How Many Meta Ad Creatives Do You Really Need?

How many Meta ad creatives should you run?

First of all, there is no magic number!

We would love to give you a number that is the ‘sweet spot’ but every account is different. Taking advertising budget, campaign structure, audience sizes and account data all play a role in deciding how many creatives you should be running in your campaign. 

A business spending £500 per month on Meta doesn’t have the same capacity for creative testing as a business spending £10,000 per month!

Running loads of creatives with limited budget can make it difficult to gather meaningful performance data, particularly when Meta prioritises certain ads. You could have 20 creatives running within an ad set, but they won’t all receive budgets so you can’t review their performance effectively.

Despite the introduction of features such as ‘Push Delivery To This Ad’ (a setting that allows you to push delivery towards a specific ad rather than relying only on Meta), Meta will still favour ads that they predict will meet your campaign goal. 

Creative Diversity vs Volume

Creative diversity doesn’t mean producing more ads. Creative diversity is about producing ads that communicate differently with your audience. 

You could have 20 ads in your campaign, but if you’re promoting the same product, using similar imagery and ad styles, do you really understand why ads are, or are not, working? Changing the background colour and making minor text changes aren’t making new creative concepts, they are just further varieties to the same concept. 

Stop thinking about how your ad looks and start thinking about the different motivations for people when they buy from you. Does your product solve a problem? What is your product USP? Are other people raving about your product? What’s stopping someone from buying from you?

Consider these different approaches when it comes to developing creative concepts:

• Product Focus: Show the product itself, zoom in on features, highlight unique functionality. 

• Lifestyle: Show the product being used by real people or in a real life setting.

• UGC: Creator-led content can show real people sharing their experience 

• USP Focus: Communicate a specific benefit that would make people choose you (you could have loads!)

• Reviews/Testimonials: These already exist, so use them in your ads, people buy from brands who other people love

All of these concepts can be about a singular product, but they’re offering so many different reasons to engage with your ads. Someone might not be interested in your product’s feature that will save them time every day, but a genuine customer review highlighting the problem it solved for them could be exactly what convinces them to click.  (think of another example)

Running a video, carousel and a static image isn’t three different concepts if they’re all featuring the same messaging. The goal isn’t to create 20 ads that all look different, it’s to make sure that each ad really is saying something different. 

Five creative concepts that are truly different can offer far more valuable insights than 20 variants of the same concept.

Advantage+ isn’t your solution to creative diversity

Meta ads are introducing more and more features through Advantage+, but this is your reminder that it doesn’t replace the need for a creative strategy.

Advantage+ Creative Enhancements can adjust different elements of your ad creative, which isn’t always a good thing. 

Whilst some people may find these enhancements useful, advertisers don’t have much control over how they look and when they appear. Ever seen an ad with a really questionable, off-brand text overlay and thought ‘WTF?’ - yeah, that’s Meta getting ‘creative’.

For this reason, our recommendation is to disable optional Advantage+ Creative Enhancements wherever possible, rather than relying on them to create variety within your campaigns.

Meta doesn’t know your brand like you do, so don’t give it the reins when creating your assets. Your focus should be on supplying Meta with strong creatives, different messaging angles and clear reasons for customers to choose your business.

You can still use Advantage+ to optimise your campaign delivery without needing its creative enhancements.

Do Meta ads have an expiry date?

Say it with us - NO! Your ads don’t have an expiry date!

When we are talking about how many creatives we should run in a campaign to be effective, we also ask… how long do I run ads for? There is no set number, it really is as simple as that. If you’ve got an ad that is consistently generating conversions and delivering the results you need it to. Why would you turn it off, just because it’s been running for a while?!

Ignore how long it’s been running and take a look at your performance.

• Is your cost-per-purchase gradually increasing over time?

• Is your return on ad spend on a steady downward trend?

• Are conversions starting to slow down?

• Is your frequency just getting higher and higher and higher and higher?

Yes, it could be time to introduce new creatives BUT…

This data could also be trying to tell you something else! If you’ve had an ad consistently performing and you see a drop off, it isn’t unusual but check on other factors first.

• Is the landing page still relevant?

• How is your site loading speed?

• Has your product gone out of stock/only a few sizes left?

Creative fatigue isn’t to blame for everything, sometimes it can be an issue with your site! Once you’ve ruled out other factors and you suspect your ads are becoming exhausted, it’s time to introduce your new ones. Don’t just switch off the others and start your brand new ones, run them alongside each other (where possible) to minimise drops in performance.

When turning a previous winner off, don’t just forget about it. Take all the learnings you can from it and apply it to your next batch of creatives. Understanding whether it was the message, a product benefit or a creative type that resonated well will help you develop a data-led approach to creative testing. 

6 steps to building your Meta ads creative strategy

So now you know you don’t need an endless supply of creatives to be successful on Meta ads, here are some steps to nail creative testing.

1. Find your strongest performing creatives

   Take a look through your existing data and find the creatives generating the best results. What about these ads is resonating with your audience?

2. Identify gaps in your current creatives

   Think about what YOU’RE NOT communicating currently and test it. 

3. Develop new creatives concepts

   Use all your findings to create new ideas and concepts. Focus on testing different messages and approaches rather than variations of what you already have. 

4. Give your creatives time

   Don’t launch new ads and start switching them off after a few days, they need time to gather performance data so you can make informed decisions.

   Don’t be making constant changes either or you’ll make it difficult to understand what is and isn’t working.

5. Make the most of your existing content

   Not everything has to be brand new. Take a look at your existing product photography, b-roll footage, reviews, tagged and organic social content - you’ll no doubt find something amazing and authentic. 

6. Review, learn and repeat

   Don’t get complacent, creative testing never really stops. Regularly review performance and use those insights to inform your creative strategy. 

The more you understand what resonates with your audience, the better your results will be. 

So, what’s the answer?

Sorry but like we said… There's no magic number! If you really need a place start,  start with five creative concepts.

More important than a set number though is…

• Creative variety is far more important than creative volume

• Meta’s automation is excellent for delivery, but not for your creating variety

• Review your results regularly and learn from them

Stop chasing creative quantity and focus on your quality!