23 Meta Ad Ideas You Can Start Testing NOW (Ft. Mirella Crespi)

Mirella Crespi: Hello everyone. I am Mirella, founder and CEO of Creative Milkshake.

Mirella Crespi: We are focusing on creative strategy, optimization, and analysis for some of the world's best brands.

Mirella Crespi: And we developed an industry leading best practices to ensure creativity and paid social optimization work in synergy to scale ad spend profitably.

Mirella Crespi: Um, developing creative strategy, producing the creatives and their ad variations, running the tests, performing the analysis, and then diving into optimizations and iterations. And that's how we continuously improve performance.

Mirella Crespi: Um, some of the brands we've worked with, um, the past year alone.

Mirella Crespi: So, let's talk about today, um, why diversity and volume matter. Um, this was a big topic in Motion's 2025 trends report. If you had a chance to read it, if you haven't, definitely do. Um, I think it's very important for advertisers to understand that whether you're spending money on Meta or TikTok, these are content eating beasts. The more creative concepts and variations you test, the more you can unlock different audience segments and the algorithm will reward you because it will be able to optimize delivery for your ideal customers.

But like, what does that mean? Like, how do we achieve that? Um, and I want to take a second to talk about AI because I was really fascinated by the conversation in the chat that was happening during like the topic when AI was coming up and the different points of view. And I think that I want to share my take as well that I believe that AI is here to augment the creative strategist, the creators, and the actors, um, to improve our efficiency, to improve our speed, um, to allow us to create more ads faster because we have amazing tools coming out for every stage of the process.

But I do believe that the more prevalent that AI content becomes, the more we are going to crave the real, the human, the authentic. So, um, my advice to you would be to look ahead to 2025 and think about how you can plug in as many AI tools as possible to build your automated workflows, but continue to try to really understand consumer psychology and try to create ads that are, um, more human because at the end of the day, that's what is really going to make people convert because we're going to get more and more numb to a lot of AI content.

So, let's talk about creative diversity. There's so many ways to think about creative diversity. Um, and this is how you should think about volume. There is no point in just increasing the quantity of ads and you're just producing, just dumping into your ad account the same types of ads. That's not really going to help you. Um, the best way to think about it is to diversify and then scale.

Mirella Crespi: So, um, this is a creative diversification guide that we always refer to. Take a screenshot, use it as a checklist, but there's so many ways to diversify your creative through your messaging. So using different emotional motivators and barriers to reach new audiences, um, different formats so you can make the most out of the auction and the different placements, different styles of execution, whether it's beautiful branded, high production or it's UGC Lo-Fi. Um, there's so many ways to to tackle execution.

And checking off all the different placements that your creatives are optimized for that. Um, so I will share some of the, um, best ad types that we worked on, um, for last year, but also looking ahead and a different way to think about creative optimization.

Mirella Crespi: Um, so creative, when you're thinking about your creatives and making sure that you are, um, diversifying your strategy, try thinking of it from different, the three different points of view. Ads that reach your user from the brand's voice and the brand's perspective, ads that reach your user from the customer perspective and share the customer, um, voice, and then the third perspective, which is the expert's POV.

Mirella Crespi: So what do I mean by that?

Mirella Crespi: When it translates to static ads, um, you have your brand branded static ads that are coming to your consumer from the brand's voice. They have usually a more polished look, they follow the brand guidelines, and they're talking about, you know, here's our three key, um, USPs and and here's the results you can expect to get, um, your classic comparison ads and so on. Um, and then you have the native or user point of view for your static ads. And these look native, they blend better into the feeds. They can be memes, they can be what looks like screenshots or your written messages and your posted ads, but these look more native and ugly.

Um, and then you have the third voice, which is the expert point of view. These are ads that are meant to look like an excerpt of a publication. Um, and they bring on to this like conversation about your brand, this third voice, which is more objective and professional. Um, so make sure when you are crafting your strategy that you are addressing all these different points of view.

Mirella Crespi: And let's look at some examples of what it looks like when we apply that to video ads. So for the brand's point of view, behind the scenes founder and employee generated content, you're going to see a lot more of that. This is when brands really take you behind the scenes and it's either the founder telling you their story or it's employees in the factory making content. A lot of the brands that are blowing up on TikTok, if you look at their feeds, they don't even show you or talk much about their product. It's just like the content and the team, um, making ads. And it's basically what Barry talked about, right? Like, go make ads. Um, whether you are a brand yourself or you are an agency or a consultant working with a brand, um, brainstorm on how you can bring them on to create ads for the brand as well.

Um, the brand can create tutorials of how to buy the product, how to how to best use it. Um, any celebrity endorsements or influencer endorsements that's still coming from the brand's perspective. Um, and your classic product explainers that still feel polished and looks like it's coming from the brand.

Mirella Crespi: Um, then the customer point of view. Um, a lot of what we talked about in the trends report is the importance of understanding how to create ads that are funny. Um, and some formats that work well are these comedy skits that feel very native to the platform. And I think this is something, um, that I really understood with my team last year is that traditional UGC in the sense of like content that, um, mimicked influencer content from the past, whether it's people just holding a product and unboxing it or whatever, um, those ads are slowly dying. And what is working now is content that blends into the discovery feeds. So this is content that, um, is funny, it's entertaining or it's educational. So, um, explore different ways of creating comedy skits where the same person can play different personas, um, to create that dialogue or, um, the talking product is a format that we see working really well. And the eye and mouth filter can be applied to the product or to the fridge that's telling you not to go steal another snack or, um, to anything.

Mirella Crespi: More examples of the customer point of view. These are also formats that again, blend into the discovery feed because they feel very native. So whether it is a styling reel that uses these effects that resemble what real fashion creators are posting online, um, or the whiteboard explainer, which is a funny way to explain, um, your product's like key unique benefits and features. The street interview, um, that usually has a very high hook and hold rate because they just blend in and if the script is strong and the questions are good, it's a high average watch time. Um, and then a candid POV. So these can be like spying your coworker in the office space or sometimes it's like couples comedy, just having that candid, um, look into people's lives tend to convert really well because again, it blends in but it stands out.

Mirella Crespi: Then the expert point of view. Podcast ads absolutely crushed it last year, and I believe they will continue to. These are quite hard to execute. I can spot and I'm sure most people can spot a fake podcast right away. Um, these are not necessarily easy to produce. Um, in our studio, we build custom podcast sets for different brands. Um, we augment it with AI and, um, the editing also matters in terms of making sure that they feel punchy and still native. Um, but these can work really well because again, they add that other perspective and voice to your strategy. Um, it works well to fight common objections, um, and to bring in that expert. And the experts can be an expert because of their qualifications. Let's say, for example, you're interviewing a nutritionist or a skincare expert, or someone can be an expert just because they've lived and they're sharing their story. Um, for example, the video on the right, she's talking about going through menopause and the issues that she faced and and how she dealt with it. So she becomes an expert just because she's she's lived through it.

Mirella Crespi: Um, and then another format that is absolutely crushing it that you should definitely invest is VSLs. Now, VSLs can be a little bit longer than your average ad, anywhere from like five to seven minutes, but some VSLs can go as long as like 45 minutes. And you're like, what? Can 45 minute long ads work on Facebook? Absolutely they can, and they actually crush it. But the key about these ads is looking at it from the perspective that the goal is not necessarily to, um, sell the product right away. So these ads don't necessarily follow your typical direct response format of like hook, body, introduce the product, social proof, etcetera, call to action. Um, these ads are really meant to educate, to address the skepticism, to go deep into a specific topic, to share the science. Um, and some most of the times they don't even take you to the product page. They'll take you to a quiz or to another even longer video. So it's quite a long funnel. Um, but depending on the type of product you're working with, um, this can work really, really well.

Mirella Crespi: And that's it. I hope these tips and examples were helpful. Um, happy to answer any questions.

Mirella Crespi: Thank you so much.