The Best Ad Creatives to Run Over BFCM

Hey there,

Today I’m sharing our entire strategy for ad creative over the holiday season.

Here’s what we’ll be unpacking:

• How we set up Motion reports for BFCM

• The exact ads that worked for us last year

• My favorite non offer-based creatives

• Winning offer-based creative inspiration

• BFCM Do's and Don'ts

Rather watch the video version of this post? CLICK HERE

Otherwise, we have a lot to cover. So let’s get into it.

Looking back to look forward

The best place to start when thinking about Q4 performance is to look back at what's worked in previous years. Here are the exact reports we use at Adcrate:

• Q4 Top Ad Types 2023 - used to identify which overall styles of creative worked last year (e.g. High Production, Statics, Offer-Based ads)

• Q4 Top Ad Angles 2023 - used to determine the angles that worked last year (e.g. if selling jeans: Big Guys, Stop Wearing Uncomfortable Jeans, Jeans Stretchiness…)

• Top Q4 Ads 2023 - used to show the top performing ads last year (note: you should literally get your top performers reshot by different creators for BFCM)

• 2024 YTD - used to show the top performers so far this year. Once again, get your top performers reshot and iterate on top performers with BFCM spins (more on this below…)

All of these reports make it very easy to determine where to invest time and resource heading into the holidays.

By the way, all of this is done inside of Motion, which I would highly recommend if you're not already using.

Non Offer-based Creative

Everyone obsesses over offer-based creative at BFCM (and we’ll get to that in a moment) but it’s important to remember that evergreen ads still work at this time of year.

In fact, in many of our accounts last year, BAU evergreen ads were the top performers over all the offer-based stuff.

How you split your ad strategy is up to you but whatever you do, please do not turn off your evergreen ads just to run sale ads. It is hands down the stupidest thing I see advertisers do every single year on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Alongside evergreen ads, you can also create what I call ‘Non Offer-based’ creative.

These are still ads meant for the holidays, but we don’t exclusively call it out in the creative.

Let me show you an example - this gifting angle ad worked really well for one of our clients last year in Q4.

By the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping every single person who is reading this who has some kind of gifting angle, ripping this ad, taking it, and giving it to five different creators/couples to get an authentic unboxing reaction.

Execute them well and you will find winning ads because this is relatable content in November through to Christmas.

Offer-based Creative

When it comes to offer-based ads over Q4, I don't think you need to go and spend $5k-10k on a seasonal shoot.

To be honest, I don't even think you need to go and shoot assets specifically for Black Friday unless you are a massive brand who spends a lot on paid social.

I just want to make ads that are as evergreen as possible. So if they do work over the holidays, we don't have to turn them off.

When I make offer-based creative, I much prefer to look at assets that are already performing and put a holiday spin on them.

That way, I’m not spending a lot of time and effort on ads that may only be usable for a few weeks.

Here are examples of offer-based ads we’ll be running this year:

• Adding BFCM stickers

• Adding BFCM headline bars

• Adding BFCM text

• Adding text overlay with offer

Another one of my favorites is to take a top performer and get someone to commentate over it via a greenscreen, like this Dr Squatch ad from last year:

BFCM Statics

During the holidays, buying intent is at it’s highest.

Customers are in the market looking for deals - and they often don’t need as much convincing as they otherwise would to buy.

That’s why statics can be potent at this time of year.

Here some inspiration for offer-based statics that we’ll be running this year:

Don’t get in the way of your audience. Give them a clear offer in the ad and make sure they’re taken to a landing page with that offer.

Other BFCMs Do’s and Don’ts

✅ DO make sure there are congruency between your creative and your landing pages.

✅ DO go through your funnel (actually put your card in). Figure out what annoys/frustrates you? about the sales process so that you can improve the user experience.

✅ DO use Motion. It makes it so much easier to make data-driven decisions in the ad account.

❌ And finally, DON’T overcomplicate things. Keep it simple stupid - when it comes to your offer, your ads and your user experience.

That's all I've got for you today. Hope you found it valuable and good luck with your holiday creative!

Alex