incredibly transformation based. You want something to be incredibly comparisonbased where you are going down the list of failed attempts. And that's it y'all. We made

15:01it to the end of another video. Actually, comment something spicy in the comments and I'll respond to you so that I know you got that far. And if you're looking to build your creator program, please, please, please check out Mod Dash in the link in the description bar below. They have been really crucial for us as the agency team who doesn't really facilitate a ton of partnerships. We are now facilitating a lot more. It's really helped my team be able to offer that more as a service which I'm really stoked about. And [music] then I'll see

15:24you guys next week. Love you. Bye. [music]

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