Launching a Facebook ad campaign is fairly easy.
Launching a Facebook ad campaign that ROIs, however, is another story.
That’s because there’s a science behind it. You can’t just throw an image and some decent copy together and call it a day anymore. You have to know exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Facebook Ads today require strategy—but it’s not rocket science. It’s more like mid-level, once you’ve figured out the pattern you’ll be able to totally succeed science. Think somewhere between a science fair volcano and brewing your own beer (that actually tastes good).
All you need to know is what works and then, figure out how to create a similar formula for your business and product.
To make that process easier for you, we’ve compiled 47 Facebook ad examples and then told you what it is that makes them great.
We got all these from Facebook’s Ad Library—a searchable repository of every active ad run on any of Facebook’s platforms (yes, this does include Instagram too).
Now put your science goggles on and let’s dive in.
Facebook Ad Example #1 | The Economist
What Makes this Ad Great: Timeliness is a great attribute in an ad. By jumping on the New Year’s hype, The Economist becomes much more relatable to people, and top of mind when they think about their New Year’s goals (which is probably a lot… “New Year, New Me” is everywhere).
Facebook Ad Example #2 | Slack
What Makes This Ad Great: Slack has always done a great job speaking to its core audience. They know that one of the big struggles of their customer avatar is an overwhelming number of emails. Slack poses their product as a way to “Break out of the inbox” and “organize your communication.” This is a great use of the before and after states.
Facebook Ad Example #3 | Fabletics
What Makes This Ad Great: This video ad is great because it features cuts between customers using the product (workout clothes), and a text talking about the benefits of using Fabletics as opposed to other brands.
Facebook Ad Example #4 | ClassPass
What Makes This Ad Great: This ClassPass ad features a similar style to the Fabletics video ad, but this one is featuring a special offer. It is also themed around the new year’s hype, which is a great digital advertising strategy to build urgency (you gotta buy the subscription while you’re still motivated to work out in the new year, right?).
Facebook Ad Example #5 | Verizon
What Makes This Ad Great: Verizon is taking advantage of bundling offers, and highlighting them in this paid ad. The text and image on the ad slides in from the side which draws attention towards the ad, since the movement is opposite the scrolling motion.
Facebook Ad Example #6 | P&G
What Makes This Ad Great: This carousal ad is a great option for a company with a variety of product lines. Here, P&G highlights different products in a cohesive ad, which shows that they can be used together.
Facebook Ad Example #7 | Moo
What Makes This Ad Great: Moo does a great job highlighting their customers using their service. Using customer testimonials, use cases, or customer stories are all great ways to show how your product can be used and increases the chances someone else will want to buy and use it.
Facebook Ad Example #8 | Ram Trucks
What Makes This Ad Great: Here’s another great example of a customer use case from Ram. Here they are advertising online how businesses can customize the trucks with their own brand images.
Facebook Ad Example #9 | Veeam Software
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad is highlighting a relevant statistic about data. People are naturally drawn to percentages, since they convey information quickly and simply. This ad is also great because it has a CTA button that is prominent, which increase the likelihood people will click on the ad.
Facebook Ad Example #10 | Bulk Bookstore
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad doesn’t focus on highlighting the product, but instead it is using a mystery giveaway. Not revealing what the prizes are builds curiosity and suspense for the ad viewer, which encourages them to click and enter the giveaway.
Facebook Ad Example #11 | David’s Tea
What Makes This Ad Great: In this ad DavidsTEA is highlighting a customer Benefit (free shipping) and is also showing some of their new products. Ads like this are great for retargeting past buyers, because it reminds them of the benefits of purchasing, and entices them with new products.
Facebook Ad Example #12 | Google Ads
What Makes This Ad Great: A Google Ads ad about using Google Ads… Ad-ception! This ad is hitting on a customer realization in the hopes that people would identify with the statement and realize they need the service. This is a good use of subtly pointing out a customer’s before state.
Facebook Ad Example #13 | Google
What Makes This Ad Great: Do you see what’s going on here? Google is running ads for their different products. For example, they’re running ads to promote…well…running ads on Google. But, they’re also running ads to promote using Google as a search engine. This ad shows Lil Nas X, one of the biggest rapping phenomenons of 2019 as the “most searched remix”, keeping Google as a search engine as top of mind for all of us searchers.
Facebook Ad Example #14 | Brilliant Earth
What Makes This Ad Great: Brilliant Earth does a great job retargeting their ads to people who have used their “build your own ring” quiz (don’t ask me how I know…) . Here’s an example of their carousal ad displaying a variety of different rings.
Facebook Ad Example #15 | Bright Cellars
What Makes This Ad Great: This video ad does a great job showing the before and after states. It starts with people sipping wine and clearly not liking it. Then, after using the service, they are happily drinking wine they do like together.
Facebook Ad Example #16 | Amazon Web Services
What Makes This Ad Great: Here Amazon is using 2 of the tactics we talked about before, percentages and customer stories. The headline is also worded in a similar way that news sites write their headlines “____ does ____ with ____”, which is engaging and eye catching.
Facebook Ad Example #17 | Yeti
What Makes This Ad Great: Quick cuts capture the user’s attention, while also highlighting the many ways the Yeti brand fits seamlessly into the active lifestyle of the target audience. With no mention of features, the ad copy taps into the ethos of who the product is made for, allowing the user to feel elevated by the brand.
Facebook Ad Example #18 | Asana
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad does a great job of answering the #1 question a business owner has when trying to figure out if they would benefit from a specific software tool (like Asana)—what does it look like? In this ad, Asana gives viewers a look at the interface, showing them exactly what to expect from Asana. Then, they made their CTA “Start your free trial today” the first sentence in their copy, ensuring viewers don’t miss their offer.
Facebook Ad Example #19 | ButcherBox
What Makes This Ad Great: In this ad, ButcherBox uses aesthetic to grab a Facebook user’s attention and then brings their attention to the upcoming holiday (Valentine’s Day). Their ad copy mentions the value of buying their meat over other meat—in this case that it is “humanely raised, sustainably sourced, and grass-fed”—which assumingely is something their customer avatar is looking for in their meat selection.
Facebook Ad Example #20 | Candid
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad immediately hits on the main point somebody who wants braces has—braces are expensive. In their ad, Candid immediately mentions that their teeth straightening solution costs 1/3 of the cost of braces. Then, they show 3 straightening myths, showcasing their expertise and improving their authority to the viewer. This helps the viewer start to trust Candid, as the see them as knowledgable in the teeth straightening space. And what do we know about making yourself an authority in your space? It leads to conversions.
Facebook Ad Example #21 | Daily Harvest
What Makes This Ad Great: Daily Harvest knows who their target avatar is—so they created the dish that would catch their attention. In this ad, Daily Harvest uses a video of a bowl of food to catch the viewer’s attention, and then explains why they should choose Daily Harvest: thoughtfully sourced, organic, customizable, delivered to your door. Like ButcherBox, we can assume these are the specific requirements the Daily Harvest customer avatar is looking for in their weekly fruit and vegetable shopping.
Facebook Ad Example #22 | Dyper
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad is eye-catching. For any parent of a young child wearing diapers, a child being (carefully) thrown into the air is going to make them stop scrolling and look to see what’s going on. Quickly they’ll realize that the child is playing a game many of us have played with kids (“Remember this?”). Then, their ad copy immediately offers 50% off of their first box of diapers made out of plants instead of plastic. Dyper knows that to draw people in, they need to show them their offer and give them the benefit of their diapers over others—which is exactly what they did in this ad.
Facebook Ad Example #23 | Four Sigmatic
What Makes This Ad Great: The ad creative in this ad doesn’t mess around—it goes straight to the benefit of choosing Four Sigmatic’s protein over other options. Their creative says has no gums, fillers, sketchy “natural flavors”, or stevia and that it’s organic, vegan, and gluten-free. Instead of hoping a customer figures out how clean their protein is, Four Sigmatic is yelling it from the Facebook Ad rooftops.
Facebook Ad Example #24 | HelloFresh
What Makes This Ad Great: HelloFresh is using a necessary digital marketing strategy to get more people to sign up for their meal subscription service—social proof. They’ve enlisted celebrities like Jessica Alba to promote their brand. Take note that this HelloFresh ad isn’t on their Facebook page, it’s on Alba’s.
Facebook Ad Example #25 | Hootsuite
What Makes This Ad Great: This Hootsuite ad serves as more than just an ad—their marketing team is using it as a way to deliver knowledge. The video explains “The Global State of Digital 2020”, which really just shows how useful having a platform like Hootsuite is for a business focused on digital advertising. They’re showcasing their knowledge in the space and then tying that knowledge to why you should choose Hoosuite.
Facebook Ad Example #26 | Hubspot
What Makes This Ad Great: We love this Hubspot ad because it directly calls out who they are advertising to in the first line of their copy. “Calling all agencies and businesses that provide marketing, sales, customer service, web design, CRM, and IT services.” This paid ad cuts through the noise and doesn’t ask for any lead—they want the lead, which is a great strategy to ensure your marketing dollars aren’t being spent on unqualified leads.
Facebook Ad Example #27 | Imperfect Foods
What Makes This Ad Great: Imperfect Foods is touching on a global issue and bringing it into a food delivery service. What they’ve done in their ad copy is ask people to “Join us in the fight against food waste!”, which gives people something more than an offer for a free month—it gives them a moral reason to sign up for their service.
Facebook Ad Example #28 | Instagram
What Makes This Ad Great: We’ve included this Instagram ad because it’s different than most of the ads we’ve mentioned here. This ad isn’t designed to make people sign up for Instagram—it’s here to market what Instagram is doing to stop online bullying. While most ads are trying to get conversions, this ad is just showcasing how Instagram is fighting one of their biggest problems, and so marketing themselves as a safe platform to use.
Facebook Ad Example #29 | Klaviyo
What Makes This Ad Great: Klaviyo is an email marketing platform and guess what their customer avatar needs to know? As much as they possibly can about email marketing. Klaviyo did a great job of using the marketing jargon of “Explore 11 segments you should market to)”, which calls out only qualified leads who understand what a segment is and see value in learning who these segments Klaviyo has discovered are. They also double down on their ad offer by giving people a $5 Starbucks gift card for attending their webinar, which we can be certain ends with an offer to try Klaviyo for a discounted price.
Facebook Ad Example #30 | La Colombe Coffee Roaster
What Makes This Ad Great: La Colombe Coffee Roasters has hopped on the subscription food delivery service but they’ve niched down to coffee lovers. Just like Klaviyo above, they’re targeting qualified leads for their coffee subscription service by mentioning their product in the first sentence of their ad. Anybody not interested in coffee can keep scrolling, but somebody who likes trying new coffee is going to keep reading and find out they can get a month’s worth of coffee for $0. Not a bad deal for a passionate caffeinat-or.
Facebook Ad Example #31 | Mailchimp
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad is specifically targeting digital marketers who want to integrated Lightspeed with their email service provider. This is niche ad marketing at its finest—there is one very specific customer avatar here and Mailchimp went all in on finding them with this ad creative.
Facebook Ad Example #32 | Monday
What Makes This Ad Great: In their ad, Monday gets straight to the point. They state what Monday does (manages marketing projects) and what you can do with it (banner requests, campaign tracking, and content production). Then, their video shows a Facebook viewer what their software looks like so that the user can see how valuable this would be as an addition to their team. This decreases the resistance somebody would have to signing up, which is then further decreased by Monday’s 14-day free trial offer.
Facebook Ad Example #33 | NordVPN
What Makes This Ad Great: We love this NordVPN ad because it knows how confusing explaining a VPN is to people—especially through a Facebook ad. The NordVPN marketing team split the ad creative up into 2 parts: who can use this (windows, android, linux, iOS) and then uses the video to show why people should be using a VPN. This is a great example of explaining a tough concept with a limited amount of space and time.
Facebook Ad Example #34 | OpenTable
What Makes This Ad Great: OpenTable knows how valuable their product is when it comes to busy Valentine’s Day restaurant crowds. They’ve done a great job of reminding people about the scarcity of available tables in their copy “The Countdown to Valentine’s Day is on”, which is a marketing strategy that has been proven to work time and time again.
Facebook Ad Example #35 | Quickbooks
What Makes This Ad Great: What is a business owners largest struggle? Having more time. If you’re a business owner, you know how hard it is to manage your team, accounting, product, brand, etc. on a daily basis. Quickbooks knows this and uses their ad copy to show how business owners save 42 hours a month by using their accounting platform. Who wouldn’t want 42 more hours each month? This is a great way of making the value of their product felt by the viewers.
Facebook Ad Example #36 | Revive Superfoods
What Makes This Ad Great: This Revive Superfoods ad is quick and to the point. While some ads work well with tons of copy and an over-the-top video, Revive is finding success in the simple side of digital advertising. We’ve mentioned this ad in this article to show that sometimes simple and to the point is exactly what your customers want.
Facebook Ad Example #37 | Ritual
What Makes This Ad Great: This is another example of using social proof to get credibility for your product. Ritual is using social proof from Vogue, CNN, Forbes, and scientists to show why their vitamins are superior. They’re also touching upon the resistance their avatar feels to buying vitamins: they’re skeptic that they even work. This is a great example of using tried and true marketing strategies to show people that your product is what they’ve been looking for.
Facebook Ad Example #38 | SeatGeek
What Makes This Ad Great: SeatGeek is using their Facebook ad as more than just an ad for their ticket buying platform. They’re using it to announce Billie Eilish’s 2020 tour tickets are now available. This is great ad copy because it’s getting people who like the singer Billie Eilish to use SeatGeek to buy their concert tickets, and they sweeten the deal with a $20 off coupon code. Better yet, how easy is it going to be for their marketing team to see the impact of this campaign thanks to their discount code? Brilliant.
Facebook Ad Example #39 | SEMrush
What Makes This Ad Great: Well, what do we have here? A SEMrush lead magnet that is targeting people who want to know more about SEO. Guess what SEMrush’s software helps marketers with? You guessed it—SEO. This ad copy does a great job of leading people through the Customer Value Journey, starting with awareness and getting them to convert by choosing to get the lead magnet.
Facebook Ad Example #40 | Social Media Examiner
What Makes This Ad Great: In this ad, Social Media Examiner is talking about the after state somebody will experience if they don’t attend their Social Media Marketing World conference. This ad suggests they won’t be up-to-date with the important trends in social and they won’t know how to successfully implement the latest techniques—something their customer avatar certainly doesn’t want to experience.
Facebook Ad Example #41 | Sweat
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad is another great example of proving the power of showing people what they’re going to get in your product before they buy it, and then giving them an offer they don’t want to say no to. Fitness trainer and creator of the Sweat App, Kayla Itsines not only tells people what to expect from her workout app in the copy of this ad, but she also does the exercises herself in the video. Then, she offers $1 for one month of Sweat, lowering the barrier to entry and making people think, “Why not, I’ll give it a try.”
Facebook Ad Example #42 | Social SXSW
What Makes This Ad Great: This SXSW ad is speaking directly to a subset of SXSW attendees—the people interested in the art installations at their annual conference in Austin, Texas. We love this ad because it’s so specific to one of their customer avatars. We’re not sure if they’re doing this, but an ad like this gives SXSW a chance to segment users who signed up through this ad as “Art Interested” and to put them down a specific email funnel that talks about the artsy-side of SXSW.
Facebook Ad Example #43 | The Hustle
What Makes This Ad Great: This ad reminds us of a trick to ensure people understand what you’ve told them: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” In this ad, The Hustle does just that. First they tell you what they do, then they show you how they do it, and then they end by reminding you what they do. This is great ad copy that hones in on the value they’re trying to showcase.
Facebook Ad Example #44 | Tony Robbins
What Makes This Ad Great: There are different ways to sell information products, and in this case Tony is focusing on cumulation. In this ad, his marketing team is showing that you won’t need to spend an entire career learning how to be more like Tony if you just take his Business Mastery course. Their promise is a faster outcome, which is something almost all of us are looking for.
Facebook Ad Example #45 | Traffic & Conversion Summit
What Makes This Ad Great: We spend a lot of time looking at Facebook ads and seeing what makes them great (aka this article). That’s how we’ve created our own Facebook ad that we know will convert. What does this ad have that is similar to the others we’ve seen so far? Like Tony, we’re offering a cumulation of great knowledge in a small amount of time. Like HelloFresh, we’re using the social proof of the A-Player marketers we have on our T&C stages. And then lastly, we’re adding in a bit of FOMO by showing you how many marketers will be attending, and what you’ll be missing out on if you don’t come to San Diego.
Facebook Ad Example #46 |Waymo
What Makes This Ad Great: How do you get people to get in a car without a driver? You put somebody they’re familiar with in the car and show the viewer that if this person trusts their company, so can you. This is what Waymo Driver did by getting Larry Fitzgerald to take a ride in their self-driving car to show that it’s safe…and it’s cool.
Facebook Ad Example #47 | Zapier
What Makes This Ad Great: And lastly, we have Zapier. While they’re copy is’t something necessarily to write home about, what we love about this ad is how they’re video shows step-by-step how Zapier helps businesses, and uses a real-time testimonial from a happy customer. Whenever your customers can do the talking for you, let them.
Wow, that was a lot. You can take the goggles off now.
By looking at this many Facebook ads, you’ll now start to see patterns in the ads that show up on your newsfeed. You’ll see marketers using social proof, benefits, offers, scarcity, and FOMO to make people click the button. These are all patterns that will also work for your business. See? This definitely isn’t rocket science. It just requires some basic knowledge of what makes people buy and then how that works in a Facebook ad template.
