Transcription
Meta is one of the most powerful machines for advertising the world has ever seen, and there aren't many platforms that rival it, if any. But this doesn't mean it's easy to advertise here. In fact, some companies struggle a lot. Some companies set the bar incredibly high and lead the way, but most fall in between the two. And in today's video, we'll look at all five levels from beginner to expert when [music] it comes to Meta advertising. Some of them may come as a bit of a surprise. Let's get into it.
So, before we reveal who qualifies as a level one Meta advertiser, let's be clear about what level one means. We can expect to see some obvious repurposing ads that have perhaps been created for other platforms that have then been moved on to Meta. Meta clearly isn't a priority for these advertisers. They aren't updated very often despite the results that are there to be learned from and improve on. And to be honest, we're expecting to see some ads that are just quite boring.
For level one, we've got Renault. So firstly, we've got a bunch of static images that are just super boring, like super corporate. A really good example of when I say businesses do Meta ads in a boring way is this. It's just the sort of thing that could have been an ad anywhere. It could be on a billboard. It could be on a bus stop. It could be on a banner ad on a website and they've just chucked it in as a Meta ad. Then their video ads are also very obviously repurposed from stuff they've made for TV like high production value. The absolute typical sort of car ad that we've all been seeing for decades. Nothing that interesting, nothing that stands out, just the sort of ad that's very easy to ignore. And they might have been reluctant to create specific assets for Meta ads, thinking, "Well, every time we make a video, it costs us half a million dollars or something ludicrous like that." They're probably paying even more than that. But actually, there are many ways that you can produce high-quality Meta ad creative that costs significantly less than that. You can look to work with influencers. You could do UGC. Lots of different options. We'll see some good examples later on. So, I think a total mindset shift, someone that actually understands creating video assets specifically for Meta ads needs to be involved in the mix and they do a lot better because as we'll see later, you can make very effective Meta ads for not a lot of money. And then the last mistake they've made is quite literally laughable. They've got hashtags in a Meta ad in 2026. You know, "Build your Renault Clio E-Tech full hybrid." I mean, I don't even know where to start on that one. Please do not put hashtags in your ads. So sorry Renault, but you're currently sitting at a level one. You've got a lot of work to do with your Meta advertising. Maybe think about actually incorporating CTAs across your ads, not just leaving it super vague so that people can take a direct action. Spend some time actually learning the platform. Technically, they are running Meta ads right now. They might as well not be as there's nothing very effective about any of these ads.
Moving on to level two. So we can expect to see some ads that will be generating some decent clicks, but perhaps wasting them with some crucial mistakes. They probably haven't got a wide variety of working creative concepts, but they've got just enough substance to make advertising on Meta worthwhile. There's bound to be a big downfall for this level. We've got everyone's favorite cheap furniture and meatball provider, IKEA.
So firstly, IKEA have a big landing page issue. Like, quite literally. They're running a nice polished video ad in this instance. Shows off a product well, mentions price, quality, etc. Clear messaging. But you click through to the landing page and it takes you to this one monster page where it's almost impossible to find out where you need to go to actually buy the thing. It's super confused because there's just tons and tons of products. Like, it's the complete opposite of what we would typically recommend for a landing page where you want one clear action for people to take based on the ad they clicked on. Another issue is that in the ad itself, the cabinet looks like a sort of light gray color, probably due to the lighting that it was shot in, but in the photos of the same product on that page, it's pure white. So, that lack of congruity is really going to hurt the results. People will click through and be like, "Hang on, did I go to the right place? Is that even the same product? Maybe I'm not interested in that color, but I was interested in the ad. That's why I clicked on the ad in the first place." So, you'd have massive drop-off rates even though the ad is decent. Like, wings clipped massively by the confusing contrast and imagery and the lack of congruity on the landing page. So, the solution here is really obvious. They need dedicated landing pages. If they're going to go to the time and effort of creating these video assets, which are pretty good, to advertise a product, when someone clicks, send them through to a page about that product where they can actually buy.
So, IKEA sit at a level two. Some more encouraging signs. Their ads are actually decent, but they really need to improve on their post-click experience, especially when they're investing as much as they are in a campaign like this. So, at the time of recording, this ad has reached 8.7 million Meta ad accounts. Like, that's a proper budget being put behind that. Let's hope their tracking data is accurate. If it's not, I might have something that can help them. One of the biggest problems in paid advertising right now is that most advertisers are making decisions from numbers they can't fully trust. The numbers inside your ad platform look precise, but they're usually missing big chunks of the picture. Between privacy changes, ad blockers, and people hopping between devices. The platform often can't see the full journey a customer takes from first click to sale. So, the platform is optimizing from a partial view, and you're setting budgets from that same partial view. That's exactly how advertisers end up scaling their losers and killing their winners. Click Magic fixes this. It gives you accurate, independent tracking that shows which ads, campaigns, funnels, and traffic sources are actually driving revenue, not just the ones the platform happens to be able to see. And with Insights and Morning Magic, it goes a step further and tells you exactly what to scale, what to fix, and what to pause. Over the past 12 years, Click Magic has tracked billions of clicks and conversions for more than 150,000 advertisers. They really know what they're doing. You can try it now for free with a 14-day trial. And because you watch my videos, if you click on the top link in the description, you also get 50% off your first month, and Click Magic is way cheaper than the alternatives. Trust me, you should give it a go.
Next up, we've got level three. Things are starting to really take shape for a level three Meta advertiser, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. For this one, I've chosen New Balance, a brand doing a fine job in a very competitive industry, especially with the likes of Nike and Adidas to be up against. Let's look at why I've ranked New Balance here.
So, this style of ad creative is good, but they're a bit of a one-trick pony. They kind of nailed one sort of pretty simple creative style. They're reproducing it at scale, which is great for like the different products and services they offer, but they don't have much in the way of variety. And even within this ad, they could be much clearer with their call to action. Like, what's the next step you want people to take? It could be easy to sort of get lost in brand advertising and forget that you will get better results if you tell people what to do next. And it feels like they've done here. I understand that they want to keep things very much on brand and that's probably why they've restricted their creative variety, but from a Meta ad standpoint, they'd get much better results if they lent into other styles and not just keep doing this one again and again. They do have one really nice piece of creative that's high-production video. They're featuring some high-profile athletes. This is nice. It's edited well. It's engaging. I think they fall short even on this one with the messaging. The slogan they've gone with is "We got no." It just seems a bit wishy-washy to me, like not that powerful. It also feels like they've put all their eggs in this basket. This will have been expensive to create and they don't have many other ads like this. You see in levels four and five, they do a much better job of rounding that out. Kind of like someone got a good idea, spent a load of money on it, and they went for it. And then the rest of their ads are more of an afterthought. They've gone with boring sort of static images that you would see on a website that they've repurposed for ads. Not ideal, but they're at least clear. The post-click experience is also much better. It's exactly what you'd want and what you'd expect. Click on the ad, go straight through to the product page, one click away from adding to cart and being able to buy the thing.
So, at level three, things are starting to look better, especially with the polished video ad. They could really do though with branching out, testing some more formats, putting out some different creative styles. They can then see what works, double down on that and look to scale and then up their production of new creative, which we know is super important nowadays.
Moving on to level four. This means things are really ramping up compared to what we've seen so far, but it can still go further. So stay tuned for level five. It's seriously impressive and there's a lot to learn from it. Level four's creative is good, destinations are great, there's really good variety, and the output is good. There's a good balance between static and video formats.
For level four, we have HelloFresh. So firstly, they've got 78 active ads. So they're already doing a decent job in terms of producing a lot of different ads. I'm sure they'd like to up that. Most advertisers would, but that's a tick in the box for me. I think that it's a business that lends itself quite well to a wide variety of creative because there's lots of different use cases, people that would use HelloFresh. You know, you've got different options with dietary preferences or requirements and things like that. But one thing I think they could do better here would be to use a lot more variety in their offer and the call to actions they're making specifically. So, they seem to have one that they push quite aggressively, which is "Get 50% off your first box and free treats for two months." That's a decent offer. I don't think that's a bad offer, but I would like them to have other options. Like I just mentioned, their business naturally lends itself to people with different dietary preferences or requirements. You could come up with offers that were specific to those people. You could have the vegetarian-related offer that is specific to that audience. That's going to make it more likely that those people take action and you could build out a suite of offers for those different use cases. I can understand why they want to keep things consistent. I'm not going to hammer them too hard for this because it helps across your marketing if you're just all singing from the same hymn sheet. You're like, "This is our offer. This is what we're running with." But in terms of breaking down your total market into the individual customer avatars and then matching your messaging and your offers with what they want specifically, nearly always improves results.
Now, they do have great variety of video ads in rotation. They've got a really nice mixture of low-budget, sort of homemade-looking UGC which fits quite well for the brand. They've got nice social proof, but they've also got some high-production ads which I think is important. They want to enhance the brand's image. This is a consumables business. You are buying food from them. You don't want to feel that it's a startup that no one's bought from before. They're just getting started. They want to lean into that establishment so that you feel confident that like, yeah, the food's going to be a tasty but also b, not make me sick. So, they've done a really good job there. They've got partnerships with creators, which I love. Perfect for this business, perfect for most businesses, but not all advertisers do it. They've got a mixture of formats. They've got some clean-looking static images that really feature customer reviews. Really important element, particularly if people are shopping around, knowing that HelloFresh business, people could be comparing them to competitors. So, those customer reviews and testimonials really stand out and really valuable. Excellent stuff. And it's clear that a lot of this stuff is specifically made for the platform. Like, they're making these format ads. It's not just repurposed TV ads like Renault were doing, which is great. That allows them to then be more specific to learn, to iterate, to get better results. Doing a good job there.
Now, looking at their post-click experience, their landing page is good, but it's one. There's one landing page that's being used for everything because they're really just pushing the one offer. So, they're sort of sending everyone there. It is extra time and effort for a business of this scale. I think it would be worth it to have those specific landing pages. And this ties into what I mentioned previously about if you had different offers for different custom avatars, you would then want to match that with different landing pages so that the special offer for vegetarian options goes through to a vegetarian-specific landing page.
So HelloFresh have made it to level four. These guys really understand social media and the power of advertising here to sell their products. What they need to do next to level up is keep scaling and they might just want to take a leaf out of the book of our level five brand here. So let's take a look at the exceptional level five, the gold standard of Meta advertising.
The business we've got for this is Huel. Now they are everywhere in the UK and looking at their ads, it is no accident that they are dominating their market, their niche here in the UK. They've got insane variety of ads like including but not limited to podcast integrations, podcast-style ads, myth-busting consumer FAQ-style ads, UGC, high-production reviews, even ASMR and ASMR UGC, which you very rarely see. And that's not just across video. They've also got a wide variety when it comes to statics. They've got high-quality stuff all the way down to some low-quality meme-style ads. You look like they were made inside the TikTok in-app editor, for example. And Meta's ad library shows over 300 results for Huel ads across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger, and Threads are hitting all the platforms. This is the result of a well-oiled machine.
So, I want to make a clear distinction here between what gets a brand into a level five as opposed to a level four. And Huel have done this by reframing their offer to target different audiences, different custom avatars. So, we've got a prime example here where they have two ads that take us to the same landing page for their flexible plan. Works out £30.50 or £1.79 per meal. But the two ads address different pain points, so they will speak to different people. So the first one really emphasizes the freebie, and that's going to be great for people that really care about that, of which there's always going to be a proportionally target market. But the second one focuses on the decision fatigue that someone might suffer thinking about how to plan meals and come up with different ideas. And you can visually show this is what a whole week of breakfast can look like for you. Don't have to worry about it. Remove that as a problem. So, same offer, similar messaging, but different customers being targeted. This is difficult to implement, but this is a level five advertiser at work. We've also got ads in here that call out different demographics. [clears throat] So, for example, "Complete nutrition designed for men over 50." Now, this specificity is costly. You have to make a lot more ads, one fit each demographic, each group. But if it's done well, it can convert really, really well because it speaks more specifically to those people. It's actually quite inefficient to have ads that exclude every demographic outside of the one that's specifically targeted with that ad, but it can work really well. And Huel are flexing their muscles with ads like this. Their landing pages are top-notch, too. They sort of match their offers in the ads well to the offer on the landing page. And then once they get to the landing page, there's lots of customization. So fussy customers or ones that might not be aware of what else is on offer can easily explore and work it out.
So Huel sit firmly at level five with so many bases covered. Any direct competitors don't stand much of a chance because they're dominating their market right now. And after looking at their Meta ad strategy, it's no surprise.
So, there we have it. There's so much to Meta advertising and it's constantly evolving and changing. I keep you up to date with all of these changes and techniques that will keep the customers coming. So, if you learned something from this video, I've got over a thousand videos on my channel all about how to advertise on Meta completely for free. All you have to do is hit subscribe so you never miss an upload.