Creative Quality vs Quantity...which matters more?

Hey guys,

This week I spoke at a conference in Denver.

The biggest question on my roundtable was ‘how can I increase my creative volume?’

But here’s the thing…

The "volume game" everyone's playing is broken. But the "quality over quantity" people are leaving money on the table too.

Let me show you what's actually working right now.

But first, here's what I've found interesting this week:

• Olly Hudson shared insights from a Meta creative workshop about a new Andromeda update. This is a GREAT tweet

• My friend Sarah shared a psychology-based prompt for generating ad concepts

• Rory Flynn used Sora 2's remix feature to create a Mario police chase

Quality vs quantity…which matters more?

Volume gives you data. Data gives you insights. Insights give you winners.

That’s why creative volume is so important. In fact, I’ve literally seen brands 5x purely by the scaling their creative volume on paid social.

For example, one of my friends last year blew his business up from $5m to $30m and when I asked him, he literally said the biggest contributor to that growth was 10x'ing creative volume.

The brands scaling to eight figures are ruthlessly testing. They're launching, learning, and iterating fast.

But sometimes quantity comes at the cost of quality.

In fact, I've been auditing a lot of eight-figure brands lately that are cranking out hundreds of ads a month, but are struggling to hit their CAC goals.

They're hitting volume for the sake of volume without going back to the drawing board on strategy.

Here’s the thing…volume without strategy is just expensive noise.

What often happens is that brands hear they need volume to scale, so they rush to get stuff out the door. The creative is average. Maybe they hit a lucky winner. But they have no idea why it worked, can't repeat it, and wonder why they can't scale.

What Meta actually wants (and why both sides are missing it)

The reality is that you need both. I call this strategic volume.

This means that when you're developing a new concept, you need to understand it. And I mean really understand it.

I love this tweet from Jacob on this.

We actually fill in a Hypothesis Tracking document for every single concept we launch.

Doing this really encourages our team to think about exactly WHO we’re talking to and WHY we think this ad will work.

The third component of the ad account trifecta is diversity.

Interestingly, Meta recently came out and said that it treats two ads as "identical" if they share similar first 3 seconds - even if the copy, message, or CTA is different.

This was confirmed by Olly’s tweet which blew up this week.

What that means practically:

• Same creator + same setting = same ad (in Meta's eyes)

• Slight copy variations don't register as new concepts

• Visual similarity overrides narrative differences

So for all those brands pumping out 50 variations of the same UGC creator doing different hooks, Meta sees them as one ad. You're not getting credit for volume. You're just wasting budget.

The big shift: Meta now rewards creative built around personas, not platforms.

Diversity is everything right now

There's a BIG difference between iteration and variation. Meta has made it clear they want variation.

In fact, go and look at your ad library right now. If all the ads generally look the same, that’s a sign that you don’t have creative diversity, you have creative duplication.

Jason from Meta actually shared that they're rolling out new reporting features to help you understand how similar your creative is in Meta's eyes.

This is Meta literally telling us: Stop launching the same ad 50 times with minor tweaks.

It's better for you to launch 3 concepts that are entirely different from one another than to launch 9 ads of the same creator doing different hooks as separate ads.

So to conclude…stop rushing out mid creative just to hit volume metrics. And stop sitting on concepts for weeks because you're trying to perfect them.

Quality x Quantity x Diversity

Pursue this trifecta relentlessly and your brand will be in a position to win.

Announcements:

We're hiring for a for a few roles at Adcrate! If you want to join one of the fastest-growing creative teams in the space and work with some incredible DTC brands, check out the full listings here :)

• Creative Strategist

• Graphic Designer

• Video Editor

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See you next week,

Alex

P.S. If you're spending $100k+ monthly on paid social and want help implementing strategic creative systems like these, my team at Adcrate is accepting applications to work with us. Check out our case studies at adcrate.com.