The Secret to Whitelisting

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Happy Monday! Welcome back to Nice Ads, the weekly newsletter that helps you make better ads.

This week, we’re going to be chatting about UGC trends and getting creative with our static ads.

Remember, our premium weekly newsletter gives you 3 static ad templates for Canva. If this sounds good to you, upgrade here today! And there’s 20% off your first month!

Krazy Klean

Heavily edited UGC is out, and simple, relatable UGC is in. You heard that right—gone are the days when the more graphics you have on the screen, the better. Instead, audiences are leaning more towards videos that show personality and feel like something anyone could make.

Customers are getting sick of seeing fake influencers advertising products that they don’t care about while filming in their £1m home in the centre of London. They’d much rather watch a creator living in a house like theirs and talking about problems we all have.

This ad is a perfect example of that. Yes, it’s clearly an advert - But it feels relatable; it feels like something anyone could make, and the only graphics on the screen are the words being spoken by the creator. It almost feels like a YouTube Short instead of an advert about a product to clean your toilet.

The product is boring, but the ad feels relatable and makes me want to keep watching, and it all comes down to the style in which the video has been made. The script is direct and sales-heavy. However, the framing of the video is neutral, and the platform is first.

Just because your product is lame doesn’t mean your ads need to be.

👉 Watch in full here

Athena Club

When I saw this static, I saved it immediately because I knew I wanted to share it with you. I loved it so much that I made it a template and I’ve sent it in this weeks’s premium newsletter. Sign up here.

The current trend of statics is to make them look familiar, look like something we see everyday. Because by doing that you stop scrolling to see what is going on - and this static is no different. They’ve used the concept to stop the scroll and tailored it to fit their product. Super smart.

But I also think one of the main reasons for this creative win is the image they chose. They could have picked anything. The razor is in a studio setting of someone holding the razor. But no, they went for a closeup image of it being used with the belly button in the middle of the frame. Seems like a strange choice at first. But I think it’s pretty smart. How often do you see a belly button-up that close on your feed? Pretty much never. So, it helps stop the scroll and pull the customer in.

Image choice is so important in static ads. It can make or break your creative. You need to stop the scroll while still showing off the product. It’s hard to pick the right image.

But when you do, it can result in something like the above. So pay attention when you pick your next photo.

Remember, you can use this static yourself by signing up to Nice Ads Premium here.

Florence By Mills

Millie Bobby Brown’s skincare brand is currently going HARD on paid media. A ton of ad creative is live right now, and a lot of it is whitelisted from authentic influencers who are all about self-love.

I saw this one from Izzie Rodgers Self Love and thought it was a masterpiece in both brand and creator pairing, but also in how to make entertaining ads for a Gen Z customer. Give it a full watch here before we start talking about it.

Everything from the hook to the overall editing is flawless - It’s something the target demo would watch even if it wasn’t an ad advert. It feels so personal and matches the customer down to a tee. No captions, no fancy transition - But a bare-bones video that is holding people by being entertaining.

At one point, brands worked with influencers on a very basic level; they made a video, posted it on their socials, and that’s it. But now that everyone knows how important ad creative is, those brands are starting to whitelist these videos to reach even more people—well beyond what an organic post would ever have achieved. The video currently sits at 34,994 likes with Rodgers ’s usual organic posts getting 5-10K likes. So it’s clear how well this creative has done on paid.

Pick the right creator, and let them run with whatever idea they have. Then, whitelist the creative. Boom. Money.

👉 Watch in full here

That’s your lot for this week’s Nice Ads. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next week when we do it again.

P.S. - This is your last week to sign up for the waitlist for my ad creative course. If you do, then you get 10% off. It’s coming real soon!