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10 Creative Strategy Insights from the Past 5 Weeks

Author

Aazar Shad
June 15, 2025

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

  • Sharing what I've learned (this issue)

  • Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet

My favorite finds

If you know that I’ve been focusing more on YouTube, and I know that most of you prefer receiving the best insights via email. Therefore, I am sharing my insights here so you can take advantage in your advertising.

These weren’t surface-level tips. But insights that only show up when you're actively building, testing, and breaking things to see what works.

So today I’m sharing 10 of the most useful takeaways.

You’ll have to check the complete videos to learn them all… these insights are what I loved the most. (Each video have time stamps to save your time).

I’ve linked them below each section.

1/ AI isn’t your copywriter. It’s your research assistant.

This was a big one from the session Marco and I did together.

We explored how AI can go way beyond surface-level prompts. Marco ran a flow where he asked ChatGPT to analyze Reddit threads, personal blogs, and long-form customer stories.

The insights it pulled, like emotional language, repeat phrases, objections, felt like the kind of stuff you'd only get from weeks of user interviews.

Now, I use AI like this to uncover buying behavior. Research work that would have taken hours or days, could be done in 30 minutes. 

2/ Reviews will tell you what level of awareness your customer is at

We also talked about how digging into product reviews helps you map exactly where the buyer is on the awareness spectrum.

Are they already convinced about the category? Are they confused about pricing? Are they switching from a competitor?

This changes your hook, the depth of your ad, and your CTA. I showed how I use Trustpilot review dumps to map this out, step by step.

3/ Creative testing works better when it’s format-first

This came up while Marco and I were breaking down how brands waste money testing random creative ideas.

Instead of changing the message right away, test how the message is framed.

Text-only vs UGC. Ingredient showcase vs emotional story. Even “ugly ads” vs polished ones.

We looked at accounts where format alone changed the outcome, even when the copy stayed the same.

4/ Templates work, but they expire fast

We also talked about the trap of relying too long on templates.

It’s not that they don’t work — they just have shorter lifespans now. Even top-performing ad structures need to be refreshed every few weeks.

The best brands have a system that cycles through formats quickly without needing to reinvent the wheel every time.

5/ Atria isn’t just a swipe file tool. It’s your strategist

I originally thought Atria was just for saving and tagging ads. But when I explored it deeper, I realized it does so much more.

It analyzes winning ad patterns, writes concepts based on review insights, helps you script faster, and even prepares performance breakdowns for clients.

Once I stopped treating it like a swipe file, my workflow got 3x faster.

Side note: Atria sponsors this newsletter.

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

Tools worth checking out:

Atria: You're only as good an advertiser as your swipe file. Atria helps save good ads and analyze them in-depth. But the best part? Their AI helps me create concepts and scripts within seconds. Check it out for free. Most importantly, they now have built-in ad analytics to make more winning ads.

Creative OS: Don’t waste your designer’s time in copying swipe files. Get all static ad templates to increase your experiments and ad creatives’ velocity. Check it out here.

6/ If you only use one Atria feature, you're missing the point

The real unlock is when you combine Atria’s features.

In the video, I showed how using Radar, Review Mining, and AI-powered scripting together creates a kind of “creative autopilot.”

You go from insights → angles → concepts in under 30 minutes. That used to take days. But only if you use the full stack of features.

7/ Founders are walking swipe files

In this one, Marco and I both agreed that the most underrated source of winning angles is the founder.

We showed how a short 20-minute call with a founder helped us find objections, metaphors, and emotional drivers that weren’t even in the reviews.

Founders who’ve done sales calls for years often know more than the data. They just need someone to extract it from them.

8/ Advantage Plus needs a different approach to creative testing

Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns will pick one ad and give it most of the budget.

If you dump multiple concepts into one campaign, four of them may never even get delivery. That’s why we recommend splitting them across different campaigns if you want a fair test.

We discussed this in the masterclass along with how to structure learning reports that go beyond just CTR and ROAS.

9/ Black background ads still get the click

This was a fun one.

We reviewed ad formats that still work in 2025, and one of the most surprising ones?

Black background. White text. One punchy line.

It’s the simplest format, and it still works, especially when it plays on tension or introduces a twist.

10/ Use this psychology trick in your ads

Marco showed ads that literally threw a product box into the frame during retargeting. It caught attention immediately.

The point was simple: Don’t overthink retargeting. It’s the perfect place to use emotion, pattern breaks, and psychological cues.

Not brand polish. Not explanation. Just persuasion.

Apparently, they pushed to cold traffic later the same video, it worked.

That’s it for this week!

If you liked these, the full videos have more context, examples, and screen shares. Marco and I went deep on stuff we normally only discuss inside client accounts.

Let me know which one stood out to you.

Try incorporating one of these insights into your next ad and let me know if it works.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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