The Formula for Proven Winning Video Ads

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

I’ve analyzed 550+ proven winning ads in the past 14 months. 

These were not just any ads. These were the ads that stayed longer than 30 days in the ad library for these accounts.

Most of these brands are spending 7 figures or more in ad spend and making 9 figures in revenue.

I finally figured out what works for these brands so you can also steal them.

Why did I do it? I wanted to increase the chance of my ads winning. And, so I can give these tips to my video editor and creators to improve their performance as well. 

You can find all the ads here if you want to analyze them yourself too. 

These are basically questions I always had about winning video ads formula.

Note: I’d recommend watching the videos first.

Also, you’ll see Atria’s links with the ads. Here’s why I switched to Atria from Foreplay and Magicbrief:

• Amazing search UI. It was hard to find ads in other tools.

• All-in-one creative strategist tool with script, concept, and brief ideas.

• AI review mining and voice-over that enables me to make more winning ads.

• Not 500K, but 5 million examples of ads. (And it’s not just other marketers who saved ads.)

You can give it a try here.

1. Positive vs Negative Hooks

91% of these videos have something negative in the hook. It could be: warning, don’t, stop, suck, sick, wrong, or something similar, etc.

Only 9% of these videos started with something positive.

Key learning: Use negative hooks to grab attention. It’s unfortunate, but it is true. The human mind pays attention to negative things first. (We have a built-in negativity bias.)

2. Hook: Starting with a Question vs Statement

Only 18% of the hooks started with a question. The overwhelming majority (82%) started with a statement. This is also interesting. I would have thought most advertisers would start with “Do you…?” or “Are you…?” or “Looking for…?”

It turns out that a strong statement has a higher chance of winning the ad.

Key learning: Start with a strong statement. 

3. What are some impactful words I can use in the hooks?

Here are these words that made the most impact:

• If you

• As an X person

• Hack

• Secret

• Stop

• Don't

• Hate

• Suck

• Sick

• Bored

• Warning

• I used to..

• Changed

• Love

• Did you know…

• Want to…

• Looking for…

• Wrong

• Suffering…

• Quit

• No

• Get rid of…

• Disgusting

• Wish

• Ignore

4. Visual Hook vs Talking Head

A visual hook is something that tells the story about what’s coming.

Here’s a good example:

A talking head is simply a creator speaking to the camera.

Here’s a good example:

86% of winning ads had visual hooks vs 14% that only used talking heads.

Key learning: Add a visual hook to your ads.

5. What kind of hooks are winning the most?

Funny, desire-based, curiosity, or problem/solution hooks are winning the most.

Here’s the breakdown.

47% of the videos that stated a problem in the hook were winning.

33% of the winning videos were funny.

While ads with desire and curiosity-based hooks had 10% of the share each.

Key learning: Problem/solution videos are winning.

Now I understand why this hot take didn’t get enough traction (follow for my bite-sized insights. I am about to share some client success teardown on TikTok).

@aazaralishad

The # 1 lesson I learned running ads.

6. Are ad hooks universally understood?

A universally understood hook is one that it tells the story without you wondering what is in it. You don’t even need to speak English (or whatever language) to understand what’s going on in the video.

It helps you create a mass appeal. It creates curiosity without spoken words.

67% of the ad hooks had a universally understandable visual. 

While 33% of them didn’t.

A universally understood hook ad:

A non-universally understood ad hook:

Key learning: Try creating a story without any words. You’ll likely improve your chance of winning.

7. Verbal vs Visual

This one is similar to talking heads vs universally understood hooks. However, I wanted to know if there was a difference when the hook’s emphasis was more verbal or visual.

77% of the hooks used a visual medium, while 23% used just a simple verbal medium. Verbal worked well with influencers, not creators.

Key learning: Don’t rely on verbal hook only. Instead, make it visually appealing to support the verbal hook.

A visual ad:

A verbal ad:

8. Call Outs vs No Call Outs

In ads, you need to call out your audience and get the right audience’s attention. I learned this from Alex Hormonzi.

He’s partially right. You don’t always need to call out “attention X…” 

There are hundreds of ways to call out your audience without mentioning the persona.

87% had no callouts, and 13% had a specific call out.

13% of those who had a call out were targeting a specific audience i.e. parents, business owners, etc.

A call-out ad:

A non-call-out ad:

Key learning: Call out your audience smartly–not just with their personality. Instead, call them out with their behavior. 

I have limited capacity to become a creative & performance strategy consultant. However, I could offer a live-cohort coaching-based workshop for you to launch your ads and find winners consistently.

9. UGC vs No UGC

Is UGC dead? Well, it’s far from it, 95% of the videos had UGC (either a customer or creator); Only 5% UGC had an actor or in-house creator.

10. Which works better? Hard CTAs or Soft ones?

Hard CTAs are ads that ask the viewer to click the link below, create FOMO, or ads that push people to buy immediately.

Soft CTAs invite users to try, give a guarantee, say check out, or say nothing.

64% of the hooks had soft CTA, while 36% of the ads had hard CTAs.

Short answer: Invite the user to check out, but don’t push unless it makes sense as a brand,  persona or script.

11. CTA with ending screen or without?

CTAs sometimes have an ending screen or end with a proper invite to check out the product.

I wanted to see if I should use an ending CTA screen or not.

Here, you can’t get wrong: 55% of the winning ads had an ending screen (either naturally or as an image); 45% of the ads didn’t have an ending screen.

Personally, I would rather add than remove.

12. Should hooks have some personalization?

I wanted to know if the hooks of winning ads have the word like “I” or “we” to see if the ad gives personalization as an advantage.

88% of the ads had “I” or “we” in the first 3 seconds, while 12% didn’t. But the ones that didn’t started with “you,” which is also good.

Key learning: Start with “I” – it’s better because people are interested in personalized stories.

An ad without personalization:

An ad with personalization:

TL;DR:

• Use negation or negative hooks in your ads

• Start with a statement

• Use impactful words 

• Have a visual hook, not just a talking head

• Double down on problems or funny ads

• Always add visual aid, not just verbal hook (most UGC creators get this wrong)

• UGC is still winning

• Invite the users with soft CTA and add ending screen

• Start with “I” – people like personal stories 

And that’s all from this week.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

Since this newsletter is free, I do it to follow my curiosity. But I’d love it if you could leave some feedback so I know whether I am helping you.

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