Do ugly Meta ads work better than polished ones?

Ugly ads are better than pretty ads for most things. I'm sure there are a few exceptions. The CMO of a big national newsletter said the same thing at an industry summit, and I've heard it a million times. It's what we do.

Why do ugly ads win?

"We've tried some really professional-looking ads that my design brain loved, and they flop. The second they see them, in that quarter second, it looks like an ad."

When somebody knows they're being advertised to, their brain instinctively ignores it. A casual ad looks like a post from someone in the feed, so people stop. Ugly ads feel authentic, like part of what you'd normally see. People don't want the glossy, fancy everything.

Step one is stopping the scroll. The text only matters if you've gotten the person to stop. If they didn't stop, it doesn't matter if it's Shakespeare or Steinbeck.

What happened when I tested a polished version?

It got crushed. My regular local newsletter creative is garbage. You could make it in two minutes: a video of me at a fair in the background with text on top.

I had a freelancer make a fancier version. Same messaging, same concept, same background video. She added motion graphics, a nice color treatment behind the text, and the logo. It was a much nicer ad, and the conversions were horrendous: about $8 a subscriber. I had to stop it.

An AI-made ad went the same way. It looked so good. I loved it. And of course it didn't work, because it looked like an ad and people hate ads. I think that only gets more true over time.

"You just got to deal with the system and human nature as it is, not how you want it to be."

What does an ugly ad actually look like?

• A fun, real video: a festival, a fair, a farmers market, live music.
• Short, plain text on top, something like "Struggling to find things to do in your area? We send a free newsletter with events."
• No big logo, no designed infographic.
• Low production, closer to user-generated content than a commercial.

The closer it looks to something a regular person made in 10 minutes for their own Instagram, the better. Regular people make ugly things. If you're a client looking at what we make for you and thinking it's kind of ugly, yes. That's on purpose.

I'd almost call my best ad an ugly ad. My design brain hates the way the text sits on it. It looks casual enough that people want to stop and read it, and then they subscribe. Video background with text on top seems to be the highest-performing type of ad on Meta in general, not only for newsletters.

Should I trust my own taste?

No. We've tried static ads, ChatGPT-made graphics with cool-looking text, and image-based ones. Some I thought were cool and got the point across well. Not one has worked as well as the plain video with text on top.

"I think things should look better, but it doesn't matter what I think, right? It matters what works."

Treat "this looks better" as a hypothesis to test, not a reason to swap out your winner. And never kill a winning ad because it looks cheap.

What do other operators say?

• Tance Hughes, who runs a newsletter in a small market, told me on my podcast that ugly ads work and the video-with-text format works across almost every industry. His bigger small-market problem was creative frequency burning out the audience.
• Amy Vartenuk of Clevelandish said on my podcast that the more polished something is, the less people trust it these days.

Faking roughness doesn't work either. A year ago people said to put one deliberate mistake in every paragraph of your writing. I asked my custom GPT to do it, and it made one error per paragraph, perfectly. Perfectly wrong. Even that trick doesn't work.

Why do managers keep pushing for polish?

Because owners and managers judge ads on production quality. A good-looking video that doesn't hook in the first second or three won't work, no matter how good the message is. Nobody is looking for your ad. You're trying to convince them to stop.

Ugly doesn't mean brandless. I still believe in having a brand. Be human and be the face of it, because people want to follow and trust people. The brand just shouldn't be only you.

Is there ever a case for a polished ad?

For a B2B offer I once asked for a professional static frame so the brand felt legit. Even there, I said niche accuracy beats polish. An operator told me about someone making strong money with very rough static ads in a tight niche. If you hit the right niche directly, they respond.