5 things top performing advertisers are doing differently

If you are here because you want to get the most out of your paid social advertising, you've come to the right place.

If you're here hoping to get that "one magic bullet" that you can implement and then everything is good from there… Well, we can't promise that. But this article will give you the five things top-performing advertisers are doing to create better-converting ads. 

It may not be a magic bullet, but we think it's pretty close.

Too long; Didn’t read

• Top-performing advertisers are doing the following in their ads:

• Using more text

• Using fewer CTA's 

• Using less of their logo

• Using faces/models more often 

How did we come up with this insight?

The insight we share in this article comes from a unique set of data we have from advertisers in Confect. All findings are coming from Conversion optimized ads ONLY. All data comes from actual advertisers. 

We have added more details about the dataset, how we analyze it, and the breakdowns of the different terms we use at the end of the article. You can click here if you wish to read more about it. 

Let's explore this in detail. 

Top-performing advertisers use more text in their content

Top-performing advertisers are not sweating about old rules Facebook used to have about text in your content. On average top performing advertisers cover 7.5% of content with text.

In fact, across all of their ads, they have 44% more text used in their content than the mid and bottom-performing advertisers. 

Text is great for communicating your offer, product, price, discount, and any other unique selling propositions you have. Note we are referring to conversion-optimized ads, that’s aimed at making people buy here and now.

Top-performing advertisers are using fewer call to actions

“Buy Now!”, “Swipe Up,” “Click to Purchase”.

However you phrase it, the Call to Action is vital in any marketer’s toolbox. But should you use them in your content? Maybe better not. 

Top-performing advertisers are using CTA’s half as much as everyone else. Only 2% of all their impressions have a call to action in the content. While for the bottom-performing advertisers, this number is nearly 4%.

If this is a surprise to you, you’re not alone. Top-performing advertisers use content to talk about their product or offering and double down on what the audience wants to know about the product to influence their decision. Not trying to manipulate you into doing their desired action, by telling you to do so

Logos are less common in top-performing advertisers content

Logos, there are loads of different reasons to use one in your content. 

But ( surprisingly ) only  20% of top-performing advertisers' content has a logo in it. At the same time, the bottom-performing advertisers have it in 35% of their content.

Logos are great for branding and raising brand awareness. You really want your brand to be recognized; things are just getting easier there. 

But should you use it in your conversion campaigns, where the goal is to get them to buy/convert? 

The top-performing advertisers have chosen to do it a little bit less than the bottom-performing advertisers. 

Top performing advertisers favor models in their content

For top-performing advertisers, you will see they use human faces or models in their content more often. 

To be precise, humans will be in top-performing advertisers' content 30% of the time. That is nearly twice as frequently as bottom-performing advertisers would use humans in their content.

There could be several reasons, but we believe that mid and top-performing advertisers see the value in using models and are ready to take the costs associated with creating content that features humans. 

If your content rarely uses models, we suggest you test them. However, you might be missing on performance that can outweigh the production cost associated with the models.

Top performing advertisers are using more emojis

Everyone uses emojis. And they make the ad copy look more lively. 

But how many emojis should one use? What is the optimal amount of emojis per ad?

We found out that top-performing advertisers use three emojis while the bottom performers stick with just two. 

Don’t shy from emojis; the best-performing advertisers are on them. 

To learn more about exactly what Top performers are doing, you can read these blogs:

• 3 Things top-performing advertisers do with their content
• How are top-performing e-commerce advertisers winning with content
• Learnings from top-performing advertisers for 2023

Dataset

The dataset from this article is based on 7.1B impressions and 59.1K pieces of individual content on Meta (Facebook) platforms. It takes into account data from all countries and industries, with the campaign objective of Conversions. The period is from 1. September 2021 - 16. September 2022.

Numbers are looking at correlation only, not causation. Remember to check your own data: numbers for different brands, industries, and contexts will vary.

If you were intrigued about a specific insight, you can go in-depth into the various dimensions and how data can be segmented in Confect, here.