OddBalls

The ad: The proof is as important as the product

Founded in 2014, OddBalls was created to shake up the boring underwear market with bold, vibrant designs. Since day one, our mission has been to bring comfort through colourful prints and top-quality products. OddBalls isn’t just about fun underwear – it’s about championing diversity and inclusion with something for everyone.

The Trustpilot label and the “50,000+ five-star reviews” claim are a very strong flex. Very few brands have this, and even fewer of them sell underwear. It is a unique competitive advantage and certainly deserves its space in the Catalog Ad.

Why it won Catalog Ad of the Week

OddBalls achieved nearly twice the ROAS of the other Catalog Ads they ran. Results like that come when an ad answers the shopper’s biggest hesitation before it even arises. So, what did OddBalls actually do to earn that result? Let’s look at the three decisions that stood out.

What makes this Catalog Ad great

Show the reviews and ratings

Trustpilot shows '50,000+ five-star reviews.' Let that sit for a minute. When a shopper sees a number like that, the doubt is already gone: this is clearly a good product. 50,000 people did not just leave a review, they left a five-star one, and a number that size is not something a brand can fake.

It tells the shopper this is a brand a lot of other people already trust, before they have even looked at what is for sale.

There is a second, quieter effect at work too. For a new shopper, the number does not just reassure, it creates curiosity. Underwear priced at 12 to 15 pounds getting tens of thousands of five-star reviews raises a question on its own: what is it about a product this affordable that gets people to rate it that highly? The instinct that follows is to find out for themselves.

Use winning Catalog Ads design on Reddit too

The same creative runs natively on both Meta and Reddit. Reddit is famously unforgiving of anything that reads as a traditional ad, its audience is quick to tune out or call out polished sales pitches.

A cheeky product paired with a design built around genuine trust signals, rather than a hard sell, is exactly the kind of creative that can survive there.

It is also smart to run Reddit Catalog Ads, a format Reddit only recently opened to advertisers. There is less competition and potentially some algorithmic favorability for early adopters.

Enable Story, reels and feed optimized Catalog Ads designs

The BAU Premium design is built across 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16, so it holds up in the feed, in the taller portrait placements, and full-screen in Stories, without ever looking like a square that got stretched to fit.

Designing for every placement the ad will actually appear in is what makes an always-on ad feel intentional everywhere a shopper meets it, rather than native in one slot and an afterthought in the rest.

When your Catalog Ads have a dedicated 9:16 design, you are also telling Meta to get rid of the grid, the format where six or eight products are stacked together on one screen.

With the grid, buyers are hit with instant design fatigue. Here, they see one product clearly and can easily read its name and price. No detail gets blurred.

Key takeaways

When your product has a distinct advantage and a visual look proven to sell, the next step is to get it in front of more buyers by maximizing opportunities across all Meta platforms and placements, and even going beyond Meta to test new channels like Reddit.

👉 Let the proof do the persuading

A rating built from tens of thousands of five-star reviews is proof no brand can manufacture. Put a number that size ahead of the product, and it does not just reassure, it makes people curious enough to check for themselves.

👉 Run Catalog Ads beyond Meta

A design built on genuine proof rather than a hard pitch can survive on platforms built to reject ads, like Reddit. Being early to a new ad format is also its own advantage, less competition, more room to get noticed.

👉 Design Catalog Ads with placement in mind

Making sure your Catalog Ads look great in every placement gives you full control over how your brand is seen and what information is displayed. Everything appears exactly as you intended, and the platform rewards you for it.

OddBalls got all three of these right in one creative, which is exactly why it is this week's Catalog Ad of the Week.