A performance ad-agency founder breaks down the 12 static formats, messaging rules, and design levers behind ads that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, then shows the AI workflow he uses to research and draft them.
Posted
3 weeks ago
Duration
Format
Talking Head
educational
Views
11.1K
584 likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Static ads succeed or fail on message and hierarchy, not novelty of format — the same 12 proven formats, written to assume the viewer has never heard of your brand and designed so the eye lands on the single most important element first, outperform clever reinvention every time.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You run or write Meta/Instagram ad creative and want a checklist of formats and headline rules that actually move performance.
You manage an ad account and want a repeatable process for mining customer reviews and ad comments into new ad copy.
You're curious how AI tools (Claude Code, an MCP-connected ad-research tool) can be wired into a creative production pipeline.
You want concrete before/after examples of how small design changes (contrast, spacing) change how an ad reads.
SKIP IF…
You're only interested in video ad production — this is static-image-only.
You want a tool tutorial rather than strategy — the Parker/Claude workflow is shown but not taught step-by-step.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
A four-year performance-ad veteran argues that static ads win on message and visual hierarchy, not format novelty: 12 proven formats (headline+benefits, testimonial, offer-based, persona-based, collection, comparison, publication, press hits, native, apology, post-it note, meme) cover 95%+ of what works. Headlines should assume the viewer has never heard of the brand, since most scrollers are strangers. Copy should be reverse-engineered from competitors' highest-impression ads (via the Facebook Ads Library or a tracking tool like Parker) and from a brand's own customer reviews and ad comments, which supply verbatim emotionally-loaded phrases that outperform written copy. Design comes down to three levers — sizing, contrast, and whitespace — that decide what a scanning eye reads first. AI image generation is best used to make an invisible sensation (pain, itch) literally visible, and an MCP-connected Claude Code setup can search a brand's ad-comment and review data, then draft on-brand static copy automatically.
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Establishes credibility (10,000 static ads made) and states the video's structure: strategy/systems, messaging principles, design principles.
00:57 – 03:50
02 · Top Static Formats
Runs through the 12 static ad formats that cover ~95-98% of what he makes, in priority order, with real ad examples for each.
03:50 – 05:23
03 · Finding winning statics with Parker
Shows the Parker tool's Discovery tab, which ranks every tracked brand's ads by daily Facebook Ad Library impressions, filterable by format/industry/language/emotion.
05:23 – 06:43
04 · Building a swipe file with Claude Code
Demonstrates prompting Claude Code (connected to the Parker MCP) to find top-impression competitor ads and save them into a swipe file automatically.
06:43 – 09:31
05 · Persona-based statics
Argues for writing ads to one specific persona rather than a broad audience, citing Grüns' gut-health persona ads and matching persona-specific landing pages.
09:31 – 11:01
06 · Assume no-one knows or cares
Core messaging rule: write headlines assuming the viewer has never heard of the brand, except for offer-based bottom-funnel ads.
11:01 – 11:48
07 · TOF static examples
Walks through acquisition-static examples that pass the 'immediately relevant to a stranger' test.
11:48 – 14:30
08 · Reverse engineering winning copy
Shows using the Ads Library impressions sort plus Claude Code + Parker MCP to find competitor ads worth recreating with a brand's own customer-review copy.
14:30 – 15:50
09 · Your customers are your copywriters
Shows a Claude Code prompt that searches customer reviews and ad comments for emotionally loaded verbatim phrases and turns them directly into ad copy.
15:50 – 16:48
10 · Clarity vs curiosity
Frames a spectrum between fully clear ads (sell on the image) and curiosity ads (sell after the click); warns against landing in the middle.
16:48 – 19:48
11 · Design principles
Explains that people scan rather than read, and that sizing, contrast, and whitespace are the three levers that control what gets seen first, with a nerve-pain-ad before/after example.
19:48 – 23:20
12 · Creating intentionally unrealistic visuals
Covers using AI image generation to make an invisible sensation (pain, itching) visible, and writing messages directly onto relevant surfaces (skin, mirrors) for pattern interrupt.
23:20 – 23:52
13 · Recap and CTA
Five-point recap of the video's rules, followed by a pitch for his agency (adcrate.com) with ad-account spend graphs.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
There are only about 12 static ad formats that repeatedly work; brands that try to invent new formats are usually solving the wrong problem.
The headline is the ad — on a static, it carries more weight than any other single element.
Pasting a customer's exact words into an ad, even when grammatically imperfect, outperforms paraphrased copy because it reads as customer-to-customer, not brand-to-customer.
Most failing static headlines assume the viewer already knows or cares about the brand; the fix is writing every headline for a total stranger, except on offer-based bottom-funnel ads.
The Facebook Ads Library's impressions-sort feature is a public proxy for what's actually spending money in a competitor's ad account.
Ads written for one hyper-specific persona often beat broad-appeal ads because a crowded feed rewards immediate self-recognition over broad relevance.
Persona targeting should extend into a dedicated landing page built for that one person, not just route to a generic product page.
Every static sits on a spectrum from full clarity (sell on the image) to curiosity (sell after the click); landing in the middle underperforms both ends.
People scan ads rather than read them top to bottom, so whatever has the most visual weight gets read first regardless of its position in the layout.
Three levers control what a viewer's eye lands on first: sizing, contrast, and whitespace.
Small formatting changes — line breaks, a single colored word — can measurably change how fast an ad's message is understood.
AI image generation is most useful for making an invisible sensation (nerve pain, itching, hot flashes) literally visible rather than for realistic product photography.
Writing a message directly onto a body part or surface tied to the pain point (a foot, a stomach, a bathroom mirror) creates a stronger pattern interrupt than a standard text overlay.
Mining ad comments and reviews for the most emotionally loaded verbatim phrases is a repeatable, promptable process, not a one-off writing exercise.
Takeaway
Static ads win on message and hierarchy, not format novelty
WHAT TO LEARN
A repeatable set of 12 formats, a headline rule that assumes total-stranger status, and three design levers (sizing, contrast, whitespace) explain more static-ad performance than any clever new concept.
02Top Static Formats
There are only about 12 static ad formats that repeatedly work; brands that try to reinvent the format are usually solving the wrong problem.
Testimonial ads work best when you paste a customer's exact words, even if grammatically odd, because it reads as customer-to-customer rather than brand-to-customer.
Run bottom-of-funnel and top-of-funnel statics together — each format reaches a different point in the funnel, not just one.
03Finding winning statics with Parker
The Facebook Ads Library's impressions-sort feature is a public proxy for what's actually spending money in a competitor's ad account, even without visibility into their real numbers.
Tools that track daily impression rank across every advertiser turn that proxy into a searchable database by format, industry, emotion, and awareness level.
04Building a swipe file with Claude Code
An MCP-connected AI agent can be told to find the highest-impression ads in a category and build a swipe file in one prompt, collapsing hours of manual research.
05Persona-based statics
Ads written for one hyper-specific persona often outperform broad-appeal ads because a crowded feed rewards immediate self-recognition.
Persona targeting should extend past the ad into a dedicated landing page built for that exact person, not a generic product page.
Making a persona-specific ad doesn't mean abandoning other personas — brands run parallel funnels for each one simultaneously.
06Assume no-one knows or cares
Most static headlines fail because they assume the viewer already recognizes or cares about the brand; the fix is to write for someone who has never heard of you, with offer-based bottom-funnel ads as the exception.
08Reverse engineering winning copy
You don't have to write cold copy from scratch — reverse-engineer what's already proven by pulling top-impression ads from competitor and adjacent-brand ad libraries.
Cross-reference customer reviews and ad comments against your own ad account to find 'white space' — angles you're not currently testing.
The exact wording customers use in reviews and comments consistently outperforms paraphrased or professionally polished copy.
09Your customers are your copywriters
Mining reviews and ad comments for the most emotionally loaded verbatim phrases is a repeatable, promptable process, not a one-off writing exercise.
10Clarity vs curiosity
Every static sits somewhere on a spectrum from fully clear (sell on the image) to curiosity-driven (sell after the click); landing in the middle converts neither audience.
11Design principles
People scan ads rather than read them top to bottom, so whatever carries the most visual weight gets read first regardless of its position in the layout.
Three levers control what the eye sees first: sizing (biggest wins), contrast (different wins), and whitespace (isolated wins) — engineer all three around your single most important message.
Small formatting choices — a line break, a colored word, added spacing — can change comprehension speed dramatically even when the underlying copy doesn't change.
12Creating intentionally unrealistic visuals
AI image generation is most useful for making an invisible sensation (a felt pain, an itch) literally visible, not just for realistic product photography.
Writing a message directly onto a relevant surface (skin, a mirror, a body part tied to the pain point) creates a stronger pattern interrupt than a standard text overlay.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Static ad
A single still-image ad (as opposed to video), typically run on Meta/Instagram feed placements.
Top of funnel (TOF)
Ads shown to prospects who don't yet know the brand, aimed at first-touch awareness rather than an immediate purchase.
Bottom of funnel
Ads aimed at prospects who already know the brand, often offer- or discount-led, meant to convert an existing interest into a sale.
Acquisition static
A top-of-funnel static written so it's immediately relevant even to someone who has never heard of the brand before.
Ad Library impressions sort
A Facebook Ads Library feature that ranks a brand's currently running ads by impressions, used as a public proxy for which ads are actually spending money.
Advertorial
A landing page styled like an article or native content, used to sell the reader after the click rather than in the ad itself.
Voice of customer (VOC)
Verbatim language pulled from customer reviews, support tickets, and ad comments, used as raw material for ad copy.
Visual hierarchy
The order in which a viewer's eye reads elements on a page or ad, controlled by sizing, contrast, and whitespace.
one-line thesis for the whole formats section→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
23:03
“Assume no one knows or cares. That is the, you know, static headlines one zero one.”
the video's single most repeatable rule, stated as a direct instruction→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
15:13
“Your customers are your copywriters.”
slide-titled thesis line, works standalone as a swipeable maxim→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
18:02
“Statics have hooks to it. It's not just video.”
reframes a static image as having the same hook mechanics as a video→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
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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.
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metaphorstory
Over the last four years, I've made over 10,000 static ads, and statics can and do perform at the top of the funnel when they're done correctly. But in the world of AI, so many brands are still getting their static ad strategy wrong. So today, I'm gonna be sharing with you everything that I've learned about static ads over the last few years and showing you what to do and what not to do when you make this ad type.
So let's get into it. And just to prove to you that I at least somewhat know what I'm talking about, here are some static ads that we've made at the top of funnel that have gone on to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars for the brands we've worked with over the last few years is a common belief that only bottom of funnel statics work inside of ad accounts.
But when you do top of funnel statics correctly, they can and do work, and that's something going be showing you today. So we are going to split it into three parts. We're gonna first cover strategy and systems, and then we're gonna go into messaging principles and then design principles, all of the things that you need to know to make great static ads.
So let's start with strategy and systems. Now let's talk about some of the top static formats that we've seen in our ad accounts. There's nothing revolutionary about these.
And I think a lot of times, uh, when it comes to static ads, a lot of brands try and reinvent the wheel. You do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are a handful of ad formats that work again and again and again.
And, obviously, messaging is more important than format. I'm gonna go into messaging in a moment, but don't think about, you know, trying to be too cute or too clever with your ad formats. Just use the ones that are proven and focus on finding the right message for them.
So headline and benefits. Very clear headline. The headline is the ad.
You got the products, and then you got the benefits around it. Testimonials. These are one of my favorite formats around, especially if you've got a lot of reviews or a lot of ad comments if you're a you're not a a new startup.
You will have a lot of golden nugget testimonials in here, you can just literally put them straight onto it on the on the ad. A lot of people here try to paraphrase customers or, like, move certain things around. You don't have to do that.
In fact, many times that we have taken the exact words or phrase that a customer has used and put it straight into an ad, even if it didn't feel, like, quite right or if it didn't make sense grammatically or whatever, it's gonna work because it is an actual customer saying that it is a customer talking to a customer rather than a business talking to a customer.
So a massive fan of testimonial ads. And, obviously, offer based ads, I don't want you guys to get the impression that I'm I'm just saying only do top of funnel ads. You want all of them.
You want the top of funnel ads, and you want the bottom funnel statics because all of them working together will hit different people who are at different parts of the funnel. So we absolutely are still doing top of funnel sorry.
Bottom funnel ads as well. Also here, we have persona based ads, which I'm going to talk about more shortly. Collection ads, if you have multiple SKUs, these absolutely crush scooping up demand at the bottom of funnel.
So I would highly recommend doing these. Comparison ads, whether that be before and afters, us versus them, what kind of timeline ads, anything where you're comparing a before state to an after state and showing that ideally visually, they are always going to be a tried and true format.
And then some slightly ugly ones that we have here, publication ads, press hits, native ads. All of these formats can pretty much work regardless of what your brand is, what you're selling because, again, they are they are tried and tested ad formats.
And then and by the way, I've actually I've put these in an order in which I would prioritize them. Like, these on the first two or three pages, I I'd say the ones that we use the most. Then you have apology ads, which I'm not the biggest fan of, but they do tend to find themselves at the top of a lot of ad accounts that I come across.
So yeah. And they're a bit gimmicky, but they they they seem to be working. And then Post it notes, also a massive fan of them, and Meme Ads as well.
I'd say across those 12, that's probably, like, 95 to 98% of the statics that we make. You don't have to complicate things.
You don't have to go outside of, you know, these 12 formats, and and this is definitely, you know, what the ones that I generate in in ClaudeCode cover for the vast majority of the time. Now the really cool thing that you can do is if you go inside of Parker, which is the tool that I have created and spoke about on this channel before, is you can actually go and find more ads like this inside of the Discovery tab.
You can just go and you know, if you want to go and find some, uh, Post it note ads, you can come inside of here and filter to Post it note. And it's going to go and find you all of the Post it note ads.
I mean, I should also filter to static if I want it to load just the static Post it notes as well as instead of the video ones.
And you can see all the Post it note ads. And the cool thing here is that this is sorted by impressions.
So we take the, uh, impressions rank on Facebook ad library every single day for every single brand in the entire database. No other tool does this, my knowledge. And you can see basically a library of ads that are performing for this specific tag.
So as you can see here, these are all ranked number one in the brand's ad library. You can see it was ranked number one on the twenty second.
It's still ranked number one today on the July 24. I can just basically scroll through an a library here from every ad brand in the database of winning ads for whatever I query.
You can query language. You can query industry, type of ad, ad format, emotion, desire, awareness level, you know, how long it's been running for, the length of the ad, all sorts of things on here.
Can query to exactly what you want and and add to your swipe file.
Save it down into your swipe file here. And you can also do this inside of ClawCode. So funnily enough, as I was preparing for this video, I wanted to rebuild my static swipe file so I could, you know, find any new inspiration.
And I just said, I'm creating a YouTube video on static ads. Go through these brands and find me some of the top ads by impressions and prepare me a swipe file myself. And they went and did that instead of claw code.
This is all done through the Parker MCP, which I will put a link in the top corner if you wanna go and install it. This is all done through the Parker MCP, of course, and it created me this swipe file of top ads.
All of these are top ads by impressions, statics. I can see the Facebook ad library.
I can see the Parker link. And then I just said, can you go and save this to my Parker swipe file? And it went and built me this swipe file.
So now if you wanna see if you want access to every ad that I've mentioned in this video, every ad in this deck, just literally I'm gonna put the link in the description. Claude code and the Parker MCP built me this swipe file inside of Parker.
So I actually just said, here are the brands that I want to find inspiration from, and here's what exactly what I want. Go and build the swipe file for me. And it went and did it.
And I I bet it has to do any work. Now I have a a swipe file of of a bunch of top ads for all the different formats that I care about. Again, this is what you guys to do.
Take the transcript, go and put it through, say, go and go and build this for me, which I thought, you know, that was a very, very cool one, use of claw code in the Parker MCP. I want to talk about persona based advertising a little bit more. If you follow this channel, you'll know that over the last few months, I've been talking a lot about the idea of making ads that speak to one specific persona.
You know, traditional advice was to make ads that are broadly relevant to as many people as as possible so you can have the biggest addressable market. And, yeah, that is still the case to an extent, but also thinking about, like, in a feed that is hyper relevant to every single person, how can you zero in on one person, speak to one person, and make a whole funnel for that person.
And one of the best people are doing this is Axel Mosey who talks about it a lot. If you go to the ad library, you will see a lot of ads like this. If you're a window installation company doing this, if you are a real estate brokerage doing a millionaire, if you're a property management company doing a millionaire, this is the most extreme version.
This concept, it can be something a little bit less direct. It could be how you like, what you show visually. If you show someone in a a real estate brokerage, then that's going to appeal to people who own real estate brokerages.
So you wanna think about how you can speak specifically to certain personas and not worry about isolating other, you know, other personas in your audience because you can also make ads for them as well. If you look at grooms, they're a great example of this in the ecommerce space.
They made an ad that I came across the other day in their ad library saying, we're looking for girlies that feel puffy for no reason. They go on to explain the exact pain points that this person faces.
Now this is not going to apply as much to someone who is looking for a GLP one solution, which Grooms also has a lot of messaging around, but it speaks specific to this girl.
And then when when she clicks through, there is a landing page built specifically for her six reasons why Grooms is your guts new bestie. So the whole experience from before the click to purchase is made for that one specific person.
If you look at Grooms landing pages, you'll see that they do a lot of this as a, you know, weight loss perimenopause, male fertility, gut health, girly. Like, all of these are their own funnels that they've created.
They'll have the ads in the front, and then they'll the landing pages, and then they'll take them through to the product pages. So now I'm seeing a lot in ad accounts working. A lot of the bigger brands that I do it now, I'm starting to see this, you know, happen more often with the the slightly smaller brands.
And I would highly recommend for you thinking about who your personas are and then creating experiences throughout the whole funnel speaking directly to that person. And if you want to see my in-depth persona creation and analysis process, then there's a link somewhere on the screen right now.
We can go and watch this video where I go into exactly that. And that is a nice segue onto part two, which is the messaging principles. One of the biggest mistakes that I still see brands making with their headlines on their static ads is assuming that people know or care about your brand.
These prospects on the organic feed are scrolling through their feed at a 100 miles an hour. They are looking for every reason not to click or pay even pay attention to your ad. If you make headlines that assume that they know or care about your brand, excluding bottom of funnel ads, if you do bottom funnel ads, you know, they if they offer base, that's fine.
That's for people who know who you are. Most ads that you make or should be making should assume that people do not know who you are. Should we go into new eyeballs who have not heard of your brand?
So if you look at this ad from mood, the first thing that I see in this ad is the big headline, love these. If I don't know or care about mood, oh, like, what what is there that is immediately relevant to me that tells me why I should buy or what this thing even is? Even with the first line here, these are amazing.
They do everything they claim. That doesn't mean anything to me as someone who's scrolling through their feed, looking at memes, or, you know, doing whatever you do on on Instagram and TikTok. So I really want you guys to think about when you are making headlines for status specifically.
Is this relevant immediately to someone who does not know or care about my brand? Because I well, at least when the the ad libraries I'm looking at, there are a lot of brands who are still making ads that assume that people know or care about who they are, obviously, outside of outside of offer based ads.
And when you do make that assumption correctly, you make what we call acquisition statics. Actual top of funnel statics then can go and convert someone who knows you and go and convert someone who doesn't know you.
These are some examples. And by the way, this is not easy to do. It's one of the hardest things to do is to write a headline for someone who does not know or care and make it immediately relevant to someone who has never heard of you before.
But this is where your research is really gonna come in handy, looking through the ad comments, customer reviews, post purchase survey, support tickets, Reddit, all that good stuff. This is where it comes into its own because the headline is the ad. And as you can see here, these are not crazy at all design wise.
They're actually very simple. The headline is clear. It's easy to read, and it stops you in your scroll.
And, yeah, these are good solid static acquisition static examples. And the thing is you don't have to always rely on writing the copy yourself.
Sometimes you can reverse engineer what's working for other brands. Now we can't see what is working in terms of inside their ad accounts. We can't see other brands ad accounts, but we can get a good proxy via the Facebook ads library sort by impressions feature.
So you can see what's working my impressions. If it's working my impressions, there's a pretty good chance the lost spend behind that is performing inside their ad account. Now we have the Parker MCP installed on our Claude.
So what I did inside of Claude codes, I just said, look at my external brands top static ads by impressions, find the ones that make the most sense for us to recreate, then draft copy for us to recreate them. What I have done is on Parker, and I kind of look at the web app as, like, the control room now.
I have just added all of my brands inside of here that I want to follow. I've got my competitive brands.
I've got my inspired brands. And by the way, if you haven't got Parker, you can you can do this through the ad library API and pull it into Claude.
I just try to do some parks. It's way easier, and it tags everything properly, which I find very, very valuable.
So I've got a bunch of brands that are not my competitors, but I just like to follow them anyway. Either they are, you know, just random brands or they're brands that share similar audiences with my clients' brands. So I I I look at them, look at what's working for them by impressions, find copy inside of our voice of customer for our customer reviews, add comments, which is also all connected inside of Parker, and I just get to recreate them.
And, actually, I showed in the in the cold code video that made the other day. If you wanna go and watch that, I'll put the link in the corner about this flow where it literally delivers me these statics out of Slack. I had all these statics delivered through copying statics from other brands and just making them for my brand with my copy, and these are real quotes from customers.
These are real customer views. These are real ad comments. And the cool thing is because we we have the skill set up that we talked about at start of the video, this looks for white space inside our ad account.
So we were not doing anything around senior dogs, so it found a static to recreate. It made it about senior dogs, it wrote the copy from our customer reviews. And that is a really nice workflow to get statics made that fill white space inside your ad account or look for opportunities and go and get these.
And all of these are one shotted inside of Claude Cove with the Higgs Field MCP and the Parker MCP. I really like them. So you can easily put something like this in.
Again, you can use the MessiC align and add library API if you want to. I just find it way easier to use Higgs Field MCP and Parker MCP together because I'm having so much fun.
And like I said, if you go and watch that Clawdco video, you'll get a lot more context on exactly what this looks like in in practice. Again, same same concept.
All of this is actual customer copy. Your customers are your copyrights. And so many times over the last few years, I can't tell you how many times we have had exact words and phrases given to us by customers, put in an ad, whether it's a headline for a static, whether it's a hook for a video, whether it's just part of the script, and it goes and does really well inside the ad account.
You can see the exact review this one came from inside of this brand, and here's the prompt I entered into Claude code. I just said search my brand's customer reviews, add comments, look for the most emotionally loaded phrases, and then I go let's go through the same process. Look at my ad account, look at what we haven't retested, and then come up with ideas for copy that we can go and then turn statics.
Again, if you want more context on that, watch the Claude Cove video that I did last week because we went we went and got made a bunch of static through this workflow. But, yeah, couldn't vouch this enough, especially if you've got a lot of customer views and had comments.
You will, for sure, have some golden nuggets like this that you can take, and it's the exact words and phrases. It feels like a customer speaks on the customer. That's what kind of breaks through the noise in the feed where everyone else is making the same generic claims.
That's how you appeal to someone. That's how you stand out in a fever where everyone else is, you know, saying the exact same thing. One thing I want you guys to think about is this kind of spectrum of clarity versus curiosity.
Because in the previous video, I said that you want to be clear over clever, and and I 100% stand by that. You want to be clear in your ads, but I also wanna make the distinction that sometimes you want to leave curiosity.
You just need to work out when do you want the sales happen. As you can see here on the left hand side, we have the traditional top of funnel that we've been talking about in this video. Very clear exactly what it is, who it is for, and, like, how it's relevant to them.
On the right hand side, we have the curiosity, our native ad where, you know, the selling is done partially in the primary text, but more so in the advertorial page that you send to.
So you seem to work out, like, where you want the selling to be done. Is it on the ad mainly, or is it on the is it after the click? I just don't get stuck in the middle again.
It's a one thing that a lot of brands do that they are somewhere in between clarity and curiosity, and it results in you just being stuck in no man's land. So just be conscious of that when you are making your ads.
And finally, I want to talk about design principles, and you can have the best messaging in the world. If it is designed in a hideous way that's not easy for prospects to understand, then they're not gonna see the message that, you know, you want them to see. People don't read ads from top to bottom.
They scan. They look for the thing that is most appealing to them, and they won't necessarily go in the order that you might think they are.
And that's a good thing because we can use it to our advantage to guide them through the process of consuming this static ad. So for example, what do you see here first?
Most people would see these two lines here, faking it with my husband, and this has been intentionally designed. This is one of my favorite statics that I've seen.
O positive do a very good job with their static ads. This is a good ad library that I would recommend swiping. They do a lot of this stuff like psychology based designed where they make you they they kind of guide you through the process of of going through this static.
You see so you see this hook first, and that is the thing that's going to grab your attention on this image. Then you see since perimenopause, which qualifies the prospect, and then you see the products, and then you see the social proof. So if they, you know, design this in a way, for example, where the the social proof is first, you go, I don't care about this.
I don't know what this brand is, but they've hooked you by putting the most attention bearing part in the biggest sizing in the in the ad, and then you go and read the ad rather than continue scrolling.
This is very smart design. It's something you wanna think about because statics have hooks to it. It's not just video.
Status have hooks, and and here, the hook is faking it with my husband. So you wanna think about when you're creating statics from a design perspective, you can control the visual hierarchy with these three levers, sizing, contrast, and white space. And the thing that you want there to be the most important message, that's where the eye should be landing first like we have got on this example here.
And in terms of actual elements that you can control, you have the placement and sizing of images, the placement and size of headlines, what you actually say in that headline, obviously, the use of fonts and colors, warps and distortions, highlights, and errors. So there are lot of little things that might seem insignificant, but, like, play a big part in making sure the prospect sees what they're supposed to see first because that is psychology based design.
Just little things as well. Here's an example. It can make a big difference.
The ad on the left, nerve pain killer doesn't have any colors, and the text is a little bit weird. Like, the killer is in front of the white light versus the ad on the right where it's on two lines, so it's easy to read. They've got the red background for the word killer, red connotant danger.
So that is way easier for me to consume and understand what is happening here than on the left hand side. Tiny change, but, uh, a big difference in how the ad feels, at least in that first impression that you have of it when you read it.
And I'm just kinda making this, guys, so that you can, uh, take the transcript from this video and put it into Claude code and say, a scale out of this. You know, you can create some kind of design agent that looks at all of the points I've gone through here and just, you know, has a checklist and judges the outputs that you have inside of Claude code.
If you want me to do more of a how to in terms of the actual Claude code system, let me know in the comments below, I can obviously go and do that. One, use case isn't necessarily a design principle, but, like, one, you know, really practical use case I've had for AI over the last year and a half with image models is using it to create intentionally unrealistic visuals.
So we're trying to make the invisible feel visible here. All of these you can see are if we go back to the slide earlier that was talking about, your customers being your copywriters, how can we show what people feel?
Look at this one in the middle here. I love this ad. It's one of my favorite AI image ads.
If you have nerve pain in your foot, I imagine this has come from a customer view that says, like, you know, it feels like I've needles in my foot or something like that. If you have that feeling, you are going to stop for this static.
So think about ways that you can make the invisible visible. And, again, you can literally, you know, take a screenshot of this page, put it into Claude code, and say, how can we make the invisible visible for my brand? Or what problems are people saying our customer views are in ad comments, etcetera, that we can actually go and make visuals for and then go and get to do that?
And, again, I am doing all of this through the Parker MCP. If you are unsure how to do that, all you have to do is go to customize and, uh, connectors and add a connector and then add the Parker MCP.
Obviously, you need a Parker account. If you do not have one, then you can go and sign up for a free month trial in the description below. And another way that I use AI and image ads is to create what I call atypical text ads where you take text and put it in unusual places that are relevant to your prospects.
So for example, if you want another nerve pain ad on the left here, writing on someone's foot, That just is something that you would stop scrolling for if you had foot pain. And then you read the headlines, a good headline, twelve years of nerve pain gone in minutes. And then he's got a picture of the product here, which you blurred out.
That kind of static I've seen work again and again and again, especially if you're writing on the body For some reason, uh, it just is, uh, it does does get people's attention when you write a message on someone's body.
Same thing with them on the right. Normal fatigue, hot sweats, or weight gain writing on someone's stomach. Um, so this is another way that you can do this.
And, again, take a screenshot of this, give it into Claude, and say, how can I do this for my brand, um, or what other atypical text opportunities are there? It doesn't have to be right on the body. It can be whatever's relevant to your, uh, business.
So for example, we work with a, um, an anti dandruff shampoo brand. We did one where we had a picture of the bathroom mirror, and we wrote a message in the condensation. So you can literally do it anywhere.
Anything that's relevant to your your audience that they would recognize right away. Oh, okay.
You know, this makes sense for a shampoo brand. This makes sense for a nerve pain brand. This makes sense for a brand that helps you solve hot sweats or weight gain.
So, you know, that's another way you can use AI in images. So to recap, use Claude code and Higgs field to scale volume.
This is going to be the actual system that you use to generate all these ads. Test with intention. Make sure you're looking for white space inside your ad account, inside your voice of customer.
Uh, use proven formats. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Speak directly to specific personas.
Don't worry about isolating other personas because you can make ads to them as well. Assume no one knows or cares. That is the, you know, static headlines one zero one.
If you do one thing from this video, just make sure that your headlines assume no one knows or cares if it is a total funnel static. Reverse engineer winning copy. You don't have do all on your own.
We can go you can go and find, uh, copy that's working for other brands. Your customer, your copywriters, uh, pick clarity or curiosity.
Don't get stuck in the middle. Consider the visual hierarchy. Make the invisible visible and write messages in creative ways with their typical text ads.
And if you do all of that, then you will look like this. Happy dog. If you want a team of experts to implement this for we have slots open and ad free right now.
We have been doing this for four years. We have made 30,000 ads over the last few years, worked with almost a 100, uh, 8 and 9 figure brands. If you're spending at least a 100 k a month, we would love to help you scale your brand.
Here are some of the results that we've got on the screen here. And if you enjoyed this video, give us a like. Give us a comment.
Give us a subscribe, all that good stuff that you guys do. A lot more content coming on the channel. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Four years and 10,000 static ads in, this creative director opens by knocking down the belief that statics only work at the bottom of the funnel, then spends 24 minutes proving it with real ad screenshots, a reverse-engineering workflow, and the exact design levers that decide what a scroller sees first.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:57list
12 Static Ad Formats
Headline + benefits
Testimonial
Offer-based
Persona-based
Collection
Comparison
Publication
Press hits
Native
Apology
Post-it note
Meme
The 12 static formats he says cover 95-98% of what a paid-ads account needs, listed in the order he'd prioritize testing them.
Steal forany Meta/Instagram ad account building a static creative testing calendar
18:20list
Visual Hierarchy — Three Levers
Sizing — the eye snaps to the biggest element first
Contrast — the eye goes to whatever is different
Whitespace — pushes the eye toward what matters
The three controllable design levers that decide what a scanning viewer sees first on a static ad.
Steal forany landing page hero, sales page above-the-fold, or static ad layout
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
23:20product
“If you want a team of experts to implement this for you... we have slots open... Go to adcrate.com to apply.”
Soft pitch placed after the full value delivery, backed by ad-account spend graphs as proof rather than claims; feels earned rather than a hard sell.
A creative strategist wires Claude Code to Slack, Notion, and an ad-research tool to build a self-updating brand brain that mines real reviews for ad copy and files its own reports.
Cody Schneider maps the exact infrastructure — pipeline, warehouse, agent — behind a Facebook ads system that researches, creates, publishes, and kills its own losing ads.
A media buyer pulls up real Ads Manager screenshots to prove one account really went from $30,000 to $1.1 million a month in Meta spend, then breaks down the three things behind it.
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