The ad styles library
Ten video ad styles that keep running.
We pulled about a hundred short-form ads still running in the Meta Ad Library months after launch, took them apart, and sorted them into the styles that keep showing up. Each style gets a plain write-up: what it is, how it’s built, what it’s good for, real examples, and the prompt we’d use to make one.
All styles
01
Customer testimonial
A customer tells what went wrong and how you fixed it, over footage of their working day.
02
Founder story
The owner says why the business exists, in their own space, with the making as proof.
03
Expert to camera
The lawyer, injector or advisor answers the question every customer asks, straight to camera.
04
Creator UGC review
A creator who already uses the product shows it in their real life, phone in hand.
05
Problem → solution demo
Show the problem for a second, then the product fixing it, one step per shot.
Which style for which business
Start with the one that fits.
Most businesses need two styles: one that stops a stranger, and one that earns trust once they know the name.
Consumer brands
- Creator UGC reviewThe home of the style. Skincare, food and drink, home goods and personal care all run it constantly.
- Problem → solution demoThe workhorse for anything tactile: kitchen, cleaning, beauty, tools. Show it working in the first two seconds.
- Founder storyFood, drink, skincare and personal care, wherever the founder had the problem first. Small brands own this; big ones can't fake it.
- Street interviewThe natural home: food and drink taste tests, price guesses for fashion and home goods, "smell this" for personal care.
- Us vs. themFood and drink taste tests, cleaning products, subscriptions that replace a store run. Keep it fair: same light, same amount, same angle.
Lenders & financial services
- Customer testimonialThe strongest style in the category. A borrower's story (the bank said no, the order they nearly lost) does what no rate or feature line can.
- Expert to cameraA loan advisor answering "will a bank loan me $50,000?" or "what does a lender look at?" builds trust before the ask. Never promise approval.
- ListicleStrong: "what you need to qualify", "3 reasons banks say no", "questions to ask before you take an advance". Keep it advice, never promises of approval.
- Us vs. themThe bank is the natural "them": the paperwork, the waiting, the no. Keep speed claims typical and disclaimed, and label actors.
- SkitSurprisingly good: the bank that asks for everything and says no is a villain every business owner knows. Label actors and keep approval claims off the script.
Local & professional services
- Expert to cameraThe natural format for personal-injury law, med spas and home services. The attorney, injector or tech is the brand, and the question is the hook.
- Before and afterThe core style for roofers, remodelers and med spas. Use your own job photos and patients who've agreed in writing.
- Customer testimonialStrong for roofers, HVAC and law firms: a homeowner or client walking through what happened. Keep outcomes soft; legal and medical ads carry extra rules on testimonials.
- Founder storyStrong for law firms, clinics and contractors. The owner's reason (a crash, a bad contractor, a family business) is the trust signal.
- ListicleThe classic for law firms and home services: steps after a crash, questions to ask before you hire, signs you need a new roof. The oldest ad we watched is one.
True of every style
What long-running ads have in common.
Style decides the story. These decide whether anyone stays for it. They held across every format we measured.
- Talk from the first frame. 21 of the 22 ads with a voice said their first word within 0.7 seconds. None opened on a logo, a title or a slow establishing shot.
- Put music under the voice, quietly. Every long-running ad with a voice had a music bed under it, usually about 10 LU (loudness units) below the voice, which sounds roughly half as loud. Every voiced ad with no music was a new one still being tested.
- Put the claims on screen. The long-runners say the story and write the hard facts: "FREE OF CHARGE", "SAVE THOUSANDS", an offer amount, a disclaimer. Captions run the whole way, because most people watch with the sound off.
- Don't worry about when the brand is said. Long-running ads named the brand anywhere from 1.5 seconds in to never (one lets a second voice say it over the end card). The story carries the ad; the name can wait.
- Polish isn't the point. The longest-running ad we measured, a lawyer's, ran 829 days at 640×360 with a stock background and a typo in a caption. Being clear and believable beat looking expensive.
- Keep the end card short. Two to three seconds: brand, one action. The best testimonials let the last spoken line finish over it, which carries attention into the call to action.
Didn’t make the cut
Styles we left out, and why.
- Motion-graphics explainer
- Lenders run plenty of it, though most of Bluevine's long-running ones are 6–8 second bumpers, and a roofer's 21-second animated checklist has run for 684 days. It earns its place as a supporting ad. We left it out of the ten because with no person on screen it gives up the trust signal the rest of the library runs on.
- Unboxing
- It has the highest hit rate in Motion's 2026 benchmark, but it only works for things that arrive in a box. It's folded into Creator UGC review as a variant.
- Product-only film (macro, ASMR, lookbook)
- Beautiful and good for retargeting a known brand, but consumer-only, and thin as a first touch: the Lunya lookbook we measured has no brand name, benefit or call to action. The single-shot process films worth making are covered under the demo.
- Green-screen reaction
- A creator in front of a review, article or screenshot. It's a useful hook wrapper for UGC or an expert, and a bath remodeler has run one well for three months, but it isn't a story shape of its own.
- Podcast clip
- Two people at microphones borrowing a show's credibility. One lender runs a good one (it's in the listicle post, because what's said is a list). But a staged "podcast" edges toward a fake endorsement, and on its own it's an expert to camera with extra furniture.
- Reviews montage
- Five-star reviews read aloud only work with a real library of reviews, and a generated one is exactly what the FTC's 2024 rule on fake reviews prohibits. Treat it as a retargeting cut of real testimonials.
- Offer or promo ad
- The biggest spender in Motion's data, but in video it's a layer, not a style: a price on screen and an end card on top of a demo, an owner selfie or a skit. Several posts here show where the offer sits: on screen for the whole ad, or on the end card.
- Reply-to-comment and day-in-the-life
- Both are ways to open another style: a comment reply is a creator review or an expert answer with the question on screen, and a day in the life is a mini-doc. They're covered inside those posts.
How we picked
The Meta Ad Library shows every ad a brand is running and the day it started, but no spend or results. So the one performance signal anyone outside the company can see is how long an ad has stayed on. An ad still running after 30, 90 or 800 days is almost certainly paying for itself; a losing ad gets switched off within a week or two. Every real example here had run at least 30 days, and all but one were still running when we checked on Sep 29, 2026. We give each one’s start date and Library ID so you can check it yourself.
We measured two dozen of them frame by frame (shot lengths, how much of the runtime is a talking head, how loud the music sits under the voice, where the brand is first said) and read the playbooks that ad agencies and creative-analytics tools publish. Real brands’ ads are cited as references and linked, never hosted here. The example ads on these pages are our own, made with OpenCraft for invented brands.
Pick a style. Make the ad.
Every style has a prompt. Press the button, fill in your product, and approve the storyboard before anything is filmed.
Make your first ad