TEA 256: 5 Meta Ad Creative Styles Working In 2026

0:00SPEAKER_02Every so often there are meta ad styles that come along and they just do really well. And not just well for like one brand, but we see them do well for a ton of different brands in different niches. And so in this episode, we're gonna show you visually if you're on YouTube, and we're gonna talk through it obviously. If you're listening to podcasts, we love you guys. We're gonna talk through three meta-add styles that are just really crushing it right now. That if you're wondering, hey, what should I test next? We're gonna encourage you to maybe consider one or all of these three styles. And

0:30SPEAKER_02we kind of see these just working again across the board. And if you this is your first time listening, your first time watching, uh, we're the e-commerce alley. I'm Josh Coffey, the founder of the e-commerce alley. Uh, this is Dylan Count. He's actually our marketing director and one of our coaches here. And he's also, along with me, the co-founders of Breezeway. And Breezeway is a meta-ads launcher as well as data-driven manager that shows you what to do inside your meta-ads account, what to kill, what to scale, what to, what to do next. And it's an incredible tool. If you own an e-commerce brand, particularly if you're on

1:01SPEAKER_02Shopify, it helps a lot. Uh, and you want to get better, more data-driven decisions, go check out Breezeway.co. We have links in the description for a free trial of that. All right. Actually, Dylan, this is the first time we've done a podcast, dude, in forever. I think it's been like a couple months.

1:15SPEAKER_01Yeah, we've been well, our building renovation is done, which uh has been quite a long project. And we also had an event just last week. So I've been very busy with those two things. I've missed it. I've missed being on the podcast. I'm back, ready, full with energy. Let's do this.

1:32SPEAKER_02Man, you even wore your lime slash lemon shirt for me. I appreciate that.

1:37SPEAKER_01Lime slash lemon. I don't even know what it is. Still no one knows.

1:40SPEAKER_02No one knows. It's like a green, it looks like a lime on your shirt, but it looks like lemons.

1:44SPEAKER_01The blue, it's probably a lemon, but the blue makes it look like

1:49SPEAKER_01which which, by the way, for those of you on Apple Podcasts, there is video. So if you're watching this, there is video. And then Spotify should have video by the time you're listening to this, hopefully. So Really? Yeah. So I actually need to get you to log in to Spotify for me so I can connect it. But yeah, hopefully by the time you're listening or watching this, there's actually video on Spotify and Apple, YouTube. So you should be able to see everything Josh is screen sharing, hopefully. Amazing. And if not, come back on Spotify

2:19SPEAKER_01and listen to this in like a month, and there will definitely be video by then.

2:22SPEAKER_02Yeah, or just go to YouTube right now because I'm Yeah, yeah. Yeah, last week we had 21 clients, 15 unique businesses, but with all the founders, there were 21 total people there because we had we allowed co-founders to come. And it was an incredible event. We we've renovated, we have a new studio uh that we just built, which by the way, if you're watching or you've seen our, you've heard our story. We have we used to have an entire set that we well, I guess this is technically a set, but it wasn't as intricate as the previous one. And we have moved out of that and into this space.

2:51SPEAKER_01Hey, this is authentic stone.

2:53SPEAKER_02This is authentic stone crazy.

2:54SPEAKER_01That's more intricate than what we had across the street, technically.

2:58SPEAKER_02It's real stone. We had a studio across the street from the we own this building in in Ashland, Ohio. And and so we've been renovating, we we have this on here, this will be future renovation, but we just renovated our upstairs and we have like beautiful private offices. We have a gorgeous conference room table conference room with a table that's like this sit-stand table for like two it seats 12 people, but it's like Olympic size ping pong table. It has like lines drawn on it, and then you just like lift it up and has this connector to play ping pong. It's amazing.

3:28SPEAKER_02And so we have a studio that I'm so excited for when we actually go design that out and we start building a new podcast studio, but we built a studio big enough to have like three different sets on it. Podcasts will get a big upgrade. We we get to mount lights instead of having lights like hanging, well, hanging, this one's hanging right here. Well, we started stands everywhere.

3:47SPEAKER_01Yeah, we started the light mounting here because the ceiling is so low. We were able to start mounting them just as like a proof of concept as how great it could be if we didn't actually have to have a bunch of stands all over the place.

3:59SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it's it's so it'll be so special. And last week we had all these these clients come in. To be in the room, you had to be doing over a million dollars a year. And actually, while we were there, on the closing night, one of our clients, Chris, who owns an an apparel brand, is he was like, I went up to him because he was close to his first million dollar month. And I walked up to Chris and I'm about to go on stage and give like all these awards to people and and and celebrate a lot of cool things. And I went up to him, I said, Hey dude, how close are you to hitting a million dollar month right now? And he's

4:30SPEAKER_02like $65 away. And he pulls his phone and shows me Shopify, and I'm like, I'm gonna be your million-dollar order. And I go in and I place the million-dollar order so before I walked on stage to deliver to like deliver the awards and this whole speech thing and celebrate, Chris got his million-dollar month five minutes before. And it was just so special. When I was having a conversation with with one or a few of them yesterday, actually, reflecting on the event. And I think that there's something so special about being in person that is so underrated. Like we get so used to being

5:00SPEAKER_02online, we get so used to watching on YouTube, listening to the podcast, doing this stuff. We do a good a gazillion, it feels like coaching set hours of coaching sessions every week with loads of people on Zoom. And it's really cool, but there's something special that happens when you get in person, and it's like all of the cracks. It's like you have sessions, but these conversations that happen in the cracks is where so much of the value lives. And we're, I was talking with two clients about this yesterday. They're like, man, a lot of the value we got was the sessions were amazing,

5:30SPEAKER_02but it was all these sidebar conversations in the traveling and being at the different excursion stuff we do and being at the lunches and the dinners and all of that in the block walks that we do around here to stretch our legs outside when it's nice. All of that is where there's so much value. And so if you've never been to an event, if you are like listening to this, you're like, man, that sounds so cool. I've never done it. It's kind of scary to me. Most people actually there, I said, who here is attending an event for the first time? And there was a like probably half the room raised their hand. I was like, whoa, how many of you are attending one of our events for the first time? And then like more people raise their hands. And so it

6:02SPEAKER_02was really cool. And I was so proud of them for stepping out in that because it's really uncomfortable to come in person, leave your home territory, go to somewhere they don't know, especially if you're by yourself. But then there's this magical thing that happens when everybody gets together. And it's that when you put a lot of smart minds together, you can solve more problems faster and you can identify problems they didn't realize you actually had. And then on top of that, you get the answers to the problems you didn't realize you had. And that is like this unlock that happens. And I encourage everybody, if you have been listening to this for a while, you've been watching for a while, you

6:32SPEAKER_02are a client of ours, and you've just you've been attending coaching, doing all that stuff. I highly recommend you get uncomfortable and you put yourself in a room with other people that are just well beyond where you you are, that have no egos and they're just there to serve and support each other and get in a room with people that care more about giving than getting. And we have an upcoming event, and this is I'm just flowing into this. This is this is not a planned promo, but like if you want to get in the room, I'm telling you, go to attendacquire.com. Attendacquire.com.

7:03SPEAKER_02This is our our third time hosting this event, and this is in Orlando, Florida. And it's it's where we have sessions, we have an open dinner sessions, basically what we just did this last week, a little bit larger scale. There's gonna be like 80 to 100 people there. That's how many tickets we we max out, and we only have like 20 something left, I believe. So if you want to really get in the room with serious entrepreneurs that care more about giving than getting and that are there to support each other and grow together, then I encourage you to step out of your comfort zone and do something like it. There's something

7:33SPEAKER_02life-changing that happens because of that. All right, cool. Now, for all of you that are like, well, that's not for me. I just want to get to the good stuff. Let's get to the good stuff now. All right, three meta-add styles that are absolutely crushing right now. Uh, one thing I just want to note is some styles they only last for a little while and then everybody catches on and then they don't really work anymore. So I would try these sooner than later. Second observation I just want to share. I don't know if you see this, Dylan. Statics are crushing in, they're actually outperforming most videos for a lot of clients. Yeah, do you see the same thing?

8:04SPEAKER_01Yeah, I actually just had a conversation with a client yesterday that like believed video was the thing. Like they had to do video. If they didn't do video, no one would buy their product. And they just launched their first static ad set that they've launched in a long time, and it is crushing it for them. And I think it it probably for two reasons. One is everyone got on the video train beginning of the year, and the platform just got oversaturated with video, and then you were also competing with

8:34SPEAKER_01everyone oversaturating the platform with video, so it it kind of just became like a muddied mess. And because everyone moved to video, statics became kind of hard to come by for a lot of brands. So then when we get back into statics, it I think it kind of changes your mindset a little bit when you come back to statics from video, at least that's how it kind of was for me. Because video kind of changes the way that you have to think about your ads, and then when you go back to statics from video, I think it actually just makes your statics better because you have to think about

9:05SPEAKER_01it now from a video perspective, your hook, your hold, like all of that kind of stuff, you kind of put into the statics. I think it does better because of that. And then also no one was doing statics, so there's a lot of inventory, or there's no inventory, so meta will help you out.

9:20SPEAKER_02And yeah, I mean, like, and just right now, third observation. I mean, with AI, like guys, like you could pump out 10 or 20 to 1 ratio of statics that are beautiful and diverse to videos. And so coming from the a video world, and many of our our clients that spend a lot of money on meta are so used to they're so used to launching video and writing scripts and recording that and sending it to editors and or editing it themselves, which takes even more time. And and then they get to statics and they start following some of our process. We have a

9:51SPEAKER_02creative production engine that we teach inside of our inside of our coaching communities. And I'm telling, like, we have clients coming in, and I'll show some examples here in a little bit of one of the clients who just posted something that they did a great job of this. I'm so proud of them, and I hope they watch this. I'll tell them to watch this because they're newer. And and so, like they did a great job and they used AI, and I love it. Here's what I love when I have tons of different people going through like training on on using AI for statics and creative and how we do that, coming to me and saying, like, holy cow, I was able

10:21SPEAKER_02to create 10 statics before I was using Canva and I was stuck or trying to get some kind of a graphic designer, and it was taking me weeks to get some stuff just to get five out, and I put 10 out in like less than 60 minutes using this framework, and the and they're getting crazy results. So, all that is to be said, I just want to say if you're doing a lot of video right now, many of our clients are and were, and now many are moving to statics. So, two big things there are styles that last for a little while, and there are also formats that last for a little while. We're gonna show you some statics, or statics are crushing versus video now. So that is something that's lasting. Jump

10:52SPEAKER_02on that. Number two, there's some styles that last, and I want to show you those, especially because if statics are working, oh, that makes everyone's life easier. The volume just increases tremendously. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna showcase some of these that are doing really well, and I'm gonna show you some of the math and talk through each of these and what I really love about them. And the first style that we just see really crushing is what I would call a context call-out. Now, what this means is you're getting really, really specific

11:22SPEAKER_02and you're calling out one of two things, like an ICP or a message. So I like to think of like an ideal customer profile that you're calling out, and I'm gonna give an example. Here's one of ours right here. So this this ad right here, I'm using a tool called Atria, which is uh which is uh an inspiration, ad inspiration tool. And I'm gonna zoom in just a little bit. So if I go in here, where I'm gonna show you the e-commerce alley. And Dylan, you made these ads. These look pretty great. I love these. So it literally says for Shopify stores stuck between 20, does that say 20 and 60? Yeah. 20 and 60k a

11:53SPEAKER_02month. Like it's really, really specific. Uh, one of our other clients, that's a subscription box, was calling out for homeschool families. Like when you just call them out, another one, professional cleaners. When you just call them out, that's the first context that you're calling out that works really well. ICP call out. The second context is a message. And when I think of a message, I think of the the acronym FOCUS. Now, I did a a podcast on this way more in depth, I don't know, like a two

12:24SPEAKER_02months ago or a month and a half ago or something, on using focus to find what we call ad angles. So if you like, I don't know how to come with ad angles, go listen to that podcast. But basically, focus stands for a frustration, an outcome, a constraint, an unspoken cost, or a skepticism. If you craft messaging around those things, you will call it out in a hyper tangible way. Don't be generic and talk about the features and be really specific. Let me show you some examples.

12:52SPEAKER_01By the way, if you want to listen to that episode, it's episode 252, the four-level meta-add testing ladder. Know what to build next.

13:00SPEAKER_02Awesome. Thank you very much. Everybody go listen to that. All right, let me show you an example here. So I have I have Huel, and by the way, with HUL, it's like this, it's like protein shakes, and they they have tons of different stuff that you can you can get. But I want to talk about like in here, if you're if you're looking at HRA right now, you can see this ad has been running 107 days, and this has been running 180 days. And if you look at this, this had this is in the top 1% of impressions that it's getting. And this is actually the seventh most impress ad with a seventh number of impressions out of 520

13:31SPEAKER_02running ads. And this other one here is number five. Now, both of these are the same ultimate angle, but they're calling at a very specific context. And I would say this is more outcome-driven context. And if I look at this, the context call out here is 40 grams of protein before 9 a.m. That's like the overarching thing. But if you look at this, let me kind of click in here. This one right here says it's a lifestyle photo and it has like a box of fuel. It's opened up on a turf area, and it just has like a text overlay on it that

14:02SPEAKER_02kind of looks like an Instagram text you could put on there, and it has some uh has some sticky notes, which are obviously this is this is actual, I would venture to say this is probably AI. I would say this is AI personally, or at least the sticky notes are. But if I'm looking at it, it says, want 40 grams of protein before 9 a.m. This is for you. Now that's calling it a very specific context. Like, how did they get 40? Why protein and why before 9 a.m.? Well, their ideal customer, that's important to them, which is funny. I'm actually their ICP because I'm the same way. I try to get in 30

14:32SPEAKER_02to 40 grams of protein before I even start my day. I usually work out and then I'm trying to get 30 to 40 grams of protein in that window of time. So this is calling it a very specific thing. The next ad here is very similar.

14:43SPEAKER_01It says the easiest real quick, I want to call out on that. Just if you look at those two Huel ads together, I think it's really interesting how it, like you said, it's the same angle. It's the same 40 grams of protein before 9 a.m. That must have been something that they found works really well for them. But the creative diversity between those two, which is kind of what this episode is a little bit about, is like, how do you how do you what angle, what visuals are actually working? That's a great example of one is pulling the package out of a trial

15:13SPEAKER_01box. So you see the trial box and it feels like an Instagram story, Instagram post. But then the one that you're about to talk about looks like an ad. It's got the three different flavors it looks like. It's got 40 grams of protein, is a little bit bigger, calls that out. But I just love how diverse those two ads are, even though they're talking about the same thing, the same angle.

15:35SPEAKER_02Yeah, and maybe this is maybe this is a little bit of yeah. Thanks for thanks for bringing that to attention. Technically, these are two different styles, but the point I'm trying to make here is just like calling out context in the style is the piece of this. So, like, so this first example is a little it will look different because technically these are all different styles of ads, but the concept of being very visual, like visually with text, calling out a context of a message or an ICP is working like crazy.

16:05SPEAKER_02So technically, you could overlay that on different styles of statics. So technically, this first one is more the concept of calling out context within the creative. It works so, so well in Andromeda is just so good at finding, pulling, and retrieving your ad for the right person. It's just insane how well it works calling people out. I'll give you another example here, and I just the client just posted these. Let me zoom in, see. Oh, I it won't let me zoom in here. Can you see this okay, Dylan? Kind of? Yeah, it's all right.

16:36SPEAKER_02Okay. I'll I'll talk about it just really briefly here. So this is another one of our clients, and they they posted some image, some ads they use using the creative process uh in our community, and they wanted some feedback on it. I want to just the ones key out I really love.

16:49SPEAKER_01Like one of them is By the way, these are fantastic ads.

16:52SPEAKER_02These are great ads.

16:53SPEAKER_01I'm just looking at like they look so good. I also love like the top, the top like six are kind of similar, but then I like the eczema friendly one and the baby pajama subscription. Those are kind of visually different, which I think is kind of cool. But the number of angles that they touch on in these nine ads is really great.

17:13SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so, like, if you look at this, I'm just I'm just gonna read through this for those listening, but if you're watching, you'll be able to see this. So, all of these different creatives have a baby integrated with uh so it's like they're selling bamboo pajamas, and you see a little lifestyle, so you see like an actual baby in here. It shows the product, make sure you're showing product, make sure there's intent. Uh, it has like a colored, just a flat colored background generally, and then it has like text on it. Now, the this is interesting because Meta used to hate

17:44SPEAKER_02text. It used to, when you threw a bunch of text, it just didn't like it. But now it's like that text is now better context than Meta take and go find the right people. So text is actually really valuable now. And that one day in the past, you remember they used to not want you to let you have over 20% text on your ads. That was a long time. That was a long time. Yeah, I used to not let you. I barely remember that. I was only a baby when that was a when that was the case. What the third style I'm gonna show today is like alt text, and it's like completely counter to what it used to be. But what I love about this is it's very specific to a context. Now that they're

18:15SPEAKER_02clearly in a they're cleary, clearly in angle testing right now. But if you look at it, it says the 2 a.m. diaper change just got a whole lot easier. Boom. That's so specific. Hey, anybody who's had a baby knows what a 2 a.m. diaper change looks like. This other one says eczema friendly bamboo pajamas. So it's calling out these really specific contexts. Eczema, 2 a.m. diaper change got a whole lot. So it's so, it's like it's so relatable. In this other one here, it says, what if bedtime isn't the problem, but their pajamas are? Another one says, if your baby outgrows pajamas faster than you can

18:46SPEAKER_02wash them, this is for you. So it's like it's focusing on these different angles within it, but it's really calling out specific context. And so in your styles that you're building, this first, this first overarching theme here is call out context very specifically. It's like meta