What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is all about giving you ad ideas to find winning ad ideas and help you scale.

This newsletter includes: My learnings, insights from other performance marketers, and analysis of top internet ads (this issue).

If you don’t know me, I run ads for DTC and app clients, helping them find more winning ads consistently.

Important note: My agency is growing, and I’d love to have one more creative strategist. If you are currently looking and have helped create ads that have spent more than six figures, apply here.

If you're running ads for an app, you know the cycle.

You ship 10 creatives. Two perform. The other eight die in 48 hours.

Those two winners burn out by week three.

Back to the brief. Same formats, same hooks, praying something sticks.

Meanwhile, CPI climbs. Hook rate drops. The team is out of ideas.

Most of this is a format problem. App ads recycle the same five or six structures, so your creative competes against a thousand lookalikes.

I've collected 15 formats working right now. Each one has a psychological reason behind why it converts. This should help even if you aren’t running app ads. I stole these formats for my DTC brands, and they still crush.

Steal them for your next batch.

Two people on a couch with mics, casually working the app into the conversation. Authority plus intimacy makes the pitch feel like a recommendation.

Someone is learning with the app, then wins because of what they learned. The before-and-after sells harder than any feature list.

Text fills the screen while video plays behind it. A beach, a hike, a workout. The mismatch keeps you watching long enough to read.

Tools worth checking out:

Before, you had to re-explain your audience, your competitors, and your positioning every time you created an ad.

Not anymore.

Here's what's new with Atria AI:

Audience profiles — Define your actual buying scenarios and personas once. Raya matches creative to the right context and the right person automatically.

Competitor tracking — Add brands you compete with. Raya tracks their ad activity so you know what's working in your space without manually checking Ad Library every week.

Brand guidelines that actually work — UVP, tone of voice, preferred words, avoided words, multiple logo variants. Everything that makes your ads sound like you, not a template.

Product profiles (coming soon) — Add your products to your brand once. When you generate scripts or analyze creatives, Raya already knows what you're selling. No re-entering product details.

The best part? Just paste your website URL and Raya extracts it all in seconds.

I've been using this for client accounts. It's basically a creative brief that writes itself.

Try it here

Someone walks up to a stranger and asks about the app. Random people feel more credible than any brand voice.

A short story about a problem the app fixes. The brain treats stories as entertainment, so the pitch slips through unguarded.

Someone asks ChatGPT or Claude, and the answer points to the app. AI now carries the kind of authority an expert used to.

They explain on camera how the app has worked for them for over a year. Skepticism dies the moment they show year-old proof.

The camera is looking down at someone lying on a couch, sharing something personal. The angle feels intimate, like a friend telling you something off the record.

The entire ad is built with AI. The unfamiliar visual style stops the scroll, and the demo does the work. 

The person walks up to strangers and asks about a problem the app solves. Reactions confirm the problem before the pitch lands.

I’d also like to thank CreativeOS.

Creative strategy isn't about one great ad. It's about speed, volume, iteration, and systems.

That's exactly what CreativeOS is built for.

You get instant access to thousands of high-performing static ad, landing page, and email templates — proven hooks, angles, and layouts pulled from top brands. Instead of staring at a blank canvas, you're starting from structures that already work.

Pick a template. Customize it. Launch it. Move on to the next variation.

It's the fastest way to produce more winning creative without burning out your team or sacrificing quality. Whether you're testing new angles, scaling what's working, or building repeatable creative workflows — CreativeOS is the system that makes it happen.

Check out CreativeOS

P.S. They launched 9 AI-powered tools that analyze, generate, score, and iterate your creative — trained on the world's best-performing campaigns.

Get 50% off by using the coupon code (AI-POWERED)

Just text overlay telling a slow emotional story while relevant footage plays. Viewers read it in their own voice, so the words feel like their own thoughts.

One continuous shot. One pure emotion. One public promise. It feels too genuine to be staged, so viewers project themselves into the moment.

A TV plays inside the ad showing the app in action. Your brain is wired to watch screens within screens.

One person secretly watches another using the app at work. Voyeurism and workplace envy make you want to know the secret.

A vulnerable monologue that ends on the app. You feel the loneliness or pain first, so the app arrives as a relief.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

Since this newsletter is free, I do it to follow my curiosity. But I’d love it if you could leave some feedback so I know if I am helping you or not.

Done-for-you direct response creatives for 7 to 9-figure brands. Book a call here. I’m open to more clients now.