Advertisers and media buyers like to play with time and space. We’ve already figured out how to manipulate the space-time ad-continuum. We’re like physicists, except in the ad world. When you put a time traveler inside a business, they are able to see the future and explode the growth seemingly overnight. This effectively compresses the time that it would normally take a business to reach their desired revenue goals into something that is seemingly magic.
Or, the good ones are just following a formulaic, logical approach to ad creative. It all comes down to leveraging the virality of certain direct response or native ad channels. Media buyers and advertisers do this by finding winning ads that go viral.
Finding a winning ad that has the potential to or actually does go viral should be part of your business goals. I’m going to rock some boats here.
A “Viral” ad, or one that is getting shared organically by users is commonplace if your following viral styles. Most businesses that I’ve ever worked with have had dozens of ads go viral. It’s not a fluke. It’s completely intentional. We want users to engage with and share our content.
Organic user shares help make better use of our ad budgets because users are sharing on their own merit. In other words, users share the content for us, helping reduce the CPMS. Additionally, the algorithm detects that there is a lot of engagement on particular creatives and, due to its feedback loop, increases the reach of that content to more users.
Viral content is completely intentional. It’s not a matter of random chance, but, rather, part of a strategic ad strategy that should exist in any serious business that has a paid ads department or one that leverages paid ads to any extent.
But what is it that makes a viral ad? What elements actually get in front of users and get them to engage with and more importantly convert on the ad that we are running? Obviously, there is a marriage between product, market fit, copy, content and styles, but most viral ads that I run have a particular consistent winning formula that helps the ad scale to 5 and even 6 figures per day in ad spend.
And, this happens pretty often.
Even if you don’t have the best product market fit and if your ad doesn’t have the best messaging, a great format can certainly help boost the chances of being seen and therefore shared.
In my facebook creative course I go over a consistent winning process that has a high probability of success creating viral videos. because it’s a systematic approach, by following it, you’ll have no choice but to create a viral video over time.
Though I’m sure I’m missing some things in this list, I’m going to share with you some of the viral ad types that I’ve used successfully that bring consistent results and have a higher potential for virality on basically any social media platform.
Before I dive into the list, let’s not forget that Facebook and any platform containing a feed will be a direct marketing channel. Which effectively means that ads are directly in front of a user regardless of their search. Contrast this to an intent-based platform like Google Ads, suddenly a lot of opportunity is available for broad reach and mass market appeal. Facebook is called a native platform.
Which means we need to be native and showcase the product in a way that would be more casual to the user. I’ve rarely had a branded ad or any “official” looking advertisement go viral. You know, those ads you see from big brands that just scream advertisements when you scroll.
Of course, just a style alone isn’t going to guarantee viral exposure. As i mentioned above, a marriage of proper messaging, positioning, product and other things will help drive conversion, and help further increase the probability of virality on the platform.
A quick note on the links, the Facebook Ad Library contains currently active ads. If the advertiser takes the ad down, then you won’t be able to see the linked ad. As such, I added the full ad library so you can browse and find what you’re looking for.
1. “Tik Tok” Style
I’ve used this style in both 9×16 ads and 4×5 ads. For both stories and open placements. This format has been a carrying format for over a year and continues to deliver great results on the platform. Because of Tik Tok’s wild popularity, but relatively young user base, it’s still maturing as a powerful direct response platform, the styles that we see on it come baked in with viral components.
All we need to do is extract a few of them and apply it to another familiar playground. Effectively, adopting one style of another platform that we see often and applying it to another platform is going to have a higher probability of yielding results than just trying to throw our favorite spaghetti at a wall.
This style has been dubbed “Tik Tok” internally, but it’s really just a text bubble with a shocking, controversial or scroll-stopping statement along with a talking head in the background. The main header text bubble changes text into standard subtitles placement or another bubble as soon as the main opener is concluded.
Once the main header is concluded, standard subtitles are present in the ad instead of those catchy text bubbles. Colors that have worked for me are blue, purple and black bubbles. Though, I encourage you to test your own colorful bubble/text combination.
For more Tik Tok inspired content, check out this Tik Tok Trends database.
2. 15-30 seconds looping videos
Playing with various lengths of ads can help diversify and expand our reach and ad portfolio. Under 15s ads have the benefit of autoplay and shorter ads also have the benefit of looping. Though, this isn’t necessarily a format, this technique can take some of your top ads or new ads and multiply the number of unique ads just by changing the duration.
In other words, cut out some of the fluff. Not everybody wants to see a long video ad. Some people just want to see some basic info and will click to learn more. Hence the goal.
I’ve also noticed shorter ads have a higher engagement as of recently. However, this could easily be due to autoplay inflating the sub 15 second creatives.
3. Disruptive Footage
This is a massive topic and I’ll let you determine what footage can be disruptive for your business. In general, think scroll-stopping odd footage that relates to your business or brand. Check out some other sites that run Taboola or Ookla ads on their pages and you’ll see a multitude of creatives that look odd.
I’ve seen weird fruits, hanging skin, happy seniors, zoomed in shots of something, solar farms and the list goes on and on. Odd things to look at that someone can’t be sure that they saw what they just saw. Make it exciting.
Use multiple shots. Speed up or perhaps slow down the footage. Add emojis in Adobe Premiere.
There’s so many things that can make up a disruptive footage that it’s relatively easy to find something relevant to your brand.
A lot of my golden snippet library is found from both stock footage sites like Storyblocks and something I’ve filmed on a cell phone. If you can’t find stock footage that is on brand and something weird, then use your phone and record it.
For example, a company that sells car soaps could use a soap cannon in first person soaping up a hot red sports car like a Ferrari. This will have action, color contrast, a subject and something fun to watch. Plus, it’s a bit obscure because the user isn’t always expecting a sports car to be blasted with soap. Regardless, it’s fun to watch.
4. Chat GPT style
A relatively new style that has come to the surface is something that I call the chat GPT style. This particular style leverages the popularity of chat GPT and asks the AI a question. Of course, the AI is going to spit out an answer that benefits the company or answers an interesting FAQ that someone may have about your business or brand.
The goal here is to mimic the layout of chat GPT and make it emulate the experience of actually using the robot. Of course, this is staged so that the answer would pique someone’s curiosity to continue watching the video.
5. Varied opening formats from my format guide
Oftentimes it’s important to “mix it up”. If you’ve been doing a particular creative style for some time, it could be time to mix up your formats. This format guide is something I use with my team so that we can all know exactly what format something is and what’s currently being tested.
This way, through the data, I can determine the best performing format vs having to guess. And also, if i have a predominant format, I know that it could be fatiguing by looking at a trend chart. Trend analysis is something that I go over in my Facebook Ads Course.
Either way, these formats have been tested many times and have proven to work many times.
If you have an existing ad, it’s easy to multiply the efforts of making a single ad by just varying the format. Then, you can have as many ads of the same content, but slightly different enough to test what gets users to click and convert at a higher rate. If you’ve experienced ad fatigue and your creatives are at a stuck point, maybe it would be a great idea to refresh your formats and keep the same winning content.
6. Talking head Style
Over the years of advertising, i’ve seen this style proliferate more and more. And it makes a lot of sense. Advertising on social media indicates that it’s a person advertising to another person. Talking heads make the ad experience more personal and less branded. A lot of people have seen the “traditional” television style. It’s obvious when we are being inundated by advertisements.
What’s different, though, on Facebook vs Television ads, is that on Television ads we are more or less forced to watch the ads during the program we wish to watch. In the past, and still when it’s live tv like the superbowl, we can’t fast forward the ads. So we’re stuck watching them. So the ads can be as obvious as they want. They are very deliberate.
The moment we see something like this, our brain shoots up its defenses and effectively tunes out. It’s filtered out material that we are barely paying attention to. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS ON A NATIVE PLATFORM!? Native platforms need to be native.
Like a friend chatting casually, sharing some news, looking for help etc. Showing a nicely polished ad, at least in my experience, has rarely resulted in good performance. Yes, you’ll get shares, but it will be tough to go viral with it.
Nowadays, everybody has a phone with a pretty darn good, usually 4k, camera attached to it. Now, you certainly don’t need a 4k camera. In fact, in my experience, lower quality footage converts better. Think native. Think like an average person with an average device is going to film an average video.
Your content doesn’t need to be average, but your approach does.
This way, people are more apt to listen because they don’t even know it’s an ad. It’s not about being the most polished ad, with the best crew and editing.
Really, it comes down to good copy and really bad camera equipment. We want the user to feel like a friend is speaking to them so that we can deliver a message without making it seem like a typical ad.
7. User Generated Content – show the result.
Whether you’re in fitness, weight loss, business opportunity, lead generation or any other field, somewhere down the funnel you have customers.
Those customers have experiences. And usually, those customers have results from those experiences. It’s utmost important to showcase those results from their own mouth. Interviewing the customer to acquire user generated content (UGC)Â is a great way to learn more about your business, brand and customer base, but also get some of the best marketing materials known in the ad game. UGC content comes from the customer, so it’s by default better than any copy.
This is no longer you casually chatting with your customers, but customers chatting with customers. In other words, this is the best kind of business: word of mouth. With this type of creative, all you have to do is let the customer do the talking and ask poignant questions to elicit the right response that you can later edit into your advertising.
I’ve had more content go viral with customer interviews than anything else. This is by far the best marketing asset you can acquire and regardless of your business, you should focus time, energy and money on. Not only are these UGCs valuable, they are a chance for you to connect deeply with a customer and discover new use cases and “whys” from your broader audience. Don’t dismiss this content.
This is some of the best content you can get for your marketing campaigns.
8. Story Style
Story style or customer journey style creatives also perform well. They can perform especially well with a voice over of an interview or of someone quoting the customer as part of the creative script. Lumen5 is a fantastic resource to quickly create story-style creatives.
Though, I’ve rarely had Lumen5 videos converted out of the box, so to speak. But, as part of another ad and if leveraged as a marketing asset, it has certainly been useful in cutting in and out of different frames of the creative. Sharing the customer journey also sets proper expectations with prospective new customers because they get to experience the product vicariously without any investment or risk on their part.
And, let’s face it, the first thing you do when you look at a product or service is check how many stars and reviews it has.
It’s human nature to want social validation and confirmation of our decisions. So, a story style coupled with a UGC style can be a powerful tool in showcasing a prominent review that could help impact others. Especially, if the story has emotion, action, and excitement.
9. Thumbnail
A thumbnail is a great way of refreshing old creatives and increasing the probability of your ads going viral. Think of a thumbnail as a static image of your ad. Most of the ads I run have a captivating beginning frame, so I use that as my thumbnail.
But for other ads, I make a deliberate thumbnail to help leverage both a video AND an image ad. I see the thumbnail as yet another asset that I can use as marketing material. And with video ads, you can select a manual thumbnail so you can have the benefit of an image ad with the flexibility of a video ad, all in one creative asset.
Neat right?
Think of thumbnails as standalone image creatives that can later be used as an image creative but are currently being used as an actual video thumbnail.
10. Stitching
Taking advantage of Facebook’s Ad looping, we can emulate an experience by stitching multiple 15 or 30 seconds ads and make it seem like they are looping, but actually just playing multiple ads in a single ad. So if you run an ad for 60 seconds and have 4 15 second iterations of the ad.
You can stuff 4 different ads inside of a single ad and let it run for 60 seconds. This way, you’re not just playing with one ad, but not you can combine multiple either winning ads or winning ad elements into a single ad. Hence we can play with time.
11. Whiteboard
A whiteboard/educational style ad converts because we’re accusotomed to being taught important information on a chalk/whiteboard. This is something that we were raised to see as school children. Providing the same paradigm in ads sets the tone for the user and immediately shifts the focus to being educational. When we’re being taught something, we’re not being sold something, so our defenses are down.
Therefore, we’re more attentive to the actual message. A whiteboard is a prop. And a powerful one at that. I’ve used whiteboards since starting advertising. It’s a super effective strategy to increase engagement and show educational material without necessarily selling anything.
12. In the Car
Driving around in the car with the camera facing you is again, yet another casual style that feels like a friend talking to a friend sharing a casual conversation. In fact, I’ve known certain advertisers to drive around in circles to just get the “in car” footage. It’s a super easy and effective tool to help your ads get more attention because it feels very casual and relatable. We’ve all had car conversations. It’s almost like sitting in a car forces us to communicate because we’re in an enclosed space together for an extended period of time.
13. Zoom Style
Ever felt like you wanted to be part of a super-secret Zoom mastermind that you weren’t invited to? Well, putting this in an ad allows the user to feel like they are part of the “in crowd” peering into a Zoom call. They are observing a Zoom meeting in progress. Though, Zoom meetings have become relatively commonplace, they really didn’t get too popular and well known until a couple years ago.
In any case, a casual Zoom interview between two or more people can create the feeling of the user peering into the life of someone else. They have the opportunity to participate in something that’s available only to them. Additionally, the format is super familiar. Rarely are we expecting to be sold something on a Zoom call, unless of course, it’s a sales call. But in most people’s day to day, Zoom is used for meetings in and out of the office. Or sometimes, it’s just used to catch up.
Finding a viral creative isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does require somewhat of a strategy. Isolated variable testing and winning creative expansion can help multiply your efforts and dramatically increase the probability of your ad going viral.
Just remember, it’s just another piece of content that needs to be shared on the platform. Don’t put too much effort in making it an “ad” as you typically see. When the world zigs, you zag. Be different. You’ll be rewarded for your uniqueness.
See? I showed you several examples of how I play with the time AND space of an ad. And, if I were to time travel, I’d travel to a time where I show you how to grow your business fast.Â
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