# The Most Valuable Static Ads Training You'll Ever Watch

Channel: adswithsimon
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjoTTa2Sd8A
Duration: 15 min
Language: English
Words: 2936
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/WjoTTa2Sd8A

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[0:00] Most brands are wasting thousands of dollars testing static ads that never stood a chance of working. They'll find an ad they like, change the headline, swap the imagery, launch [music] five different versions, and wonder why none of them perform. But the problem usually starts before they open Figma. They don't understand their customers well enough to know what message would actually make them buy. And this is something we've seen repeatedly at Static. We've created static ads for brands like 180, HexClad, and Drum's Wood with over $50 million in ad spend behind our creatives. And one of the biggest lessons we've learned is that understanding consumer psychology matters far more than producing endless

[0:41] variations. Because if you don't understand what your customers want, what they're worried about, what actually influences their purchasing decisions, [music] you're not really testing new angles. You're just finding different ways to communicate the same idea. So in this video, I'm going to open up actual creatives, show you how we identify the psychology behind winning angles, and walk you through the process we use to turn those insights into static ads worth testing. Let's start by finding an ad that's actually worth studying. Before I create anything, I want to understand what's already working in the market. Because if I'm working with a brand and I need to come up with 10 new static ads, I

[1:18] don't want to be guessing what those ads should look like. I want to find the concepts brands are already putting money behind, understand why they're using them, and figure out what we can learn from them. Okay, so we're going to pick a category that we're very familiar with. At Static, we work mostly with supplements brands. We're going to go with supplements. Now, we're going to search for three very similar competitors. We're going to go with Marsh Man, I Am 8, and Gruen's. These are three brands that are crushing right now on Meta. I went with these three because it's supplements, it's a similar price range, and it's targeting a

[1:51] similar demographic. If you want to find their ads on the Meta Ad Library, you have two ways. The first one, very easy, you type the brand name on the search bar. If you want to dig deeper and see all the ads they're running across different pages, I have a solution for you. It's called the keyword search. You have to identify a keyword the brand is using on their brand page in the ad description. And then you're going to copy paste that keyword onto the search bar. And this is how you can identify the other pages the brand is advertising on. Now, one key metric that I love to

[2:22] look for is how long the ad has been running. It's a very useful research signal. If an ad has been running for a long time, it has higher chances of being a winning ad. Although it doesn't necessarily mean it's profitable. We'll deep dive with these three static ads that definitely picked my attention. Mars Man is a testosterone supplement for men. This first static ad here using statistics and a familiar visual will definitely target those. Most men played video games their entire youth and will be targeted by that first static. The second static ad we picked is a GLP-1 angle. People on GLP-1 are suffering from muscle loss. This visual is the

[2:59] perfect way to show people how coupling GLP-1 with Mars Man will allow you to lose fat and gain muscle. Now, last but not least, big belly. I love this visual. It's targeting men that are overweight. Being overweight is shameful. So, having a funny visual like this one allows the target persona to dive in easily. What I love about these

[3:19] three concepts is that they're unique. The gaming stats, the GLP-1 podium, and the visual balloon are all ideas that you've never seen before. They all speak to the desire that matters most to their target audience. Ads crushing on Meta in 2027 will help the intended customer recognize themselves. And this is exactly what Mars Man is doing with these static ads. If you want to learn about these ads, you should save them into a creative research board named psychology. Now, I got three ads here, but I wouldn't necessarily go and recreate all three. Before I start designing anything, I want to understand the angle behind each creative. And

[3:58] there is a really good example of this from Road. One of the things Rhode does really well is making people want the product without constantly explaining the product itself. When you look at some of these creatives, there isn't necessarily a huge headline, a discount, or a long list of benefits, but you can still understand what the brand wants you to feel. And that's what I mean when I talk about the angle. Rhode is making ads that don't look like ads. The typical woman shopping for makeup is used to high production ads. So, Hailey Bieber taking a picture of herself in the forest breaks that pattern. Hailey

[4:32] here is selling the no makeup makeup look. This is the ultimate version of a native ad. When AI high production ads became easier to make, so if you show the life your customer wants to signal and not the product, you're ahead. If you want to understand what's scarce in a category and what became mainstream, just look at the big brands. The day Nike starts making native ads, it's cringe now. Here, it's clear Rhode wants to target independent women who are sick of makeup. Now, back to our Mars men ads. Let's identify the audience each creative appears to target. The psychology behind a man that's taking GLP-1 is they're becoming weaker and

[5:11] weaker every day. Showing them how to remain strong throughout that process is the best way to target them. The winning podium is also extremely aspirational. Any man out there wants to win. And so, if you can tie that identity to your visual, you have an ad that's crushing on Meta. GLP-1 has a very large market right now, so it's probably the angle that's the most promising here. The larger your market, the more money you can make with your Meta ads. But, you have to make sure that your product can be coupled with GLP-1 first. If you're spending real money on Meta and want help developing and testing static ads,

[5:46] that's what we do at Static. [music] We created ads for brands like AG1, Hexclad, and Jones Road, and you can book a call with my team. It's the first link in the description. Now, once you've found an angle worth testing, the next step is to turn that idea into creatives. Okay, let's take the angle we've just identified. If I wanted to test this for a brand, I wouldn't necessarily make five ads that all look identical with a slightly different headline. I want to explore different ways to communicate the same idea. Here is another idea we come up with for Marselman to target GLP-1 users, a long-form text carousel. It's very

[6:21] different than the three other visuals we've seen. And what it does is it's telling a story. Storytelling is one of the best ways to enter your customer's mind. Here it says, "GLP-1s melt fat. Sometimes they take your muscle and drive, too. Marselman boosts supports natural testosterone so the scale goes down and nothing else does." Now, here are some other ideas and angles you can

[6:44] use to target GLP-1 users. High-achieving men, men with ambition, they love making to-do list on a notebook. This native ad here, probably made with AI, is the best way to target them. Now, what if you want to target women on GLP-1? Then this highly creative visual showing cats is the way to go. Women love their cats more than they love us. Funny cats made with AI are being shared on social media

[7:08] millions of times every single day. Groomes here is using the comparative format perfectly. On one hand, you have a cat on GLP-1 without Groomes, that's without hair, and on the other hand, you have a cat using GLP-1 and Groomes, that's full of hair and looks like a queen. Now, last example from Groomes as well, the iPhone picture format. This woman took a picture of her selfie style. It looks so organic that it could have been an Instagram story. Women are being sold to hundreds of times every single day. The psychology behind organic style ads like this one is telling women, "You are on GLP-1, you're experiencing side effects, but you're

[7:47] normal, and here is a solution for you." Now, when you select those creatives as inspiration, make sure it fits your brand. If you're targeting a more man-ish audience, you want to put a man in the organic style ad, and you might want to have dogs in the cat visual. Now, one interesting fact is that those

[8:05] ads are probably all made with AI. However, none of them qualify for AI slop. If you want to use AI the right way, make sure you're telling a good story and your visual is appealing. And the best way to do that is to identify visuals that do this well already, just like we did. So now we've gone from researching competitors to finding an

[8:24] angle to developing creatives around it. But none of that tells us whether the ads are actually going to work. For that, we need to look at what happens when the creative start getting spent. This is where I think a lot of brands get confused. They launch a batch of ads, see that one has a really high ROAS, and immediately decide that's their winning creative. But I want to understand how much money is actually going behind this ad, whether it's profitable for that business, and whether the concept can support more spent. If you look at this ad account, it spent $120,000 that month. 90% of that ad spend is

[8:56] going towards static ads. At Static, my creative agency, we're inside 150 mid ad accounts. Total ad spend per month is around $60 million. On average, our clients spend around 40% of their ad spend on static ads. The example I just showed you is not an isolated example. If you have a dedicated video creative strategy, you should have a static ad, too. Now, let's filter from January to August. This ad we made for this brand

[9:21] spent $208,000. This ad truly understand the psychology behind their customers. Now, let's look at some other ads. This one spent $11,000 for the past 30 days, and it became one of the top performers in the ad account. Two reasons why this ad is a high performer. First, the headline, it's handwritten like a kid would have done. Then the second reason is it's mentioning the worst parent nightmare, the iPad. The iPad will save you if the kids crying, but deep down, their parents know they should be doing a creative activity. This brand makes a detective game for kids. This is also

[9:56] another top performer for that brand. This ad spent $5,000 for the last 30 days. It is the perfect example of a strong bottom of funnel ad. Okay, and last one, another top performer, $2,500 spent in 30 days. This visual looks like a spy ID badge. Kids love that stuff and parents too. You see what's common with every single one of these ads is the message. All of these ads are for parents and parents only. And the best way to target parents is to target their kids. So how can you double down and push these concepts further to make new winning static ads? Let's say we keep

[10:31] the parent to kid angle. What are parents really proud of when it comes to their kids? [music] Probably their grades at school. How about we combine authority and visual to make a new winning static ad? We could just tell the story of a teacher mentioning to their parents how creative their kid has been today at school. The way to use this would be either a carousel static ad or a teacher visual. You could even go further and transform these into

[10:58] video ads. It's a rainy day at school. Parents are coming in to see their teacher. The teacher's telling their parents how creative the kid has been today. And you can see the smile on the mom's face. And then they get back home and the reason the kid got creative is because they got rid of the iPad and started playing with your product. So that's what you do when an ad is working. You build on it. But what happens when it stops working? Now let's look at the opposite situation. Your ads are dying in the auction. You're not getting any scale. It's not a winning ad. It's the opposite. It's literally

[11:30] dead. And this is where most brands make the same mistake. They try to bring it back. They change the background color, swap the headline, move a few things around and try to relaunch it. If the ad is still winning, iterating on it makes sense. If it's dead, you're iterating on something Meta has already stopped spending on. When an ad is dead, Meta has stopped spending on it. When an ad

[11:52] is dead, it's not just a bad few days. No, it is done forever. You will never be able to scale that ad again. We have here a perfect example of that problem with IM8. Most likely IM8 had a performance problem on that first ad. And to try and make it scale again, they did a very small variations. They took

[12:12] the same product and changed the scene. They slightly changed the headline and swapped the layout. If this ad was dead, this small change will not make it live again. This is especially true for top-of-funnel ads. Top-of-funnel ads are trying to create net new traffic, which means they're not being supported by any other ad than themselves. When you have a dead ad, it's usually an audience size problem, not a design problem. What this means is that the angle has already reached the people it was going to reach. With Andromeda, the Meta algorithm now works as a bucket of audiences. And as you scale, you will need to uncover new ones because the

[12:50] first ones will die. This is what happens with creative fatigue. Your buckets of audiences are empty. [music] And changing the appearance of an ad doesn't give anyone a new reason to buy. Now, how do you identify an ad that died? First, Meta is deciding not to spend on it. Then second, your CPA is going up. Lastly, third, your frequency is going up, too. An ad that dies usually means the angle died. And so producing more variations of a dead ad will not help it live again. Instead, what you need to do is go back to research to come up with new angles,

[13:23] just like we did for the GLP-1 examples. So winners get iterated and dead ads gets replaced with new angles. But you can only tell which is which if you're keeping track of what you're testing. And that's what turns all of this into a system. We've researched the market, found an angle worth testing, turned it into multiple creatives, and looked at how which did your performance and what to do when they died. That's not five separate steps, it's one loop. So the creative process has four stages:

[13:53] research, produce, test, and analysis. Now, let's have a look at this long-form text [music] ad carousel for Mars Men. We did some research and identify the GLP-1 angle. We then selected a format that would speak to our audience and put it into production. Once live, we looked at metrics like CPA, ad spend, and ROAS. And finally, analysis. If it's a winner, we can iterate on it and produce more variations of it. And if it's a loser, we have to come up with a new angle. To iterate on it, we could keep the format and change the story, or change the format and keep the story. The creative

[14:28] process is a loop because after analysis, you go back to research. And the process starts all over again. One thing we do at Static is we always write down the conclusions of the test at each round. The end goal, the result, the next steps. So, the next batch always starts from something we've learned. The creative process loop expands as you [music] spend more money on Meta. At $1

[14:51] million, you need one angle that works. At $10 million, you need three to five angle that works. At $100 million, you need to double down on the winning angles and keep on finding new ones. The next time you're creating Static ads, start by finding an angle worth testing before you worry about what the finished creative looks like. [music] And once you found something that works, use the

[15:13] results to decide what to produce next. If you want to understand what's changing with Meta creative and why brands need to approach advertising differently, I've made another video breaking that down. [music] It's on screen right now. Go watch that

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