Modern Creator
Ben Trogrlic · YouTube

How I Make Thousands of Meta Ad Creatives Every Month

A performance agency founder breaks down his nine-step system for Meta ad creative in 2026, from persona research to AI-generated volume.

Posted
5 months ago
Duration
Format
Tutorial
educational
Views
7.7K
221 likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Meta ad performance in 2026 comes down almost entirely to creative strength, not targeting, because the algorithm now gates which ads get shown before it decides who sees them, so a research-driven, hook-first production system beats any amount of audience tuning.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You run or manage Meta ad accounts and want a repeatable system for researching personas, writing UGC scripts, and producing creative at volume.
  • You're spending real budget on ads and keep testing only one or two hook variations instead of iterating fast enough to find winners.
  • You want a concrete workflow for using AI tools (Claude, Freepik, Kling, Seedream) to generate ad creative without a full production team.
SKIP IF…
  • You're looking for targeting or bidding strategy advice; this video is entirely about the creative side of the account.
  • You don't run paid social ads; the frameworks are built specifically around Meta ad script structure.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Bernhard, who runs a performance agency producing thousands of Meta ad creatives a year, argues that in 2026 Meta's algorithm gates which ads even get shown before it decides who sees them, so creative strength now decides performance more than targeting does. His system starts with persona research pulled from reviews, support tickets, and post-purchase surveys, fed into an AI project to produce demographic and psychographic profiles. Every UGC or static ad then follows a five-beat script: hook, problem, solution, benefit, CTA, with five to ten hook variations tested per concept because a failed hook kills the whole ad. He pushes creative volume using AI tools (Freepik for stills, Kling and Seedream for video) and finds ad ideas by mining ad libraries like Atria. The most common mistake he sees is under-testing variations and writing personas too generically.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:42

01 · I Produced Thousands of Creatives

Bernhard introduces himself and states the video's thesis: Meta now gates which ads get shown before it decides who sees them, so creative weakness is the real failure point.

00:42 – 03:13

02 · Learn Your Customer

Persona-based creative strategy: pulling research from Reddit, reviews, post-purchase surveys, and support tickets, then feeding it into an AI project to produce a reusable persona document.

03:13 – 05:59

03 · The Only Ad Structure That Works

The five-beat script order (hook, problem, solution, benefit, CTA) demonstrated against a running-shoe UGC example.

05:59 – 09:48

04 · The HOOK

Why the hook is the highest-leverage part of the ad, the five-to-ten-hook-variation rule, and reverse-engineering script structure from long-running ads with an AI tool.

09:48 – 10:45

05 · Visual Targeting

Matching the visual setting and cast to the persona (football pitch for football players, playful tone for mothers), so visuals and copy reinforce each other.

10:45 – 12:40

06 · Creative Volume

Pushing output volume (more hooks, more bodies) as a performance lever, and using AI image generation to fill asset gaps when real product photography isn't available.

12:40 – 15:01

07 · Winning Formulas in 2026

Authenticity in UGC, undervalued static ads, simple phone-shot product demos, and long-form expert-explainer ads that route into a pre-sell page.

15:01 – 17:01

08 · How to Find Ideas

Mining ad libraries (Meta's, Atria, Pinterest, TikTok) for inspiration, archiving screenshots, and using an AI tool to turn a reference image into a reusable generation prompt.

17:01 – 17:52

09 · What You Get WRONG

The most common mistakes: moving fast without research, generic personas, and under-testing creative variations.

17:52 – 19:27

10 · How I Make Ads at My Agency

The full loop end to end: research into personas, static ads first, double down on working messaging, scale into UGC, and look for a new persona once performance plateaus.

19:27 – 20:23

11 · Work With Me!

Closing pitch: book a call if the brand spends over $50k/month on ads, with an on-screen QR code and a link in the description.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Meta's algorithm now decides which ads deserve to be shown at all, not just who sees them, so weak creative gets throttled before targeting ever matters.
  • Persona research should come from post-purchase surveys, support tickets, and Reddit threads, not assumptions, then get fed into an AI project to extract demographics and psychographics.
  • A UGC ad script follows five beats in order: a hook in the first one to three seconds, a relatable problem, the product as solution, a stated benefit, and a simple call to action.
  • If the hook fails in the first few seconds, nothing else in the ad matters, because no one watches long enough to see the problem, solution, or CTA.
  • Running five to ten hook variations against one body script outperforms spending the same budget producing only one or two hooks.
  • AI image tools like Freepik can generate on-brand product lifestyle shots for a flat $39-a-month subscription, replacing one-off photoshoots for new creative concepts.
  • A still image generated with an AI tool can be turned into a video ad using Kling 2.6 or Seedream 2.0, skipping a second production step entirely.
  • Static ads are undervalued: a single phone photo can outperform a highly produced UGC video, so volume on statics compounds faster than volume on video.
  • Long-form 'expert explainer' ads, two to three minutes of a doctor or specialist explaining a product's mechanism, are outperforming short ads in some markets when they route into a pre-sell page.
  • The most common creative mistake isn't a bad idea, it's not testing enough variation: one headline with three backgrounds, or two hooks paired with one body, isn't enough signal to find a winner.
  • The more specific the persona (a 55-year-old in menopause with hormonal breakouts, not just 'women with skin issues'), the more relatable the ad copy becomes.
  • The same product can need three different personas and three different scripts because the underlying problem shows up differently across life stages like puberty, pregnancy, and menopause.
Takeaway

Weak creative dies before targeting ever gets a chance.

CREATIVE-FIRST ADS

Meta increasingly decides which ads deserve to be shown before it decides who sees them, so a research-driven, hook-first production system beats any amount of audience targeting.

01I Produced Thousands of Creatives
  • Platforms increasingly gate which content gets shown at all before they decide who sees it, so weak creative gets suppressed no matter how well you target.
  • When something you create consistently underperforms, check creative quality before blaming the algorithm or the audience you're reaching.
02Learn Your Customer
  • Real audience research comes from existing customer language in reviews, support tickets, and post-purchase surveys, not assumptions about who you think you're talking to.
  • Feeding raw customer feedback into an AI tool to extract demographic and psychographic patterns turns scattered feedback into a reusable reference document.
  • A specific persona (age range, stated problem, failed past attempts, discovery channel) is more useful than a broad target description.
03The Only Ad Structure That Works
  • A proven script structure runs hook, problem, solution, benefit, call to action, in that order, every time.
  • State the problem in the language the audience already uses about their own daily frustration, not generic pain points.
  • Pair every benefit claim with a concrete payoff, like time or money saved, rather than leaving it abstract.
04The HOOK
  • The first one to three seconds decide whether anyone sees the rest of the message, so they deserve disproportionate creative effort.
  • Testing five to ten hook variations against a single script outperforms testing only one or two, because the hook is the highest-leverage variable.
  • Reverse-engineer a proven script structure by feeding successful long-running examples into an AI tool and asking it to extract the underlying pattern.
05Visual Targeting
  • Visuals have to match who you're speaking to as closely as the copy does: show the environment and people your audience recognizes as their own.
  • Messaging and visuals reinforce each other; mismatched visuals undercut copy that's otherwise on-target.
06Creative Volume
  • Output volume matters as much as output quality: doubling the hooks or bodies produced per concept compounds into real performance gains.
  • AI image generation can fill gaps where you lack real product assets for a new audience segment, at a fraction of a traditional shoot's cost.
  • A still image generated with AI can be converted into a video with an image-to-video model, collapsing two production steps into one.
07Winning Formulas in 2026
  • Authenticity in UGC-style content depends on how well you understand the persona you're casting for, not production polish.
  • Simple phone-shot static images are often undervalued relative to highly produced video, and can outperform it.
  • Long-form expert-explainer content, a credible person explaining a mechanism for two to three minutes, can outperform short-form ads when it leads into a dedicated landing page.
08How to Find Ideas
  • Ad inspiration libraries and swipe files exist specifically to shortcut idea generation; use them before starting from a blank page.
  • Build a running archive of things that catch your attention while scrolling normally, instead of trying to recall them later.
  • An AI tool can reverse-engineer a visual reference into a reusable generation prompt, turning one inspiring image into a repeatable template.
09What You Get WRONG
  • Moving fast without research produces generic output, because specificity is what makes a message feel relevant to the person receiving it.
  • One variable tested against three backgrounds, or two variants against one base, isn't enough variation to reliably find a winner.
  • Overcomplicating a process slows iteration speed; a lean, straightforward workflow ships and tests faster.
10How I Make Ads at My Agency
  • A single underlying problem can require multiple distinct approaches, because the same problem shows up differently across life stages or contexts.
  • Treat testing as a continuous loop: launch, identify what's working, double down, then look for the next opportunity once performance plateaus.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

UGC (User-Generated Content ad)
A video ad styled to look like an organic social post from a real customer or creator, rather than branded studio footage.
Persona-based creative strategy
Building ad messaging and visuals around a specific, research-backed customer profile instead of a general target audience.
Brand DNA document
A reference document an AI project generates by analyzing a brand's reviews and positioning, used to keep ad copy on-brand across a team.
Hook
The first one to three seconds of an ad, responsible for stopping the scroll before the viewer sees the rest of the message.
Static ad
A single still-image ad, as opposed to a video ad, often a product photo with headline copy overlaid.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

01:40toolClaude
08:00toolClaude Projects — UGC Script Writing skill
12:20toolFreepik ↗
12:40toolKling 2.6
12:45toolSeedream 2.0
15:20toolAtria
19:57productThe Adgency ↗
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

03:13
“Be obsessed with the people you want to sell to because then selling gets easier.”
Tight standalone maxim, works with zero setup, already cut as an on-screen quote card.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
07:00
“If the hook fails, none will see how well the video actually could work, what problem you're solving, or how quality your product is.”
States the stakes of the hook in one breath, mirrors an on-screen quote card.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
12:47
“For UGCs, you have to be authentic — it's so important.”
Short, declarative, already paired with an on-screen quote card.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogy
Over the past years, I've produced a thousand of creatives across different industries, scaled brands across Europe and the US, and one thing became very clear. Most ads don't fail because of targeting. They fail because of the creative weakness.
And in 2026, this is even more extreme. Meta is no longer deciding who to show your ads to first. It's actually deciding which ads deserve to be shown, all right?
So if your creators are not strong, nothing else really matters. I'm Bernhard, founder of the agency based in Austria, Europe. We deliver hundreds of ads.
every single week for some of the biggest D2C brands in the Europe and US. In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to create meta ads in 2026 step by step so you can build ads that actually perform and scale. Let's get into it.
So first and foremost, you need to understand your customers or your potential customers. We don't talk about creative strategy anymore. We talk about persona -based creative strategy.
How do you actually understand who your customer is? You do research. So, and there are many ways on how you...
You can research your customers or potential customers. You can go through Reddit. You can go through reviews of your own.
You can go through own conducted post -purchase service. You can go through customer support tickets. You can ask your customer success managers.
If you have a retail store, you go to the people in the retail store and ask them, what are people actually talking to you? What are chatting with you about, right? So you actually understand who your target audience is.
And I know, what should you do with a post -purchase service? reviews so how do you actually get a target audience out of them right i'm just going to show you like an example how we do it so you take the pps you throw it into cloud you tell them hey look here's a lot of information i want to make a creative strategy for my brand xyz please make two to three personas out of that analyze them and give me the personas the demographics and the psychographics of them and for this brand here for example we did this whole process we got a document and this document is pretty good for us because we can then reuse it every time and that And we understand, for example, this is now in German.
This basically says the blemish fighter, right? She is 35 to 54. She's a woman.
Her issues are like your main problems are she's getting red in her skin. She has rosacea, right? And basically she has inflammations in your skin.
She tried a lot of things, right? But nothing really helped. Now she's really like looking for this one cream that finally helps.
That's her motivation. She basically discovered the brand on Instagram, through ads, socials, influencers, and so on. and so on, right?
So we actually now know, okay, this is like a persona that we could actually start working with, okay? And you need to really conduct that. I can also like show you creatives that we did.
For example, here for the shoe brand, we wanted to actually target mothers who have children, obviously, right? And we wanna show it into the copy and also into within the visuals, right? But those are like talk about later on.
But you can basically see that you can pretty immediately see who you're gonna target here. And for example, here for this hiking shoe, we're targeting people who are hiking.
So we're showing it visually, right? With the product and with the images that we're providing. So you really need to understand who you're targeting to and who you're talking to because messaging and visuals that match your messaging are so important.
Be obsessed with the people you want to sell to because then selling gets easier. Let's go to the point two that you need to do afterwards. So when you have your base, like when you understand who you want to target and who you want to talk to, you can create static ads and you can create UGC.
Let's talk about the more complex things, which is a UGC, okay? You need to understand who your target audience is. Then you're looking for people, for content creators or models, if you do it internally, who match your target audience visually, right?
Their appearance. Because then they're gonna see themselves in the mirror, basically. So when you have that, you have to do strong scripts.
And basically, a script usually follows an order, right? There are different orders that a script can follow, but one of the most common and... bulletproofs is have a strong hook that gets your attention in the first one to three seconds have a problem and make it relatable for example if we go back to the shoe image that we just saw right we wanted to talk to mothers who are going out with their children playing on the playground through muddy weather whatever and they just want to throw those shoes into the washing machine get them out three hours later and have them nice and clean the next day and dry right that's their daily life that's their issue they don't want to walk around with dirty shoes get a lot of shoes just to have like a clean pair of shoes and they definitely don't have the time to do it manually by hand right so that's their problem and we're gonna relate to it we're gonna show them our shoe right which is just perfect for it you can just throw it in a washing machine get them out and that's it and then we also like tell them some benefits they're gonna have with it you're gonna save time with it you're gonna save money with it that time you're gonna save you can spend with your children the time the money that you save you're gonna spend on other things and so on and so on and so on and then in the end you need to have a very simple cta so
So a hook, a problem, solution, a benefit, and a strong CTA. Let's look at one UGC we actually did for that brand. So everything starts with a strong hook.
In the strong hook, we're immediately calling out the people who wanna target. And we're basically saying here, I always hated running, all right? Running means people who either run or wanna run, right?
And then in the same second, in the same frame, we're basically saying with this UGC, we're calling out the problem, right? Because my feet are getting heavy and it just pains me. a lot i have sweaty feet and it just doesn't make fun when everything hurts all right so then we're like jumping to the solution which is the product so then i found the geesevine speed then we're seeing her basically being happy and running and we're basically saying hey this shoe is so light it is it's so comfortable it doesn't hurt and now i finally have fun again we underline that with her being happy right and running around and then we're saying hey there's a small bonus like your feet won't smell anymore right?
Which is like a bonus shoe. And in the end, there's like a very simple CTA, right? So this is basically how you do it.
And you can transfer basically all of that to a static image. One of the most important parts and one of the biggest issues I see with most brands or other marketers is you do so much research. You're looking for so many different creators.
You talk with them. You find a deal with them on how you're going to pay them and so on and so on and so on. Then you do a buddy, right?
And then basically you're just creating one or two hooks. Then the creative maybe dies and You're just thinking, oh, well, didn't perform, let's move on, right?
And so you're like busting through a lot of budget, time, resources, and so on. And basically what you should focus on and what you always should have, you need to have five to 10 hooks because just one hook can completely change the outcome of your concept, of your idea that you tried to bring to life, okay? We did that mistake many years ago where we did all this work and just had like one or two hooks, instead have like seven to 10 hooks.
with a messaging testing where we're actually trying a lot of different things to really hook the right people and hook as much as possible to just like get this performance through the roof so have a lot of hook variation all right so the thing is so if the hook fails that is that none will see how well the video actually could work what problem you're solving or how quality your product is so basically you need to have a strong hook otherwise all this post editing and then writing scripts etc will just be like a waste of time i'm gonna show you here on how we are doing it basically we have in cloud we have a project it's like you just see a script writing scale for a geese vine we have a brand dna document right so a brand dna document is basically we're analyzing a brand that we're onboarding we have a document that explains what to do and how to analyze it so you can see here your senior strategist consumer psychologist and marketing researcher and so on and so on all right look for amazon trust pilot and so on and then we're basically putting in our
brand in here and then it's analyzing it and then we have a brand context document all right which basically explains the brand okay then when we go back we have a skill a UGC script writer framework how you can make your own framework is very easy go to the ad library or look for big brands like grüns jones road rich wallet i don't know im8 ag1 look through UGCs that are running pretty long, all right?
And then get those videos into Cloud, for example, and let it analyze it. Tell Cloud, hey, please analyze the structure of it and make a UGC skill out of it, a copywriting skill that I can use for a project to then replicate the structure of the script for my own product. And that's basically what we did here.
And then in the end, we can basically say, hey, look, let's write a UGC for following product. Let's go with a general audience, right? If we don't wanna go niche, going to be very generic which is also fine we did it here it asks me question i'm telling you if you have questions ask me right so it goes through everything and comes up with different concepts and then we have ugcs that we can actually work through all right so we have book variations we have the discover the problem part the discovery part the proof part and emotional payoff and so on and so on and so on right so this is already how we are using it internally with project the same thing is with static headline copywriting we have again instructions on how to use the project we are having our brand context document that we actually conducted previously and then we are having basically a comprehensive context document for static headlines basically how you're writing setting headlines right and then we're using it no worries there is not too much in it because we're already working i think i can show you we're already working with an own tool that we generated to generate different static headline concepts with templates and so on and this is how we do it right so for example in our own tool as you can see
we're basically having the training data with personas, products, angles, references, writing skills, and so on that we're using to generate a lot of different and own briefings, all right? So let's go to the next point, the visual targeting. So when we're conducting, right, when we're doing static ads or when we're doing UGC ads, one of the most important thing is not only the copy, the messaging is right, but also the visual is right, right?
If I'm a football player and I wanna talk to football players, right, I most probably won't gonna have a restaurant setting right i'm gonna be on the pitch and when i'm talking to mothers i'm gonna be maybe more playful showing children as as here for example showing like all those clothes that needs to be washed we're gonna show like a dirty shoes and a clean shoe right and so on if we're talking about hiking you're gonna see here we're talking about hiking all right when we go to jones road and we're gonna talk about older people we're gonna show older people if we're talking about dark circles we're gonna show dark circles right before and after and so on so it's very very important that whatever we're doing messaging wise we also have to do visually and they have to work together because then everything gets much stronger then let's go to point five creatives i'm a creative agency and i'm being very transparent and honest creators are getting a commodity it probably has never been more easier for everyone to have a certain level of
furthermore quality creative output, but also like a lot of volume. And volume is so important. We have to push our volume.
It just doesn't cut it anymore to like launch five ads per week, right? You really have to push it. And you can very easily push it through, like, you know, small tweaks in your process.
Instead of doing two hooks, you're doing seven hooks, all right? Instead of having one body, you have two bodies, right? It's just like your cutter just needs a little bit more time, but you have much more output.
Same goes with statics. you have a new concept you want to talk to for example business women 45 plus but you don't have assets for it use gemini nano banana use some ai tool to generate it what we're doing we're using freepik for example i mean i can show you some stuff out my team is actually doing for example let's talk about jones road here right so we can go into view all and just see what one of my team did today we've been talking about traveling here so we're probably doing a traveling concept here you can see that my team actually generated the miracle bomb of jones road on a suitcase with like a passport and a coffee right something that really like traveling right we wouldn't have those assets so we're just generating it right and all Obviously, not every generated asset is perfect, but you just regenerate them, right?
And we really love to use FreePay. We need a model. We want to show like the shades of the product.
We're generating it and you probably don't gonna see that this is AI, right? And it's so easy. We're like on a subscription that costs $39 and we can generate as much images as we want.
And the cool thing is if we have an image that we like, we can turn it into a video with Kling 2 .6 or the new Seedream 2 .0. So it's very... easy right so volume has never been easier then we're coming to winning formulas in 2026 so obviously ugcs and for ugcs you have to be authentic right it's so important ugcs are like in the space for the past four years so people on social media just understand what ugcs are so you need to be very very native and the better you understand your customer persona from point one if you remember the better you can cast your right creators the better you understand their daily lives of your customers the better you can write a script which basically mirrors the daily life of your customers and that makes it as a total much easier to make authentic content right and this is so important statics static static statics push volume to statics it's so easy to create nice statics from high quality to ugly ads that you take with your phone just like in the next minute right statics are so overrated because every phone everyone was so focused on ugc's and high productions that statics are just like crushing it all right also what i believe is like sometimes just take your phone and record yourself
like simple product demos hey look i'm drinking five cokes a day i just found water drop a small cube with 10 vitamins in it. It basically tastes like a Coke, but it has zero sugar, has 10 vitamins in it.
And I drink water. I just put it into my water bottle. It dissolves in the next 10 minutes.
And I can just like drink a ton of water without like missing the taste of the Coke, right? And it can be so easy. Just do that.
Be very native. So simple product demos are very, very, very important. What is like a little bit of a secret?
And we see that format crushing, especially here in the German speaking countries, are long form video content. like really videos where we're talking two to three minutes from a 40 position all right so someone really like who is a doctor or maybe who is talking about diet and stuff like that people who are supposed experts and explaining a product explaining why your product has a unique mechanism why it works because there are so many sources of fiber that's why poppy is the best and so on and so on and that are then leading on a pre -sale page on an editorial page right this actually crushing, crushing, crushing.
Then one of the most important things that I often get as a question, how do we actually come up with ideas? And yes, that's a hard question actually, but it's pretty simple. So the first thing that I would do is just go into the ads library and check out what big brands do.
You can either go to the ads library or you can go to Atria. We're using Atria and you basically can filter, go through. I mean, I can show you, right?
It's like so simple to navigate through it. While I'm opening it up, you can go to Pinterest, see what are people using there. You can just like open up TikTok or Instagram and just like scroll through your feed.
And every time when you're like doing that and do doing scrolling, screenshot the images and post it into a Slack channel, have an own album on your phone where you're saving that, share it in a WhatsApp group, whatever. And so if you go to Atria, for example, and we go to inspos and we go to inspirations, I mean, you can go through industries and say, I don't know, I want to go through, let's say fitness.
And then I basically see like a ton of ads that I can go through. And the cool thing is if I, for example, have this static ad here, I could copy it, go to cloud, or I can do the Pinterest, see a pretty nice Adam. Pinterest I could basically use that image I mean let's do it together so I'm for example typing in running shoes and I see this here and I really like this so I can copy that one can go to Claude and basically tell Claude hey Claude please write me a prompt for nano banana 2 that analyzes this image because I would like to make this image with my own product ignore everything else like text on this product just explain this image in a prompt you could do that probably a bit nicer overall and i just like let it analyze it all right here's the prompt so what you can do is basically take that prompt you go to free pick you go to the image generator put in the prompt then you can put in your product then you're basically just saying you don't want to have auto model but you rather want to have the good nano banana too and just generate it that's the way how you can basically do your own uh your own static ads if you find inspiration okay and then point eight what most people get wrong okay many times people start with gut feelings they want to be like
just fast, fast, fast, but it just doesn't work fast, fast, fast. Do your research, really. Start with your research.
If you have a good research, a good understanding about your customer audience, everything will get easier. Making ads too generic is also an issue, right? You have to talk to someone, right?
You're talking to a woman who has hormonal breakouts in her skin. She's 55. Maybe she has her menopause currently.
The more specific you get, the more relatable you get, right? not testing enough variations you have one headline with three backgrounds you have two hooks with one body this just doesn't work anymore right and stop over complicating things be straightforward right be lean create a lean project and just be like very very very straightforward and point nine how we're doing it basically i just explained everything to you so we're doing we're starting with the research through all those different data sources post -purchase survey reviews comments under our ads we're checking competitors reviews competitors ads with their comments we're asking success management we're checking through tickets that we have we put everything into cloth we're generating a brand document we're generating personas based on all these reviews that we're generating those pps that we're having when we have a good understanding about two to three personas we're starting with creating static ads either with assets we're getting from the brand or with generating assets ourselves as i just showed you with the suitcase that you saw then we're like launching them we're gonna see what messaging is working good we're putting more resources into messaging that works to gen
generate UGC content with creators that are suiting the customer persona that we're having with a lot of folks who have like this volume, right? And then we're basically testing, iterating. And we're always like, as soon as we find something that works, we're pushing it.
And then when we feel, okay, we somehow hit a ceiling, we're looking for net new customer personas, right? Because oftentimes your product is a solution for a very specific problem, but hormonal breakouts, for example, can be different for women after her menopause, like 45, 40 plus, can be different. for someone who's in puberty can be different for someone who currently is expecting a baby, right?
One product, one solution to hormonal breakouts, but three different personas that you have to communicate different to, right? So this is like the whole magic and you just have to push content, right? So if you take one thing away from this video, Meta ads in 2026 are creative driven, okay?
So if your creatives are strong, the platform works for you and will basically help you achieve your goals. And if they're not, nothing else will really. fix it, right?
And everything I showed you here is exactly what we do inside our agency, right? Research, concept, production, iteration, UGC, static, testing, media buying, and so on. And we operate across Europe and US in German and English, Spanish, and we handle the full creative process from ideation to production to scaling.
So if you're a brand spending over 50k a month on ads, and you want this system applied to your account, scan the QR code on screen or click the first link in the description and book a call with us and if you have any questions just leave a comment. I'll see you in the next video.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Bernhard Trogrlic has produced thousands of ad creatives for European and US D2C brands, and he opens with a claim that reframes the whole video: Meta's algorithm no longer just decides who sees your ad, it decides whether the ad deserves to be shown at all. What follows is the research-to-production system his agency runs to stay on the right side of that gate.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

04:20list

Hook → Problem → Solution → Benefit → CTA

  1. Hook (first 1-3 seconds)
  2. Problem (relatable, specific)
  3. Solution (the product)
  4. Benefit (concrete payoff)
  5. Call to action

The five-beat order Bernhard says almost every working UGC or static ad script follows, demonstrated against a running-shoe UGC example.

Steal forany direct-response video script or landing page section order
01:00list

Persona Research Sources

  1. Reddit threads
  2. product reviews
  3. post-purchase surveys
  4. customer support tickets
  5. customer success manager interviews
  6. in-person retail staff conversations

Where to pull raw customer language before writing any ad copy, then feed it into an AI project to extract 2-3 personas with demographics and psychographics.

Steal forcold-audience messaging research for any paid acquisition channel
12:20list

AI Creative Volume Stack

  1. Freepik ($39/mo subscription for AI image generation)
  2. Kling 2.6 (image-to-video)
  3. Seedream 2.0 (image-to-video)

The toolchain used to generate missing product lifestyle assets and turn a still image into a video ad without a reshoot.

Steal forscaling ad variant volume without a production budget
CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK
19:57link
“If you're a brand spending over 50k a month on ads, and you want this system applied to your account, scan the QR code on screen or click the first link in the description and book a call with us.”

Pairs a visible on-screen QR code with a verbal CTA that restates the exact qualifying spend threshold right before the ask, pre-qualifying clicks before they land on the booking page.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA
12:20toolFreepik ↗
19:57productThe Adgency ↗
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

cold open / thesis
hookcold open / thesis00:00
persona research promise
promisepersona research promise00:42
"be obsessed with your audience"
value"be obsessed with your audience"03:13
"if the hook fails, the ad is dead"
value"if the hook fails, the ad is dead"05:59
AI creative volume workflow
valueAI creative volume workflow12:40
QR code CTA
ctaQR code CTA19:27
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

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