The Future of Creative Testing: Modular Creative

In this post, we’re diving deep into the future of ad creation: modular creative.

What does that even mean?

Think of modular creative as approaching your ads like a puzzle...or a lego build. Instead of creating an ad that is a single asset from start to finish, modular creative breaks each portion of the ad into discrete parts that can be swapped in and out quickly and easily.

Most ads follow the same formula:

• The opener or hook
• The message
• The call to action
• Traditional ad creative treats these components as inseparable, and traditional creative teams will often create all of these components in one single shoot or production run. And that means that when an ad is underperforming, teams will often be tasked with starting from scratch to try something new. Ugh.
• Modular creative, on the other hand, treats each of these components as its own unit. In a single production run, creative teams may source a wide variety of assets for each of these sections
  — including UGC from social media creators, professionally produced photo/video assets, animations, etc. Then, editors will slice and dice each of these assets into a nearly endless number of combinations.
• That way, when an ad is underperforming, the part that isn’t resonating with audiences can be quickly identified (we’ll get to how in a minute) and iterated upon.
• So why is modular creative the future of advertising?
• There are a couple of reasons why modular creative is the path forward for social media advertising, particularly when it comes to reaching customers on Instagram and Facebook. But the kicker is this:‍
• Modular creative takes ad production from a qualitative exercise to a quantitative, measurable, and analytical endeavor. It provides a framework for quickly creating the best possible ads.‍
• The truth is that most brands can’t afford to gamble on creative anymore. Modular creative, when paired with the right analytics tools, solves this problem.

Instead of pulling reasons why customers aren’t responding to ads out of the sky (or, you know, somewhere else), modular creative allows teams to compare one version of an opener to another and see which one has higher thumbstop rates (we'll explain what this means shortly). Then, they can use that data to make more informed decisions for the next iteration of the ad, and so on and so forth. This means no more blowing budgets on huge shoots that produce assets that simply don’t resonate with audiences.

In case you didn’t catch it, modular creative is so cool because...

• It cuts production costs by allowing teams to create a library of evergreen professional video and photo assets and cheaply sourced UGC that can be combined in new ways over and over again.
• It allows meaningful data to be attached to ad creative.
• That data can be used to create better-performing ad iterations and to learn about what resonates the most with customers about your brand, products, value props, etc.

Modular creative 🤝 Data & analytics

Ok — modular creative allows teams to do more informed and efficient testing and iteration of their ads. But how, exactly, does that work?

First, let’s do a little primer on the creative metrics that matter.

• Thumbstop Rate. This allows us to track if an ad stopped a user’s scroll, and can be used to identify the best opener.‍
• Hold Rate. This tells us how long a user stuck around to watch the ad. It can tell us if the message of the ad resonates and if the transitions are structured in a way that continues to capture the user’s attention.‍
• Click Through Rate (CTR). This tells us how many users took action on an ad. It can tell us if we had a strong call to action or incentive.‍
• Conversion Rate. This tells us if the ad was successful in generating that cash money. 💰

It's the ultimate marker of success for an ad.

At Coast, we partner with an analytics platform called Motion to help track and report on each of these metrics. For a hypothetical ad, Motion’s data could allow us to see that...

• Opener 3 had the highest thumb stop rate‍
• Message 6 had the highest hold rate‍
• CTA 1 had the highest CTR & conversion rates

We can then use this data to combine each of these modular assets into the best-performing version of an ad possible.

This obviously boosts ad performance and revenue, but it also does something of equal importance: it gives brands a chance to really listen to their customers and to show up for them in a better way with this knowledge. So even when an ad underperforms from a conversion rate perspective, you’ve walked away with invaluable knowledge about what customers are looking for.

Ok, so what’s the catch?

To unleash the full potential of modular creative, teams need to be extremely organized and ultra-nimble. Many internal creative teams aren’t set up to keep track of dozens of variations of each ad component, the ways those components have been combined to date, the stories those combinations tell, how new iterations are changing these stories, new ideas for creative concepts, influencers creating fresh UGC each month...you get the picture. 😵

To get it right, you need to have synergy between creative and paid media teams. You need to know how platforms like Instagram and TikTok work in order to understand why metrics are impactful and what story the data is telling about a brand and its customers. This type of hybrid approach is rare, but is one that more and more brands and agencies will need to adopt in order to survive the new era of digital marketing we’ve found ourselves in.

Curious to learn more? Let’s talk.