Last month we ran $557,388 in Facebook ads for two e-commerce clothing brands.

Beyond driving sales, we also wanted to use the campaigns to unearth what makes certain ads crush it, and others fall flat.

So we applied our Intel Tags to every piece of ad creative to track individual elements like background color, image composition, and product types.

Doing this allowed us to answer a variety of questions like, “Does the carousel format work better than single images for driving clicks?”

Let’s take a look at the six takeaways from our analysis to find out.

CAMPAIGN SCOPE

  • Objective: Link Clicks
  • Campaign Length: 42 days
  • Countries: United States, Hong Kong, Australia, Russia, UK, Canada, Korea
  • Targeting: Interest-based and focused on premium brands, shopping keywords, and apparel keywords

IMAGES WITH COPY VS IMAGES WITHOUT COPY (WOMEN & MEN)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Copy vs No Copy

Result: Ads featuring images without copy produced click-through rates that were 40% higher among women, and 54% higher among men.

DISCOUNT VS NO DISCOUNT (WOMEN & MEN)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Discount vs no discount

Result: Ads that didn’t mention a specific discount amount produced click-through rates that were 46% higher among women, and 43% higher among men.

LOCALIZATION VS NO LOCALIZATION (WOMEN & MEN)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Localization

Result: Ads that used localized copy produced click-through rates that were 22% higher among women, and 87% higher among men.

PRODUCT IMAGES VS MODELS WEARING PRODUCTS (WOMEN & MEN)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Model vs no Model

Result: Ads that focused on a product instead of a model wearing the product produced nominally better click-through rates among women (8% higher) and moderately better click-through rates among men (37% higher).

MULTIPLE PRODUCTS VS SINGLE PRODUCT (WOMEN ONLY)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Single Product vs Multiple

Result: Ads that focused on a product instead of multiple products produced click-through rates that were 37% higher among women.

SINGLE IMAGE VS CAROUSEL (WOMEN ONLY)

A/B Testing Facebook Ads: Single ad vs carousel

Result: Ads that featured a carousel instead of a single image produced click-through rates that were 23% higher among women.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

So what did we learn from running $557k in e-commerce Facebook ads?

  • There were a few standout elements that significantly improved the performance of ads shown to both men and women, including:
    1. Using images without copy
    2. Not mentioning specific discounts in ads
  • For men, using their native language in the ad drastically increased click-through rates, yet this did not hold true for women.
  • Though not tested in ads shown to men, focusing on just a single product in ads shown to women, rather than including a variety of products in ad creative, tended to provide a boost to click-through rates.