If you pay any attention to voices on the creative side of digital marketing, you’ve been told hundreds of times to “mAkE uGlY aDs”. It’s not bad advice, honestly. Ugly content and images are effective digital trojan horses for direct response ads. We’re pretty confident that the feed blight above is putting up numbers across platforms. Being primed to consume “ugly” organic content in our feeds, we’re more inclined to give an ugly ad a second glance before scrolling.
If you pay any attention to voices on the creative side of digital marketing, you’ve been told hundreds of times to “mAkE uGlY aDs”. It’s not bad advice, honestly. Ugly content and images are effective digital trojan horses for direct response ads. Being primed to consume “ugly” organic content in our feeds, we’re more inclined to give an ugly ad a second glance before scrolling. So, by all means, keep testing ugly ads and experimenting around what gets your audience’s attention. But… if you have a niche audience with a shared problem that needs solving, explore ads that (sometimes literally) speak the visual language of your customers. It’s rare to find an example as straightforward as this one, so we had to share it with you.
We were working with a DTC contact lens brand whose main USP was price. The client told us it wasn’t really worth testing any other USP because price was the only one that ever delivered results. (Obviously we tested this and wound up agreeing for the most part.) The client’s established perennial best-performer was a basic static ad featuring a prominent product shot and price callout.
Tasked with remixing the format to unlock more performance, I looked at the obvious areas to tweak: copy and product shot. Nothing felt particularly groundbreaking, so I shifted focus back to research. After spending some time reading Reddit threads and compiling inspo on Atria and Figma, I started to deconstruct the customer journey and look for shared experiences. Below is an abbreviated version of my thought process.
The Benchmark:
Question: What do all contact lens wearers experience as part of the buying process?
Answer: Confirming prescription/EYE EXAM, establishing backup glasses, choosing daily vs. monthly, choosing delivery time/method, checking reviews for comfort…
Epiphany: An eye exam is the required step — the universal part of the journey for everyone buying prescription contact lenses. First-time buyers, brand loyalists, switchers, it doesn’t matter — if they’re currently in the market for new contacts, they’re taking the exact same eye exam.
Hypothesis: Borrowing design features from the Snellen chart (the one used in standard eye exams), and using its font for ad copy, will immediately capture the attention of our target audience, leading to more conversions.
Execution:
The Outcome: CPA dropped, ROAS increased, and we finally dethroned the best-performer that had been the benchmark ad for years.
We’re not going to stop making ugly ads that grab attention and determine winning USPs anytime soon. But this test reminds us that the ads with the highest performance (the ones that also win the admiration and confidence of your clients) can be the ones that feel the most recognizable to your audience.
In this case, borrowing the visual language of the eye exam wasn’t just a design choice — it was a shortcut to recognition, trust, and attention. We spoke to the universal checkpoint that every contact-wearer passes before ever adding to cart. Borrowing the visual language of the moment allowed us to speak to the shared experience, awarding us instant attention, trust, and boosted performance.
TL;DR: Ugly ads interrupt. Familiar ads resonate. If your audience has a collective problem or shared experience, build creative that (sometimes literally) mirrors it. It can be as simple as changing up the font, because stopping the scroll can be as simple as mimicking something your audience already knows.
