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Jan 29, 2025

5 Steps to Create Ad Creatives That Convert & 90+ Ad Formats to Get Started

Creating ad creatives that consistently convert can seem like a daunting task, but with the right approach and tools, it’s manageable and highly rewarding. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, this guide will walk you through the process and help you unlock a repository of 90+ ad formats for your next campaign.

Step 1: Create Your Brand Persona

Every successful ad begins with a deep understanding of your brand’s identity. Your brand persona acts as the foundation for all your marketing efforts and ensures consistency across campaigns. To build your brand persona:

Define your core values and unique selling points (USPs).
Identify your target audience, including demographics, psychographics, and behaviors.
Establish your brand’s tone and visual style—e.g., professional, playful, minimalist, or bold.

A clear brand persona ensures your ads resonate with your audience and stand out in crowded markets.

Step 2: Perform Ad Concept Research

Before jumping into ad creation, research what works in your industry. Start by:

Analyzing your competitors: What kinds of ads are they running? Look for patterns in their high-performing creatives.
Studying trends: Keep an eye on emerging formats and themes in your niche.
Gathering inspiration: Use platforms like Ad Library (Meta), Pinterest, and Behance to collect ideas.

Research-driven concepts save time and increase the likelihood of creating ads that perform well right out of the gate.

Step 3: Building a Structure for Ad Campaigns

Once your research is complete, organize your findings into a structured campaign plan. This involves:

Outlining campaign objectives: Define specific goals—whether it’s lead generation, sales, or brand awareness.
Segmenting your audience: Use your brand persona to create audience subsets for targeted messaging.
Mapping out creative assets: Identify which platforms and ad formats you’ll use (e.g., carousel ads for Instagram or video ads for TikTok).

A strong structure ensures your campaigns are cohesive and aligned with your goals.

Step 4: Running A/B Testing for Ad Creatives

Testing is critical to optimizing ad performance. A/B testing allows you to determine what resonates most with your audience. Here’s how to do it effectively:

Test one variable at a time: This could be the headline, imagery, or call-to-action (CTA).
Use measurable metrics: Focus on conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), or cost per acquisition (CPA) to evaluate success.
Analyze results and iterate: Apply insights from testing to refine your next batch of creatives.

A data-driven approach eliminates guesswork and helps you consistently improve ad performance.

Step 5: Choosing the Right Format

Not all ad formats are created equal. The right choice depends on your objectives, audience, and platform. For example:

Use video ads for storytelling and engagement.
Opt for carousel ads to showcase multiple products or features.
Choose static image ads for simplicity and quick comprehension.

Keep experimenting with formats to find what works best for your specific goals and audience.

50+ Ad Formats for Your Next Campaign

With so many options, it’s important to diversify your campaigns. Here are some tried-and-true ad formats to explore:

Before & After

This is a classic advertising angle that showcases results that your customers could have from using your products. Before and after ad formats are most commonly used for beauty products, dietary supplements, and anything that yields a visible result for their appearance.

Ad Comment Reply

Ad platforms like Facebook allow potential customers to leave comments on your ads, which you can use to create more content. Taking a comment from a customer and using it in your video ads is a great way to boost engagement and drive your conversion rates.

Recent Trends

Taking advantage of trends and other cultural moments helps keep your content fresh and relevant. For instance, incorporating popular TikTok dances into your ads is an easy way to stay on top of trends.

Animations

Using animated video ads as opposed to, or even alongside, live actors can be visually eye-catching, which is crucial for Facebook ad creatives. You can use animations to tell your brand’s story, visualize your value proposition, and more.

Screen-To-Order

This simple ad format shows a customer viewing your product online, then cuts directly to them holding it in their hands. It’s fast, effective, and extremely easy to produce, making it a great ad type for eCommerce brands.

Us Vs. Them

Don’t be afraid it call out your competitors directly in your ad campaigns. Us. vs. Them ads use images, text, or videos to showcase why your product is better at addressing your customer’s pain points than other alternatives.

Collection Ad

If you have multiple products that you want to promote at once, a collection is simply a series of images showcasing closely related products.

Carousel With Video

Similarly to a collection, carousel ads include multiple images in one sequence. Adding a video to your carousel is an easy way to make your ad more engaging.

Post-It Notes

Want to make the text in your video ads more visually interesting? Try using Post-it notes instead of text overlays. This gives your ad copy a more authentic feel that your customers may relate to.

Text Overlay

On the opposite end, you can also make your text the star of your ad. One way to do this is to keep your text static over the visuals of your products.

Product Variety

For product collections with multiple styles and colors, like apparel and accessories, you can showcase the variety of your collection with a simple video featuring all of the available colors in a “try-on” style video.

Lifestyle

Highlighting the lifestyle that your product can achieve for your customers is a great angle to take, which you can do easily by featuring the actors in your ad living their ideal lives with your product in hand.

Unboxing

Unboxing videos are among the most-watched content on social media platforms, and you can create your unboxing-style video ads to showcase what your products will look like straight out of the packaging.

Product Features

Product feature ads showcase all the benefits of using your product for the customer. You can achieve this either by using video or text.

AR-Style Ad

In this ad format, you can do a side-by-side comparison of your product against your competitors. This is especially useful for food-related products and can highlight your ingredients.

3D Video Ads

If you have an ad image that you want to “pop,” 3D video ads install 3D animation methods to make certain parts of your image, like the product itself, stand out from the rest of the visuals.

Hybrid Ad

With a hybrid ad, you can combine elements of other ad formats, like an image collection and a video ad, together in one carousel.

Question, Answer

Addressing the FAQs of your customers is a great way to build trust and engagement, and you can do this by directly featuring a question from a customer and then answering it within your ad creative.

Testimonials

If you have customers who already love your products, you have ready-made ad content. You can feature your best testimonials in both image and video ads.

Product Reveals

When you’re ready to launch a new product, creating a reveal video is an easy way to get your customers excited and push them to pre-order it ahead of time in your CTA.

Reasons “Why”

Case studies have shown that audiences gravitate towards numbered content, so using this angle to list the number of reasons why they would love your product can use this fact to your advantage.

“So Satisfying”

The more you can make your product looks visually appealing, the easier it is to entice customers. This ad format focuses on visuals that make your product look aesthetically satisfying.

Customer Journey

The customer journey should always be at the center of your storytelling. In this ad, we follow the journey of one customer using the product, making it easy for the target audience to see themselves in the ad.

In-Image Copywriting

This ad format combines imagery and ad copy to create one compelling visual simply by placing the text within the image rather than separate from it.

Over-exaggeration

Exaggeration in advertising doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In this instance, using extreme exaggeration illustrates the product’s benefits in a light-hearted, humorous way.

What I Ordered Vs. What I Got

This format illustrates what your customers can expect when they order from you by showing the journey of customers who ordered your product in contrast to them using the product themselves.

Founder Features

Want to create a more personal relationship with your audience? Video ads featuring the founder of your brand can help share your story and build a stronger connection with potential buyers.

How-To Videos

In this step-by-step ad format, you can show exactly how to use your product in either a video or image, removing any concerns or questions shoppers might have before purchasing.

Instagram Story

Instagram stories are often where users share first impressions of products they love, and you can use this content in ads on other platforms by creating videos that either look like or are taken from Instagram.

Product Demos

Product demos are video ads showing your product in action or being used in different scenarios.

Urgency

To create urgency in your ad creative, remind buyers that this is a limited-time offer or that an item is in low stock, giving them a feeling of FOMO.

Grid Swap

This simplistic animation style shows multiple products in each frame of a grid, then switches them every few seconds.

Reviews

Just like testimonials, sharing customer reviews taken from your eCommerce shop or another social media platform like Facebook and LinkedIn is a good way to build customer trust.

3D Rendering

3D renderings of your products use computer graphics to add layers to your images, making them more visually engaging.

PR

The more positive press you have for your product, the better. You can highlight any PR in your ad’s texts, images, and videos.

Boomerang

Boomerangs are short-form video clips that play on a loop, which you can use to create quick, catchy videos of your product in action.

Cinemagraph

Cinamegraphs combine motion elements with still images, which overlay to make a more dynamic visual ad.

Flat Lay

For showcasing the details of a product, a flat lay is a type of ad format that looks like a stop motion but is shown from above, allowing the product to lay evenly in the visual.

GIF

GIFs have become one of the go-to methods of communication for online users, featuring short, low-quality video clips that are played in a loop. This type of ad keeps your brand looking fresh and relevant to consumers.

Illustration

There are many ways to use illustrations to create a sense of playfulness in your ads, including adding doodles over your images and creating animated product illustrations.

Mashable

This dynamic style uses video ads and other moving images with text placed over top of them, making it more likely that customers will actually read your ad copy.

Slideshow

To make your still images more engaging, try running them in a slideshow, which should always end with a clear CTA for your shoppers.

Specs

Specs, or specific features of your products, can be highlighted in this ad format, which uses videos and still images to point out these features.

Stop Motion

This is a unique style of animation that uses a series of still images to create the appearance of a moving image, making your ads appealing to the eye.

Video Inlays

Instead of putting images of text over your video, you can also add video inlays to your ad creative. This creates a window-style appearance that draws attention to your creative.

Vignette

On the other hand, the opposite of a video inlay is a vignette, which shows a still image over a video, making the product stand out visually.

Reactions

Reaction videos are often low-resolution, giving them the appearance of being filmed in a more authentic way than an over-produced ad, which is typically more relatable to potential customers.

High-Concept

This ad format involves positioning your ad campaign around a greater philosophical or social issue that relates to your brand’s persona. These ads are usually a large-scale production and are best used around big shopping events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Memes

Internet memes are the pinnacle of online culture, and you can easily recreate this vibe in your ad creatives by creating videos and images with the same look as popular memes.

How to Make 300+ Ads the Easy Way

Scaling your ad production doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here’s how you can efficiently create hundreds of ad variations:

Use Templates: Platforms like Canva, Figma, and Adobe Express offer ready-made templates for quick customization.
Leverage AI Tools: Tools like AdCreative.ai or ChatGPT can help generate ideas, headlines, and even visuals.
Batch Production: Work on multiple ad variations at once by swapping out headlines, images, or colors.
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO): Use platforms like Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads to automatically test different combinations of creative elements.
Collaborate with Specialists: Outsource tasks like video editing or graphic design to save time.

By combining automation, templates, and a systematic approach, creating hundreds of ads becomes achievable without sacrificing quality.

Conclusion

Creating ad creatives that convert isn’t a one-size-fits-all process, but by following these five steps and exploring diverse formats, you’ll set yourself up for success. Start by defining your brand persona and conducting thorough research. Then, structure your campaigns, test your creatives, and select the right formats for your audience. With over 90+ ad formats to choose from and strategies to scale your output, you’ll be equipped to craft high-performing campaigns that deliver measurable results.