Happy Sunday! 

Vendor of the Week:

Happy Sunday! What a week it was, right? Thankfully tomorrow is also a day off, so it really feels like tonight’s a Saturday. Happy Memorial Day weekend to those in the US, and a big thank you to anyone serving in our military, and their families for the sacrifies they’ve made to do that.

I hope you’re sitting on a couch — today’s email will be a fun, quick, informative read (give me 5 minutes) — with your feet up, a weighted blanket draped over your lap, and some form of BBQ’d food in your hand. Today’s newsletter is going to dive into how I think about what creative should be used in each channel, and why. 

As you already know, I spend my day to day running Sharma Brands, a growth marketing partner to some of the fastest growing brands. Over the last 5 years, we’ve worked with 100+ incredible clients to help them grow and scale at various points of their brand journey. I like to say that we typically work with clients at 3 stages: 

  • The 0-1. This is from pre-launch brands that come to us to launch them into the world, and/or brands that are still trying to figure out their PMF in the market. We ensure they are setup from a go-to-market, creative, messaging, and performance standpoint.
  • Scale. These are generally brands diong $30M to $500M in revenue. They come to us because with one team, we can handle strategy, creative production, media buying, email, web management & design, etc. It’s much cheaper to pay Sharma Brands than to hire top-tier talent in-house at this scale.
  • Enterprise. These are your favorite fast-food spots or alcohol brands. They come to Sharma Brands to understand how they should be thinking about running campaigns in a more effective and impactful way, or they’re looking to get in on what the cool kids are doing in the brand world, so they don’t get left behind.

Throughout building SB, my team and I have seen tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of pieces of creative that have been run via paid media by brands across pretty much every channel. Most commonly, we work with brands to help them make and run media on Meta, TikTok, YouTube, TV, Snap, X, Pinterest, podcasts, native and programmatic ads and more. We also launch campaigns on less-digitally-traiditonal channels like OOH, direct mail, print, etc. 

Having spent over $100M in paid media myself, writing all the creative briefs, vetting creative talent, and then continuing to pump out massive amounts of creative output each week, I’ve developed a 6th sense about the creative formats that are working best right now on each paid channel. And for today’s email, I wanted to outline exactly how I think about creative per channel. Now, this is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Like anything I write about, this is through my lens of what I see working well… I always encourage testing. Things that have worked for me, may not work for you… and things that work for you, may not work for me. 

Lastly, I want to note this is May 2024… if you open this email weeks, months, or years from now, it may be outdated. Okay, let’s dive in:

Creative on Meta

On Meta, there are a few things that are working right now. 

  1. Enriched catalog ads 
  2. Celebrity/influencer led creative where there is a known brand involved (this works even better when it’s whitelisted from their account) 
  3. Bright and bold static ads with a clear offer or CTA 
  4. Advertorials and listicles 
  5. Lofi iPhone selfie style creative with a good hook and story 
  6. High-production value creative for high-AOV or luxury brands 
  7. Quick cut videos with fun or on-trend animation 
  8. Screenshots/wildcards as creative

Here’s a bit on each. 

1. Enriched catalog ads. 

I have been beating the drum on enriched catalog ads since January. Why? Because they might be the best creative format on Meta today. 

Just think about it. Most of the time when you are shopping online, do you want to see a polished video ad that tells you an abstract story about the company or lifestyle or do you simply want to see the exact product and price so you can purchase and move on with your day? I don’t think it’s necessarily an either/or question (it’s more about using both as tools in your toolkit) but I do think that consumer ad fatigue is driving a percentage of shoppers to prefer the hyper-simplistic creative format that catalog ads offer on Meta and other platforms right now. 

In general, catalog ads help brands remove the fluff and friction from their ad creative in order to make a more straightforward pitch and sale. Ask yourself, are you in the market for some size 11 white leather shoes? Good. Catalog ads will literally show you the exact pair and price that the company has to offer so a consumer can seamlessly click and buy. 

It’s generally a no frills and no fluff creative style but there is one big caveat here. I greatly prefer “enriched” catalog ads for a reason. Basic catalog ads typically pull in your product image from your product library on a simple white background. IMO, these look pretty low-effort/lazy and they don’t actually stop me in the feed. What you have to do instead is use a tool like Marpipe to enrich your catalog ads with more design and accents to make them actually pop (see all these examples here). It’s where you combine the catalog ad format with other creative best practices like having a bright, on-brand background color, large text and unique fonts, sale tags, and a super clear CTA. 

So catalog ads by themselves aren’t my favorite. But enriched, on-brand, and beautiful catalog ads have been some of the top performing (on a CPM & CPA basis) creative that I’ve seen on Meta this year. 

2. Celebrity/Influencer Led Content

As many great marketers know, one of the oldest tricks in the book to increase engagement is to feature a known creator or celebrity in your ad. By partnering with celebrities and influencers, you are able to associate their brand and credibility with your product or service to instantly build trust and interest with a broad set of consumers. 

The television and magazine industry figured this out many decades ago. This is why you see so many celebrities and movie stars featured in commercials and magazine ads throughout history — it works.

Your CPC will drop 50% and your CPM will drop too, because your engagement will go up with a celebrity face. If you remember my email a few weeks ago about the Meta report, one thing that the best brands had, was low CPMs. It gave them more shots on goal, and the celebrity face does exactly that.

3. Bright and Bold Statics:

I personally like running static ads because the CPMs are typically much cheaper than video (about ⅔ cheaper). They’re also easy to make… get a designer to make you a few templates in Figma, and now just swap out small details or copy and you have a new creative to test. On Limited Supply, I remember Moiz told me about a static ad that printed millions for them with minimal changes. Ash wrote a great tweet about how his ad account is 100% statics now. 

With static ads, you just need to feature the product front and center and have a bright background with big block text and a clear offer. You can also do testimonial static ads or comparison chart static ads that work really well. 

If you count carousels in the static ad category, these are great too. 

In general, my advice is not to overthink it. If you are a brand, you should test dozens and dozens of static concepts every quarter and basically make, run, and test as many as you can. Static ads will typically be evergreen bread and butter for paid social and they perform quickly whether it’s evergreen ad creative, or promotion specific creative.

These ads are never the most cutting edge or sexy, but they work. You should have at least 5-20 good templates for static ads in Figma, that you can leverage at any time for messaging tests, promotions, or new offers.

4. Advertorials & listicles

As with any sales cycle, there is usually a consideration period between someone’s first click and final purchase. Customers definitely want to click your ad, but they also want to learn more before they actually decide to buy. This is why advertorials and listicles work so well as creative formats on Meta. You can teach them about your product through your landing page, or you can send someone to a third party publisher site where they can read a short story or a 10 reasons why listicle that ends with a CTA. IMO, when you send someone directly to your LP, it feels more like an explicit sale interaction. When you send someone to a third party publisher site to read a review or a 10 reasons why post, it feels more organic and native and less transactional. 

I think this is exactly why it ends up generating more sales. We have done this 100+ times with clients at our sister agency, Character, and everyone is always surprised by how well it performs. If you aren’t running advertorials or listicles in your media mix, you should definitely try it to see if they can improve your CPA. 

It works best if you’re a brand that sells a product that requires a long onboarding process (personalized dog food, personalized hair/skincare, etc), a long consideration period (high AOV products, cookware, mattresses, etc)., and have a very obvious problem/solution that can be demonstrated.

If you’re selling something that is low AOV, advertorials aren’t a good idea or use of your time. Instead, just focus on affiliates.

5. Lofi iPhone selfie style creative with a good hook and story 

High production value videos for lower AOV items rarely makes sense anymore. IMO, the megatrend toward unfiltered, uncut, story driven content is only accelerating. It exploded with UGC in 2017-2021 and now there are creators gaining massive followings with no fancy editing work or creative at all.

Raw, iPhone style creative is converting very well and I think more brands should lean into it. These could be raw unboxings, raw reviews, raw founder story ads shot on iPhones etc. If you haven’t tested lo-fi ad creative yet, you should.

Don’t make this all your creative, but test it. It might finds its way in front of pockets of people that you wouldn’t have otherwise expected, due to the way you speak about the product or its benefits in a more unfiltered way/format.

6. High-production value creative for high-AOV luxury brands 

The only place where I don’t see the lofi ad creative working is in the high-AOV, high end luxury space. Obviously Dior or Canali can’t run selfie style videos. Luxury fashion and luxury brands still need luxury creative. This means studio shoots, 3D CGI animation, and high-end video and photo. Anything that has a $500-1000+ AOV is typically selling the brand perception as much as they are selling the actual product. Luxury creative for luxury brands still wins here. 

7. Quick cut videos with fun or on-trend animation 

On the other side of Lofi content is what’s being called “The Beastification” of content. It’s not hollywood level production but it’s inspired by the quick cuts and transitions of some of Mr. Beast’s most viral videos. These creatives work especially well on Snap but also work on Meta too. 

We do a lot of this creative (Sharma Brands creative highlight reel)! It’s characterized by higher production value, on-trend music and animation, and quick engaging cuts. It’s probably the most recognized format in the world of ads today. 

8. Screenshots/wildcards as creative

The last thing I’ll mention for Meta is the concept of screenshots or “wildcards” as creative. I’m really liking the screenshot style or the screenshot of a text message or a notes app or a picture of a sign that has your ad copy on it, etc. Just something a little out of the blue and a little bit more creative to stop you in the feed. These formats work because they are unique and catch your attention. Anytime you can think outside the box and make something really new and fun, you have a chance at breaking through. 

TikTok

In general, my rule for creative for paid social is that if it wouldn’t perform well organically, it shouldn’t be an ad. Nowhere is this more true than TikTok today. All of the best creative that I have seen on this channel is trend driven. A lot of it is comedy focused and very playful and fun. 

Some of my favorite examples are the TikTok ads from brands who just spark the organic content performing best. In fact, if you’re a brand that is constantly producing UGC on its own, you may not even need to make dedicated TikTok assets — just spark what works. 


A lot of other great ads I see on TikTok are comedy focused or skit driven like the format of a character playing both roles and talking to themselves or creative that’s based on a viral/funny trend. 

Another nugget is that I highly recommend you pay close attention to the people who are doing affiliate content for TikTok shops right now. These creators are selling $3-30 products on behalf of other brands and they are absolutely crushing it. Pay attention to the hooks these creators use when their videos do well with engagement, and how they are getting people to get so bought in.

Side story — when I used to write my own advertorials and then setup the ads for them, I’d go to the Facebook pages of BuzzFeed, Well & Good, Insider Picks, etc and see what headline/article format for an article pushing products did well, then I’d try to mimic it. That’s all this is too — watch what these viral TikTok Shop videos do well and copy that format.

Electric shavers, dresses, kitchen items, shoes, etc. I have seen tons of examples recently where a creator is running ads to a tik tok shop with a very basic video of the product in use and it has 10M+ views. Most of the time it’s pretty raw and uncut. Usually it’s just a selfie style iphone video that has the hook of “I just found something for the guys” or “I just found this for all of the girls” etc before they go into the review. This simple hook crushes for them. 

Jolie is another classic example of a brand who uses viral organic on TikTok to inform their paid. As I have written about before, they have seeded product to 100s of users who have then made reviews and posted them on TikTok. Jolie’s marketing team monitors this closely and looks for the most viral examples to spark with paid. It’s a classic strategy and still works today. 

YouTube

IMO, YouTube is still a sleeper ad platform and I think more brands should be spending media dollars here. It’s one of the only channels outside of Meta that has the potential for brands to spend millions per month very efficiently. When I think about ads on YouTube, I immediately think about partnering with a native creator who understands the channel. 

This is exactly what we did with Sara Dietschy at Hint a few years ago. Sara is an amazing content creator and had a pretty large following on social/YouTube when we partnered with her. I didn’t make any specific demands for what she had to create because she already loved the product, and she had already built a following for a reason… she didn’t need to be told what to say. Most influencers, who genuinely love your product, don’t. 

After she made her videos, we repurposed them and ran them as ads everywhere on YouTube and Meta. These videos alone drove millions in revenue. 

Another big callout is that YouTube just announced a native integration with Shopify as they prepare to scale up their YouTube shopping program. This means that YouTube is now positioned to be a serious competitor in the social platform commerce arena that will compete with TikTok and Facebook shops. 

Not only is this going to be a game changer for content creators who will be able to make a ton of money through affiliate marketing, but for brands that fit well into a YouTube format (cookware comes to mind), this is going to become a massive channel of ongoing revenue. YouTube videos are timeless … if you look up “How to make a thai chicken bowl”, the video you will watch might be 4 years old, and still selling cookware on a daily basis because of the evergreen nature.

Snap

I was recently at Snap’s Direct Response Summit in both NYC and LA and they shared what has been working best for advertisers on the platform. The tips they gave brands were: 

  1. Fast cuts with trending animation.
  2. Really catchy hooks and nailing the first second. 
  3. Optimize for very short ads 2-9 seconds.

Snap tends to SKU younger but I think the ad inventory is really valuable here. The CPMs are competitive and people generally aren’t paying enough attention since they are too focused on TikTok being the shiny new platform to run media on. IMO, Snap media is still underpriced today. 

If you’re paying attention to creators, they have all been telling their audience to follow them on Snap lately. Everyone from YouTubers to the Kardashians have been putting out hefty amounts of content on Snap. Snap is paying creators handsomely to continue posting content (one of my YouTuber friends makes $10k/day for posting on Snap). This brings the people… and now that the people are there, it’s time to bring the advertisers back!

TV

For TV creative, you want to tell a very clear, concise, and easy-to-understand story about how your brand or product makes the lives of your customers better. Including a demonstration of the problem, the ingredients that make up the solution, how the solution works, and the benefits of the solution to the customer (at the end, focusing on benefits specifically, not value props), all make for high-performing TV ads.

Unless you’re Nike, I strongly encourage you to NOT just run abstract, motivational videos with no offers that are just about the lifestyle associated with the brand. Unlike with paid social ads, concise storytelling is more valuable than abrupt jolts and quick cuts.

As you produce your creative, you want to focus on generating 2-3 concepts that you can test with 4-6 angles or hooks in the beginning. In the planning of your creative, you should overcompensate for what you think you’ll need. Get all the extra shots, cuts, takes, and angles you think you’d ever want to test, within reason.

The beauty of TV creative, is once something gets tested and starts working, you can have a winning piece of creative run efficiently for 3 years in a row, with little to no change to the performance at all. 

For Programmatic

From a creative standpoint when it comes to programmatic, you have to think about a few things. 

In my experience, it only makes sense to run programmatic ads when coupled on with another channel, usually Meta. This creates more of a reminder effect with the banner ad, where I think it’s most effective. I don’t think you can remember the last banner ad you saw, right? That’s why I don’t think it makes sense to use for prospecting, but for retargeting, it’s got a higher chance at converting.

Almost everyone will discover your product from Meta, TikTok or YouTube, and they will be reminded of it with programmatic banners on the open web. 

When it comes to the creative, think about having a “reminder” variant that says something like:

Didn’t you want these shoes? 

Don’t you need this towel? 

Don’t forget about this cookware set! etc. 

The other thing to note about programmatic ads: Watch out for the attribution window. 

Setup your own reporting to verify all these numbers and the channels incremental lift. 

You might work with a platform that wants a 90 day attribution window, or that’s how they do their reporting. That means if someone who sees the ad at some point on a website and within 90 days ends up converting, Criteo will take attribution for that sale (when in reality they bought from a Meta ad or clicked an email or SMS link).

Make sure you check this because programmatic over-attributes in my experience. It should alway be a secondary retargeting channel for you. 

Native Ads

Native ad platforms like Taboola help you tap into thousands of publishers getting hundreds of millions of page views outside of your standard social platforms. These are sites like CNBC, Bloomberg, Vogue, etc. who have ad space that you can tap into on their sites. 

If you haven’t tried running ads with Taboola yet, I recommend trying it out. There’s only a couple of variables to success with Taboola, which makes it an easy channel to have always on. 

For context, you’ve probably seen or clicked on Taboola ads without realizing it. They are at the bottom of your favorite publisher sites (Yahoo!, NBC, etc.) and act as a content recommendation widget. The psychology here is similar to upselling someone after they’ve purchased — they’re in the mindset. In this case, it’s “upselling” them into another piece of content (aka yours) after they’ve finished reading something else. 

Because of this juxtaposition below the content they just read, the CTR on Taboola is high, especially when you figure out which specific publishers work best for you. In addition, the headline in the creative acts as a shoutout to your relevant/target audience, helping CVR on top of the already mentioned CTR above. At Hint, I found that the health-focused publishers worked the best for us, and it was something we could always keep on and drive incremental revenue with. 

Now... on the creative side, there are two variables to focus on: copy and the image. 

The image is tiny but has a high impact on the creative's performance. The headline does, too. This guide provides an easy guide on how you can repurpose your FB ads for Taboola, but I also highly recommend checking out the top-performing native ad units on Ad Beat.

PS — Taboola gives our Sharma Brands clients, my portfolio companies, and my newsletter community a special red carpet consulting and onboarding when you inquire on this special link!

Podcast Ads

When it comes to podcast ads, the number one creative format is host-read ads.

You could record a commercial and run it through a podcast ad platform like Spotify where it can be programmatically run on various shows based on your targeting parameters, or you can go directly to a show and do a sponsorship deal to get the host to read the ad on your behalf. 

IMO, host-read ads drive a higher ROAS for the partnership. Imagine getting Joe Rogan to read your ad for Athletic Greens vs just running a random audio commercial for AG1 on Spotify podcasts without a known host. You’re not just buying the time, you’re also getting the co-sign and influence.

When you find the right podcast x brand match, podcast ads are still underpriced. In the same way featuring a celebrity in your commercial is valuable, getting a known host to read your ad has a similar effect with the right partnership.

Okay… this has been a long email. This is 6 pages of nuggets on all of these platforms. I could definitely write more but I think that’s all I can cover for this week. It’s time for you to get back outside to the BBQ, too.

Now onto some fun stuff…

LP of the Week:

Oceans — The company that helped Sharma Brands hire phenomenal off-shore talent.

In the past, I’ve always been jealous of people who have benefited from high-quality offshore talent. I used a couple of recruiting companies in the past to help me find some talent who could help with a couple different roles: executive assistant, developers, project managers, QA people, etc. During the process, the company promised to help me make the hire, but then it stopped right after that. I ended up laying off all the people I had hired and just believed we couldn’t make it work with offshore talent. 

Then, Austin Rief, who started Morning Brew, texted me saying that he invested in a company called Oceans, and he’s hired a CFO from Oceans who’s crushing. He asked me to give it a try and I deferred it for a year. Then I finally caved in and made a very specific ask — I need someone to be my EA, but I need someone who’s fluent in English, understands the advertising/marketing world well so they have context on what I’m doing, someone who can move quickly and be proactive, and most importantly, someone with iMessage (so much of my work gets done in iMessage). 

Oceans matched me with Rameez, and he is the best. You’ve probably heard me talk about Rameez on Limited Supply or somewhere… he’s the man. He was the Head of Shopper Marketing at Ogilvy Sri Lanka, went to college in Colorado, and now helps me do so much. We’ve since hired 10 people from Oceans. But why Oceans?

  • They have a full operation in Sri Lanka, on the ground, so everyone feels like they’re in a close-knit community there.
  • They measure progress and growth of all your people, because they stay involved to ensure your talent is the best it can be.
  • They have a full training and onboarding program they do with Divers (what they call their talent) before they join your company, and you can feel the impact of it.

At this point, I can’t live without Rameez! Whenever my peers see how he moves or what he does for me, they all ask for an introduction to Oceans. If you feel like you’ve been trying to find the perfect EA solution with someone offshore, I am putting my own word on the line to tell you… Talk to Oceans!!

At some point this year I’m going to fly out to Sri Lanka to visit our team and possibly setup an office out there. Each department now has an Oceans Diver that helps them manage workload, moving things around, project management, etc. I can’t say enough amazing things about Oceans. If VA’s have never worked for you in the past, then you need to try Oceans.

That's all for this week

I hope you enjoyed todays newsletter and were able to pull a couple of nuggets that you can put into play this coming week. If you have a short week, due to MDW, I wish you luck in fitting everything in!

It’s Sunday night, which means it’s the night to reset before the week. Get those 9 hours of sleep tonight, and have an incredible week. Stay hydrated. Get a sweat in. Go for a run. Have some fun!

I’ll see you next Sunday, same time. Same place!