Welcome back to Funnel Vision, the weekly newsletter that puts performance creative & growth marketing in focus. Brought to you by the crew at Ready Set.

The first photograph was taken in 1826 by French inventor Joseph Niépce. Today, the average person snaps 20 photos a day. In the time it took to read this intro, roughly 736,800 more pictures were captured worldwide.

Here’s what’s inside today’s edition:

• Why static ads are still core to a holistic creative strategy

• Actionable tips for making your statics pop—and convert

• How to scale winning image ads into entire campaigns

Reading time: 5 minutes

CREATIVE STRATEGY

6 Counter-Intuitive Tips for Making Static Ads That Convert

At Ready Set, we might be all about video. But we also appreciate a high-performing ad format when we see one. And there’s fewer high-performing formats with the staying power of static image ads.

Static ads (absolutely) still matter (and convert) in 2025.

They are a core component of a holistic, multi-format performance creative strategy. And they’re a perfect complement to video ads for counterintuitive reasons, which we’ll get into later in this article.

The tips we’re about to share are far from generic. There will be no stale “stick to safe zones” here. Nope, these are hard-earned, data-backed insights that, when applied, will give your static ads an instant performance boost.

Let’s get into it.

1. Use bold, high-contrast hooks

Lead with a single big number. If numbers are irrelevant to your product/service, use a razor-sharp less-than-five-word promise or benefit instead. 

Dark backgrounds against light figures help make those numbers pop. “Dark mode” designs consistently outperform images with light backgrounds.

2. Use lots of text

Sounds counterintuitive. But text-heavy ads get scrollers to do one hugely important thing: stop scrolling and read.

Our most successful concepts mirror the interactions we take part in every day. 

Text threads, handwritten sticky notes, and conversations inside familiar app interfaces let viewers feel as though they’re catching a glimpse of a genuine, private exchange.

When the copy is on-point and the language is right (the more informal and casual the better) it effectively and efficiently drives the message home.

3. Use before and after ads

If we listed every creative concept you could explore in a static ad, we’d be here all day. But there’s one that’s worth calling out for its thumb-stopping effectiveness: the before and after ad.

This is a great concept for a few reasons:

• It shows the transformation your product/service offers in one image

• It positions the benefits against the relevant pain points

• It's a simple comparison that everyone's familiar with

4. Show hands holding phones

This tip is especially applicable to apps, as it literally puts your product in the customer’s hands.

Showing off the UI via a phone-in-hand image positions your brand as part of everyday life. These concepts can be paired with light design or even animation for a visual pop, or could quite literally be a photo of someone holding a phone using your app.

Bonus tips: Dashboard screenshots and app store icons act as subtle visual primers that activate when someone is browsing for your app. 

5. Inclusivity and cultural relevance are performance drivers

Ads featuring people across different genders, races, and ages don’t only signal representation and inclusivity, but it’s exactly the kind of diversification that boosts performance.

Including different types of people means your ads are more likely to resonate with niche communities—ones you may never have engaged otherwise.

Similarly, leaning into cultural nuances, trending moments, and casual language marks your brand as relevant and worth paying attention to.

6. Never stop testing

Static image ads are the ideal vehicle for fast testing.

It’s fairly easy to create multiple ad variations within one concept. Especially if the concept is video-based and the talent/s, production materials (set, cameras, etc), script, and offer are already established.

It’s the most economical way to explore new ideas. Here’s the process in a nutshell:

• Launch multiple image ads each exploring a different angle/hook

• Identify the performant characteristic of the winning static

• Iterate on the winning element and expand to video, GIFs, carousels, etc.

To see this approach in action, be sure to check out this week’s ad of the week.

Statics ads are core to a holistic performance strategy

Single image ads are underrated drivers of a high-performance creative strategy. In no small part because they are the R&D lab of performance creative.

• Test fast. It is relatively fast and efficient to spin up and test multiple ideas/hooks/angles to put out.

• Find the signal. When a novel idea lands, that insight graduates to the big leagues.

• Exploit everywhere. A single flame of a winning idea can quickly spark a raging inferno of ROAS—statics can be scaled into multiple formats and even form the foundation of a brand new concept.

Static image ads themselves are also major performance drivers. We’ve seen exceptional performance from hit image ads, especially around the holidays and major shopping events like Black Friday.

We suggest a 70:20:10 ratio:

• 70% proven winners

• 20% iterative tweaks

• 10% big bold ideas

Plug this mix of static into your performance creative strategy to make sure every single dollar is either learning or earning.

CLICKABLE LINKS 👆️

💰️ Germany is mulling a 10% tax on large online platforms like Google and Facebook, joining a raft of other countries to slap levies on the big tech giants.

⏸️ Fubo unveils programmatic “pause ads” that appear when the viewer hits pause. Finally you’ll have something to watch when you pause your show.

👀 Here are all the ad advances announced at at Google Marketing Live 2025. Want more Google? Here’s 100 things announced at the I/O conference everyone’s still buzzing about.

😬 Anthropic’s CEO issues dire warnings on the imminent white collar “blood bath” unleashed by meteoric AI advances. This is fine.

🤑 TikTok launches $1 million ad credit program in a bid to curry favor with small U.S. business in the face of a ban.

🎬️ This guide to what makes a good movie trailer has a surprising number of parallels to making great video ads.

FROM OUR SPONSOR

AD OF THE WEEK ✨ 

This ad from Upstart, a consumer lending company, is the result of the iterative process detailed above. By acting on a performant signal from a single image ad, we scaled this ad into a winning video campaign.

Brand: Atticus
Platform: Facebook & Instagram

WHY IT WORKS 🧠

🧪 This ad is what we call an exploit. An exploit is a method to take an ad that’s performing and improve upon it to create something entirely new.

🏅 First, the winning element was isolated by running multiple ads with single variations. This enabled us to pinpoint the performance driver: the hand-written note.

⚙️ We then scaled out that idea by producing dozens of ads all centered around this concept, with the placards ad ultimately winning out.

Thanks for reading!

That’s all for this week. Seeya next time 🫶 

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