September 2, 2021

Facebook Webinar Wrap-Up: How yellowHEAD Optimizes Ad Creative

During a recent Facebook webinar, we shared yellowHEAD’s creative methodology and revealed how to combat creative fatigue.

Screenshot of a webinar with Facebook and yellowHEAD

Last month, yellowHEAD was pleased to take part in Facebook’s webinar series, Creative for Performance: The Agency Take. In this series, Daniel Portnoy (Client Partner, Facebook) meets with advertising agencies to discuss the unique ways they approach creative design. Naturally, we couldn’t pass up on that conversation, so Gal Bar (Co-founder/CEO, yellowHEAD) and Adi Susman (UA Team Leader, yellowHEAD) joined Daniel for an in-depth look at our process.

You can watch the entire webinar right now, but here’s a summary of the main discussion points for your convenience:

Every New Client is a Clean Slate

When we take on a new client at yellowHEAD, our methodology is to approach them as a clean slate. You should never make assumptions about a brand that might influence campaign performance. Instead, our team meets with clients to discuss their needs and goals. From there, we begin to research target audiences and motivations, brand opportunities, competitor campaigns — anything that clarifies their position in the market and informs our strategy.

Once we’ve established this clear overview, the team starts work on creative concepts in the form of storyboards. At this stage, we want to highlight core messaging and imagery that will have the biggest impact on users. Most of these insights will come from Alison, our creative analysis and ideation platform, which analyzes similar products within the vertical to understand current trends.

Finally, we work with the client to develop a media strategy. We will estimate conversion and CPA benchmarks that reflect the client goals. For a new campaign, also establish an initial budget for testing creative performance.

a purple banner promoting episode 4 of Facebook's series Creative for Performance: The Agency Take

 

Analyze Creative Performance in Detail

When the yellowHEAD team puts new creative into the world, our general rule is to give it seven days to prove its worth. During that time, Alison is analyzing performance behind the scenes so we can decide whether to keep, delete, or optimize the content.

At a minimum, we need to know whether the content delivers enough impressions within benchmark ad spend to justify its use. Going deeper, Alison weighs metrics like CTR and CVR to measure performance precisely. Finally, we consider how users react to the creative, such as a particular moment that commenters love or hate.

These metrics help us rank each creative into the following categories:

  • Above-Average Performance: Conversions, CTR, and CVR are at least 20% higher than existing benchmarks. Our team will recommend increasing ad spend and finding other high-value placements.
  • Average Performance: After seven days, the creative sees expected conversions based on our media plan. Our team will optimize creative to increase performance.
  • Below-Average Performance: The creative sees low conversions, CTR, and CVR well before the seven days are complete. Our team will either optimize creative or rethink the original concept.

It’s also important to note that Alison isn’t just considering performance in relation to our media strategy. We analyze all creative on three levels:

  • Ad: How creative performs against other creative in the same vertical.
  • Audience: How creative performs across target audiences.
  • Campaign: How creative elements impact the overall campaign result.

These details provide a deeper understanding of why creative overperforms or underperforms, and how yellowSTUDIO, our in-house creative team, can optimize further.

Don’t Wait for Creative Fatigue

Creative fatigue — the phenomenon where users stop engaging with ads after seeing the creative too often — is one of the biggest obstacles to performance marketing. Left unchecked, it causes performance to deteriorate across ad, audience, and campaign layers. As a result, we’re vigilant about preventing creative fatigue and make every possible step to diagnose and address it.

Alison typically detects creative fatigue as increasing CPA or a decreasing ROI. Deterioration doesn’t necessarily signify fatigue, however — it’s part of a broader trend of diminishing returns throughout a layer. However, Alison’s machine learning algorithms can tell the difference between a performance drop and full-fledged fatigue.

The best way to address fatigue is to be one step ahead of it. Waiting for fatigue to occur before developing or optimizing creative means you’re constantly fighting to bring your numbers up. Our approach at yellowHEAD is to produce one or two new creatives every week and mix up campaigns. Even if a particular creative excels, we keep uploading new content to sustain performance.

If creative fatigue does occur, the good news is yellowSTUDIO isn’t building creative from scratch. Alison is unique because it highlights the highest performing elements within available data. This differentiation lets us know what resonates with customers — be it specific characters, colors, songs, emotions, or call to actions — and produce smarter creative for clients.

Performance Marketing Requires Data Analysis and Human Expertise

For many marketers, the ideal strategy is to fully embrace data-driven insights or human expertise. At yellowHEAD, we believe you need both. Alison is always making creative recommendations, but understanding context and client needs let us fill any gaps. Human ingenuity is also essential for identifying new opportunities and creating innovative concepts: Data and human creativity work best hand-in-hand.

The best way to facilitate these questions is to identify high-performing creative, test new optimizations, and — most importantly — ask questions about the results. The more you follow these steps, the more creative your creative will ultimately become.

We’d like to thank Daniel for hosting Facebook’s webinar, and Gal and Adi for providing their insights. If you’d like to find out more about how yellowHEAD can help you connect with audiences in our new marketing ecosystem, contact our team today.

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