Steal These 4 Viral Ad Formats

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

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet (this issue)

New Episode Alert: Facebook Ads Creative Strategy to Scale Beyond $100K/month Ad Spend from an 8-Figure Founder

If you ever felt scaling beyond a certain budget breaks your ROAS or CAC, then this is a must-watch show.

Here’s why:

• You get honest and straightforward insights.

• The founder doesn’t want to be known (he just wanted to do me a favor)

• His business actually was a creative-cluster f*** and he was able fix it

• And it all starts and ends with “creatives”

Give it a go, I’m sure you will like his raw, honest thoughts.

BEST LINKS OF THE WEEK (on popular demand)

My favorite finds

• Writing & creative advice better than 90% of courses

• The people who click the least… often convert the best. And Meta doesn’t show you that.

• Some thoughts on advertising as a DTC brand on Meta in 2025 that should help you in your businesses. 

• AND ANOTHER ONE 🫠 “It’s Duolingo but for _____” strikes again

• Great typography turns boring copy into eye-catching, expressive visuals.

  Here are six techniques I use to create typographic ads

One of my clients spent roughly $30K for 3 months as a test with an agency to help our social accounts go viral.

I thought it was all BS but it did.

And the best part? I now use those videos to for paid ads too.

Now this video is the third highest spender in my ASC+ campaign.

And here’s the thing: If something gets millions of views on TikTok organically, it means it has huge insights for paid ads.

And if you understand why it worked, you can turn that into a paid ad with serious upside.

Because virality ≠ luck.

There are patterns. And those patterns can reduce your CAC, increase scroll-stopping power, and make even the boring products stand out.

I spent over 20 hours scouring the internet and picked three standout formats that actually apply to ads. I asked one question for each:

“Why did this go viral, and how can we turn it into a high-performing ad?”

I’ve had pretty good wins by stealing the viral video format in the past

So, Let’s get into it.

Viral Format #1: CoupleTok With Just One Look

Here’s a video that got 1.9M views.

The format is UGC, and the video’s just 8 seconds long.

So what made this pop?

Let’s break it down:

• It’s short. Just enough to keep you watching but not enough to scroll past.

• It flips a story we all know. The hidden truth in a relationship.

• It taps into drama... without saying anything. You feel the tension. You get it instantly.

• It teases a reveal. Turns out, she’s been wearing lenses all these years. He didn’t know.

That’s it.

Just a micro-story with a big payoff, and the product slides in naturally.
No hard sell. No talking-head explanation. Just a moment.

How You Can Use This in Paid Ads

If you’re running paid ads:

• Take your product and find a moment that triggers gossip, curiosity, or “Wait. What?”

• Don’t explain. Just show the reaction.

• Hook the viewer with a story, not the product. Deliver the product as the punchline.

Viral Format #2 – The “So Easy To Use”

Here’s one of the most effective growth plays I’ve seen lately.

And it’s not about clean design or complicated demos.

It’s a well-planned organic TikTok campaign by Lovable. 

The format:

• Open with a bold challenge: “Can we clone Netflix using only AI + ChatGPT in 2 clicks?”

• Walk through the “build” in under 45 seconds

• Use split-screen: ChatGPT writing the prompt + Lovable building the page

• Hype up the results, even if they’re not 100% perfect

That’s the entire play.

It doesn’t matter that the final result doesn’t look like Netflix.

That’s not the point. The point is to trigger people into commenting.

Devs rush in to say, “This isn’t how it is,” and “This is just a clone of the UI.”

And the Non-tech viewers are amazed. AI skeptics get riled up. 

More outrage = more reach.

Classic engagement bait.

They even seem to be running some of these accounts from third-world geos,  maybe to test reactions across regions or just to scale content production.

How You Can Use This in Paid Ads

Here’s how you can borrow the structure:

• Pick a well-known tool or concept in your niche

• Frame your product as a way to clone/simplify/speed up that thing

• Walk through it in real-time, step-by-step, using split-screen

• Hype the result

• Don’t over-explain, let the comments fight it out

If you’re in AI, SaaS, or other tools, this is a must-test.

Viral Format #3 – The “On Screen Listicle”

This is one of the most viral formats I’ve seen lately.

No talking. Just text.

These videos are made by the co-founders of Candle App, Alex and Sophia. And they use a dead-simple 6-second format to rack up over 7.1M views.

Here’s how it works:

1. Record yourself talking to the camera, just like a selfie video.

2. Mute the audio completely.

3. Use music instead

4. Speed it up so the clip becomes just 6 seconds.

5. Layer your message over the video using on-screen text.

That’s it.

Make sure the text is longer than 6 seconds to read, so the video loops.
You read half, it restarts, you keep watching. That’s where the algorithm kicks in.

Sophia’s examples:

• “Top 5 tips that SAVED my long-distance relationship”

• “5 things I wish I knew before moving abroad”

• “Why I deleted Instagram and how it changed my life”

Each one has a curiosity hook + relatability baked in.

And they subtly plug their app Candle in each list. But it never feels like an ad. It’s just “one of the five things” mentioned casually.

How You Can Use This in Ads

• Make it a list. Use hooks like “5 reasons I stopped using X” or “3 things that saved my relationship.” Keep it personal.

• Shoot a casual selfie video. Mute it, speed it up, and add your list as on-screen text.

• Mention your product as just one of the tips. Don’t sell. Just include it naturally.

• Make the text take longer to read than the video duration. That’s what makes it loop and rack up watch time.

• Use this as TOFU content. It builds awareness, not direct conversion, but can fill your funnel with cheap traffic.

Test it with different list formats, and rotate in different product use cases. The video’s not the ad. The text is.

Viral Format #4 – The “Professor + Study Hack”

This video has:

• No talking

• No acting

• Just music, text overlays, and good footage

And yet... it got 4M views, 18K likes, and 500+ comments.

Coconote has done 30+ versions of this same video. Different angles, same core footage. They’re printing viral hits.

This format has helped them scale to:

• $200K MRR

• 40K+ downloads/month

• Over 250 million views total

Here’s the format:

• The video opens with a bold on-screen hook:

“My Harvard Professor freaked out after I showed him this ADHD hack.”

In just one line, it does three things:

• Hooks your attention

• Signals status and credibility

• Sparks curiosity

Then the scenes flow like this:

1. Classroom, phone in hand: 

“All I do is go to my class and press my iPhone”

2. Lecture playing: 

“This ADHD app will take all my notes while I focus during my class”

3. Phone again, showing features:

“...and then it creates quizzes and flashcards from my notes”

4. App reveal: 

“The app is called Coconote”

No dialogue. Just clear visuals and text that tells the story.

And I saw a very similar format here as well

How You Can Use This in Ads

If you’re building an AI tool or productivity app:

• Start with a status hook (and show they freaked out): Ivy League, top professor, fancy job

• Lead with a single benefit, not a list

• Let your product do the work. Show it in action

• Use music + on-screen text instead of voiceover

• Repurpose it 20+ times with small tweaks: change location, text, or “who the professor is”

This format works because it’s fast, digestible, and visually communicates value in 10 seconds.

That’s all for this week!

After studying so many viral formats, I stumbled on Social Growth Engineers newsletter. Full credit for to them finding viral videos every day. This is a must have in your inbox (no affiliation with them). Check out their newsletter here.

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

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.

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