Hi, I'm Simon.
Today, Simon says: native ads.
Native ads are one of the top-performing static formats on Meta right now. But here's what most brands are sleeping on: native is elite at top of the funnel, that part's not up for debate. Where brands are losing is treating it as only that: TOF awareness, nothing more. That's the mistake.
If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say "native ad," they're the ads that look like a post you'd scroll past on Facebook: the kind your long-time-no-see aunt would put up. Mostly ugly. No text on the image, no context, but the caption underneath is usually a wall of text, a whole story pretending to be a real post.
Let me show you some below:
Old woman at the doctor
Before-after
Doctor Ad
What I have been seeing for the past few days is that a lot of brands are annoyed, because the native gets the click and then nothing converts, people don’t buy their product.
The part they got wrong isn't the ad format. It's where the ad sends people. I got this wrong too for a while, and part of it is just that Meta changes constantly, which is exactly why you should always be experimenting with creative.
My real advantage here, as a CEO, creative person, and obsessed with the Meta algorithm, is that I'm in over 80 Meta ad accounts from my clients.
What I have been seeing for the past few days is that the natives actually printing right now, the ones spending six figures each, are linking the CTA straight to the product page. And lately, the natives actually printing, the ones spending six figures each, are linking the CTA straight to the product page. Not to an advertorial (one of those long, article-style pages that reads like a news story but is really just selling you something), not to a listicle, not to some long "here's the science" explainer. Straight to the PDP.
These are two examples I took from the Meta ad Library from native ads that go straight to PDP:
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Every week I set aside time to review Meta ad accounts so I can spot trends, inconsistencies, surprises lol.
I opened one this week spending around $2M/month. A single native static in there had spent about 42 grand on its own. It’s a police officer stopping a woman in the middle of the road. Authority figure, no context (as always with native ads), no text at all (because the copy is on the description, always).
I followed the click and it dropped me straight on the product page. It's the best-spending ad in the account, it outspends videos, for everyone still claiming static is dead.
Here's my read on why skipping the advertorial works:
The native ad already did the hard part: it stopped someone mid-scroll and got them to click on something they weren't even shopping for. That click is the expensive moment, and now you've got their attention. If your next move is "read this whole article first," you've just added a step. Every extra step is somewhere people drop off, and a chunk of them will.
And if your product page already does what the advertorial was supposed to, which is showcasing good photos, a clear promise, reviews sitting right there, then the advertorial isn't warming anyone up. It's just one more page sitting between the click and the checkout.
Here's why it works: By the time someone clicks a native ad, they've already read that whole wall of text. An advertorial just serves it to them again: the same long read, one more time. And they're tired, they already did the reading.
They clicked because they're interested, so you drop them straight on the product page and let them.
One thing from last edition: the reason these natives earn the click at all is almost always an authority figure, a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a grandmother, a cop. That's the creative half. This is the other half: get the creative right, then stop hiding the product behind an advertorial.
If you spend on Meta and you're not sure whether this is you, it's a fifteen-minute check. Open your account, find your best native, see where the click goes. If it lands on an advertorial, run the exact same ad straight to the product page and let them fight. There's a real chance the page you spent three weeks building is the reason your CPA looks bad.
Most brands never check. They assume a native ad is a top-of-funnel thing and leave it there, never testing whether it could actually drive the sale. The beauty (and probably the curse) of Meta is that this stuff changes fast; you just have to be paying enough attention to catch it. Or you come to me, since I'm sitting in 80+ ad accounts watching it happen. Your choice.
That's it for this one.
Reply and tell me: where does your best native ad send the click right now? straight to the product page, off to an advertorial, or you honestly have no idea? I read everything, and the best answers become future editions.
Talk soon,
Simon.