10 Meta Ads Creative Formats That Convert Like Crazy in 2025

a huge thanks to story blocks for sponsoring this video every year I share the ad creative formats that actually convert on meta ads and let me tell you 2025 is already shaping up to be a very interesting year some of the classics are still crushing but there's a whole new wave of new ad formats that are outperforming almost everything else and here's the thing get a little closer format matters but messaging is more important than ever the right messaging can make or break an ad Crea even in some cases if the design isn't that well

executed that's why for each of these formats I'm also going to be breaking down the messaging strategies and extra little bits that I've seen really work well with the brands that I work on so if you're stuck wondering which ad creative to test next or how to nail the messaging in your ad creative be sure to stick around for all 10 of these formats this video is going to save you hours of guesswork and show you how to make high converting ads fast even if you're new to meta ads or if you're on a low

budget also for fun let me know in the comments what your product or service is or even your brand and I will personally suggest an ad format for you to test okay let's dive into it now the first one was actually the top performing ad creative for all of 2024 and we spent well over $2 million on this one ad now the gri style ad is nothing new in fact it's been used for decades even during the print era however this ad type is incredibly psychologically pleasing in fact our brains love this ad because it

completes a subconscious Loop for us essentially with a grid format our eyes are always trailing from left to right and top to bottom this ad format is great for brands that have bundles have multiple products or even have different skews AKA different colors sometimes in fact it actually just helps to show the same product multiple times now I will say the top performing ad creative for this grid style format did have a messaging element as well which is really great CU we were able to test out multiple different messaging styles to really see what worked

and unfortunately I can't show you the actual ad ndas but here were essentially the messaging strategies that we were able to try and ultimately what worked best so imagine this ad tested with these different messaging points now which one do you think performed the best now I will say here this one at the end the purely value based messaging was ultimately the one that started performing first but it was actually the 10minute exercise routine that ended up crushing it and beating out all other types of messaging now now when we drilled down on this what

we actually realized is this was the most scalable type of messaging that we had tested the others were looking at a specific age range and gender the other was featuring a specific social media platform rip the more you know right all right number two this one's actually new for this year but it's what people in the industry are lovingly calling EGC or employee generated content now a lot of us in the industry know about Founders ads right but what about other employees now this is actually something that I saw Jenny Kane doing over the last

few years that seemed to really work well for them but my favorite way to do this right now is actually with Warehouse content Hollow socks overnight ODS and happy Mammoth absolutely crush this type of format and something that I note too is that it works really well for both images and video and I know what you're thinking what if I don't have access to a warehouse to film these types of videos well that's where story blocks comes in let's actually search for warehouses on story blocks boom you can easily use these as a background or

even an individual asset now some businesses get a little anxious because they think that they need to be in the physical location to make this type of content but to be honest I've actually witnessed the green screen effect having a really similar vibe to actually being in the physical location in fact here's a really great example of this now when I want to test out this kind of stuff with the brands that I work with I use story blocks because I find that the content combines best with ugc in other forms of content that's commonly

used in meta ads creative for both video and images they have a curated Content Library that has everything you need in one place with over a million 4K in HD footage templates music sound effects images and more and yes it is completely royaltyfree even for ads and you don't have to plan a photo shoot fumble with AI Solutions more on that in a bit or you know get a Creator to make this type of content for you it is literally instantaneous which just makes team so much more agile to get started with unlimited stock media

downloads at 1 set price head to story blocks.com darad Deni or click the link in the description now for number three I'm actually going to be super prescriptive because I actually found that this specific type of Founders ad was working really well across several accounts so yes it is a lowii or ugc style Founders ad so it's from the founder but we have a Tik Tok response bubble that is handling a common objection now in many cases this could be a price point but if you keep on coming up again a certain frequently Asked question

or a certain thing that your customers or people who want to become your customers seem to be anxious about pre purchase make content about that from the founder honestly speaking to that common objection now I'd say that this is really great for Founders that want to try this type of content but don't know where to start start with this one and here's a list of common objections you can try and number four Creator content do you notice how I'm not using the term ugc anymore here's the thing Creator content is absolutely still moving the needle

in 2025 but I've really reframed how I am looking at this type of content instead of working with people who do ugc I am really aiming to work with creators because those who can show up authentically on camera and really develop that type of connection with the audience AKA real creators these are the people that I find absolutely create top converting ads not the specific type of of Creator content that I saw work this last year absolutely is more in the single testimonial vertical instead of having compilations even though I did see those work sometimes

most of the time it is coming from a single Creator interestingly the type of messaging that I've seen really work number one across many accounts I find that opening a hookup with a reaction sort of like these is something that actually really resonates with people other things that work are using trigger words in the hooks so things like this and as always the good old problem solution type of AD creative absolutely still works when paired with the right Creator I would say that problem solution Creator content is like the bread and butter of AD creative

content for brands that are spending more than 300 to 500k per month on meta ads you're really going to need to know how to nail this type of content because I don't actually see anything else scaling up accounts in the same way as authentic Creator content but if if you're looking for a new fun way to do this I do see this type of tweet or social media framing like this you can always change the elements around a little bit absolutely does work and look unique and number five another one of the new ones AI

ads here's the thing I was a little resistant to using a ton of AI in the ad creation process um but I'm using it quite a bit now and it is absolutely working in fact if you're interested in me doing a deep dive on on AI ads let me know because I honestly don't think that what I'm going to explain here is going to be even scratching the surface of what is possible here so here's the way that I think about AI content right now in 2025 I really like to categorize it into five big

buckets number one is going to include AI features that are on existing platforms that people are already using so think like your canva your Premiere Pro maybe even your cap cut Brands and designers and video editors are starting to lean into these type of features a lot I even know that I am leaning into it quite a bit especially for video edits on this channel and heck there's even geni capabilities directly inside of meta ads manager now the second bucket is more for images so it's more of your mid Journey style images these can absolutely

work but they definitely have a certain look to them and I know some Brands just based on their own image alone aren't willing to go there quite yet and then there's the Deep fake style ads like what Arc ads does essentially and I will say I have been testing this out a lot recently and I'm really excited for it in in the same way that I love using story blocks to be able to test out ideas and theories instantaneously I am now able to do that quite a bit with Arc ads which is really exciting

now the fourth bucket is actually just pertaining to voiceover so with something like 11 ads now why this is really interesting to me is because because it essentially enables Brands and businesses to compile all of the content that they already have and create new scripts and storylines by using voice over that is AI generated and then the fifth bucket is what I like to call endtoend AI Services these are essentially businesses like airpost that are enabled to create hundreds of ads with just a click of a button essentially automatically of course there's a lot more

to it than that but essentially if you were to sign up for a service like that you would be able to very quickly very easily and quite cheaply get a ton of creative and that's absolutely where the industry is going to be headed but uh let's take a step back cuz like I said AI could really take up an entire video again let me know let's ease back into this um for number six is text based ads now the cool thing about this is I really like to think about it as just like text Heavy

ads so this can be Texton ads like in images or it can be more video based I've absolutely seen both types of these ad creatives crush it and I'd say on the video side A lot of times this is something that I see Brands having already done on Tik Tok or on reals and it's like yeah like let's put some ads behind that and try it now the reason why I wanted to bring up this ad creative too is because this is something that I actually tested during Black Friday Cyber Monday and it annihilated it

this is actually something that I saw a lot of Brands doing including Ripley rler and and their team told me that it absolutely crushed for them and I saw very similar results which is really exciting I'm actually currently working on trying this for a nons sale period but this is definitely an easy one to do during a sale period which I'm excited about number seven don't be mad at me Dynamic product ads DBA or catalog ads so when I was doing research for this video so that I could give you actual ad creative that I

see working in converting today in 2025 instead of just what I think works in several accounts I kept on running into the scenario where catalog ads were actually the top performers whoops it doesn't make for amazing and great content but if I'm being totally honest a lot of people aren't utilizing their catalog ads to the fullest Advantage so if you're interested in doing a big deep dive on that I have a very big video that I did with Dan pantello earlier last year that a lot of you really loved that really does a deep dive

on different DPA and catalog strategies and the different ways that these ads can actually show up in slightly different formats and I'll say the teaser here is that catalog ads run on a different algorithm which I am very very interested in so for nearly any brand out there especially if you have multiple SKS and multiple products you absolutely need to make sure that you are doing that type of AD format Justice and number eight negative marketing ads so this one is actually more of a messaging strategy in itself right now there are several formats that

I've seen work pretty well there are the regular negative reviews I've seen the zero or one out of five star ads crushing on a few accounts which is really cool but I also think just leaning into more negative messaging within your creator content is absolutely something that I would test in your variations especially using more of those negative or hard-hitting trigger words think words like regret embarrassed hate those are three that I have personally seen work over the last few months so those could be really easy ones for you and number five ugly ads by

the way let me know in the comments if you guys signed up for Barry's course I will absolutely be attending alongside you guys I am so excited to learn more from him he actually used to be my boss which is pretty cool but the reason why I really wanted to bring up this specific type of AD format is because there are several different ways that you can do ugly ads number one but also this is actually something that meta has been talking more about how this is one of their top performing types of real ads

they call it lowii content but I do think it's really interesting that the platform and even bigger brands are starting to wise up and be like wow yeah like this actually crushes and it's absolutely something that brand should be doing in the way that I like to think about ugly ads it's absolutely more of a state of mind than it is a specific format and the way that I like to get people like geared up to think about this type of AD creative is in a few ways so first one is what if I challenged

you right now to make an ad creative within 5 minutes what would that ad creative look like another really great exercise you can do with your teams if you want to get them to start thinking more in this vein is actually to have them call their mom their family member their girlfriend their whatever their best friend and try to get them to sell something to them of course I immediately think of that Wolf of Wall Street Scene but what I actually mean is think about a product or a service that you really loved and simply

just talk talk to your significant other or your close family person about it and think about the things that you are bringing up when you are trying to emphasize what a great experience it was or how much benefit you got from it but I know that this is just a YouTube video a ton of you aren't necessarily going to try those exercises even though I know they're really valuable I think only the serious ones will so if you're curious about what ugly ads do tend to look like of course we have the Post-it note ad

still crushes still see it work but also one shot one take videos so essentially just you know take your phone and film an ad within a few seconds 30 seconds just Yap see what happens again I think this this is where the actual getting on the phone with a person that you're close to and talking about a product that can really help that's essentially what that type of ad is and then there of course the POV shots so instead of doing like a Yap this is like you know from the perspective of you so I

think a lot of times like people's mind jump to the unboxing it's not necessarily that it's more um the product in action and then of course another classic ugly ad style are these Nostalgia Graphics much like these essentially for ugly ads you just have to think how to communicate as authentically as possible and what that potentially looks like and number 10 to round us out I want to talk about my POV on features call outs ads on US versus them on Headline ads testimonials and before and afters to be honest all of these formats are

still absolutely worth testing in 2025 but I won't lie most of the top performers that I've seen again and again over the last few months are things that I already mentioned in this video but every once in a while there is a huge Banger there within one of these classic ad formats and I'd say too especially if you are a newer brand or a brand on a budget or a brand that is just coming to Market a lot of times for instance I'll see the US versus them be the first ad that really crushes it

for that type of business same thing with the features benefit call out style ads and another thing to mention here too is I've predicted that creative volume is going to be something that's really top of mine for advertisers this year and Ash actually had an amazing tweet about this today where he talked about how many ad creatives they made in 2024 and also the percentage of those that were top performers and it was 9% which really shows hey you know the more ad creatives that you put out there the more chance that you give for

something to really resonate the more times you're going to win but I do know that there's a huge debate about quality versus quantity and I do believe that there is a world where you can increase quantity without sacrificing as much on quality because of the rise of AI and if you know your customer really well and you never stop the customer research Journey then creating ad creative around those desires those things that really psychologically tick within all of us then I think volume is not going to be a problem for you and getting more of

those winners is inevitable and the final ad creative that I want to talk about this is actually an extra one a bonus one if if you will but something that I've been thinking about over the last few weeks especially with this Tik Tok band looming maybe Tik Tok is no longer around um when this video is being published my goodness is this idea around brand formance which is something that my colleagues at BMG 360 actually talked about when we did a talk at meta recently now something that my good friend Nikki Henning and colleague talked

about is actually them starting to put ad spend behind creative that was doing really well for them on reals or organic and I think that you know if you're looking at all these ad creative formats and you're a little lost and you're a little confused about organic versus paid ads and like the real difference there I think it is still especially in 2025 really worth putting some ad spend behind those creatives that are working for you on organic and again this is something that I've talked about in a few other videos but when I was

at the meta agency Summit late last year the number one thing that they talked about was authenticity and content and creative AI was actually the second most discussed topic which is still a lot but I really do think that as much as we have this push for things that seem manufactured or AI driven what we actually all want as an industry is more of that authenticity and I find that often times that authenticity really does start on the organic level and that's it thank you so much for staying to the end that means that you're

real well so please like And subscribe those small actions really do help me out and I can't wait to see you guys in the next video love you bye