In Facebook creative testing, why does the control always win?

Check out this FUNNY video to hear our CEO reveal why the control video is so difficult to beat in Facebook ad creative testing.

Why Does the Control Always Win?

Find out what we just uncovered (Jan 2020) that has radically improved our custom creative testing and creative strategy for Facebook ads. We will deep dive into how we tested creative prior to our recent discovery. In addition, we’ll share our actionable tactics and strategies for new concepts and variations that are sure to reshape your creative testing processes.

Your creative and UA teams will be forever grateful you have this information.

High-Performance Creative

High-performance creative is a rare thing for social advertising. In our experience, after spending over $3 billion dollars driving UA across Facebook and Google, usually only one out of twenty ads can beat the “best performing control” (the top ad). If a piece of creative doesn’t outperform the best control, you lose money running it. As a result, losers are killed quickly, and winners are scaled to the moon.

Facebook Creative Testing

The reality is, a vast majority of ads fail. The high failure rate of most creative shapes creative strategy, budgets, and ad testing methodology. If you can’t test ads quickly and affordably, your campaign’s financial performance is likely to suffer from a lot of non-converting spend. But testing alone isn’t enough. You also must generate enough original creative concepts to fuel testing and uncover winners. Over the years, we’ve found that 19 out of 20 ads fail (5% success rate), you don’t just need one new creative: You need 20 new original ideas or more to sustain performance and scale!

New Concepts for Facebook Creative Testing

And you need all that new creative fast because creative fatigues quickly. You may need 20 new creative concepts every month, or possibly even every week depending on your ad spend and how your title monetizes (IAA or IAP). Also, the more spend you run through your account, the more likely it is that your ad’s performance will decline.