We have written a lot on the optimal setup of a campaign, as this is the foundation of your advertising strategy. But the real differentiator is your ad creatives. Before we dive into best practices for ad creatives, here are a few of Meta's resources you can use for inspiration. Did you know that 56% of your sales increase from digital advertising can be attributed to the quality of the creative?

Where can I get creative inspiration? Check out Facebook’s Ad Library. The ad library provides advertising transparency by offering a comprehensive, searchable collection of all ads currently running across all of Facebook’s apps and services, including Instagram. You can use this to check out what advertisers in your category are using to attract customers. 

For more inspiration, check here. And if you’re running direct response campaigns, you can get some creative inspiration here.

In this chapter, we will go over the following elements of advertising creatives: 

1. The basics 

2. Creative best practices

3. A guide to refreshing creatives

4. A practical guide to building, ideating and testing your ads on Facebook.

The basics

What works best:

• Static image and video assets work best together. Static images in combination with video campaigns achieved higher results than static image-only campaigns.

• Have a clear message and focal point for your static creative. Static image assets need to have a clear message and focal point, honing in on the product or service being advertised to inspire action. Product-focused creatives drive business results more efficiently, generating more content views most of the time versus creatives without a clear product focus.

• Optimize performance video ads for mobile viewing. Videos that contain strong brand association and product showcasing perform better as performance videos are correlated with a higher conversion rate. 

Creative best practices

This overview was designed to help you understand how to come up with creative advertising ideas and test them on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. 

We’ll start with a key focus area for your creatives: mobile optimization. Over 90% of all Facebook and Instagram users are on mobile, so you should design your creatives to be mobile-first. How?

Start with mobile-first best practices:

1. Video ads should run for 15 seconds or less

2. Design for sound off (ads should have caps)

3. Frame your asset in the right aspect ratio

Now that your ad is mobile optimized, you can spice it up with creative considerations for driving sales. 

1.  Static + video works best together, especially for sales-driven campaigns.

2.  Highlight your brand strategy early. Brand association within three seconds of a video’s start is positively correlated with an increase in brand awareness. 

3. Showcasing the product or service for most of the video increases conversions.

4. Get noticed. Being noticed is positively correlated with increased sales.

Okay, you’ve followed the steps above. Now how can you measure your creative success and test other creative variations?

1. ​​Ad diagnostics. Use the ad relevance diagnostics tool to see how your ads are performing in the auction and troubleshoot poor performance.

2. Video creative. Use the video performance card in the Ads Manager to assess view-through rate for video ads.

3. A/B test. Create a Facebook A/B test to determine the winning creative asset. Setting up a proper A/B test and picking a winner can decrease your CPA by 26%.

How can I identify when it’s time to refresh my creative after launch?

You can identify creative fatigue by using the “delivery” column in the Ads Manager.