Facebook and Instagram ad examples, sorted by what they're doing
Ten ad formats that keep showing up in the Meta Ad Library for months at a time, what makes each one work, and how to make your own version.
TLDR
- Scroll the Meta Ad Library for a week and the same ten formats keep coming up in ads that have run for months.
- None of them are clever. Most look like they were made on a phone. That’s the point.
- The examples here are mock-ups of each pattern, so you can see the shape. Go find real ones in your own category and save those.
- Save the landing page with every ad. Half of what makes an ad work is where it sends you.
1. The customer talking to camera (UGC)
A real-looking person, a phone held at arm’s length, “okay so I was skeptical but…”. It works because it doesn’t look like an ad until second four, and by then you’re watching.
What makes a good one: the hook in the first second is a problem, not the product. “My shins used to kill me after 5k.”
2. The founder
Same format, but it’s the person who made the thing. “I started this because…”. Common for DTC brands and small SaaS. It borrows trust from a human face, and you can’t copy it with a stock photo.
3. The problem, then the product
Frame one: the annoying thing (tangled cables, a messy desktop, 60 tabs). Frame two: the fix. Static or video. It’s the oldest format in advertising, and you’ll still find versions of it that have been live since last year.
4. Us versus them
A two-column table: us, with ticks, “the other guys”, with crosses. Blunt, easy to read on a phone, and it answers “why this one?” before anyone asks.
5. The review screenshot
A screenshot of a five-star review, sometimes a tweet or an App Store review, and nothing else. Social proof with zero production cost.
6. The stat
One big number. “2,100 five-star reviews.” “Ships in 24 hours.” “18 hours, cold brewed.” Works best when the number is weirdly specific.
7. The lo-fi meme
A meme format everyone knows, applied to your product. Cheap, fast, and it goes stale in about three weeks, so brands run lots of them. Meta even has a “memes” filter in the ad library now.
8. The carousel how-to
Five slides that teach something useful, product on the last one. Great for B2B, where a single image rarely explains enough.
9. The offer, front and centre
“50% off your first box.” No story, no hook, just the deal in the first frame. Runs forever for brands with a good first-order offer, and it’s usually the control every other ad is tested against.
10. The unboxing
Hands, a box, what’s inside. Satisfying to watch, and it answers “what do I actually get?” for anything physical.
How to use these
Don’t copy them. Pick the two formats that fit your product, then go to the ad library and find five real examples of each in your category, running for at least two months. Save them with their landing pages. Now you’ve got a brief.
The easiest way to keep them: paste each ad library link into Savepad. It saves the creative, the copy and the landing page together, and you tag them by format (#ugc, #comparison, #review). There’s a full walkthrough in how to build an ad swipe file.
When you make your own, ad specs for every platform has the sizes and copy limits, the ad copy character counter shows where Meta cuts your text, and the ad brief template turns the whole thing into a PDF for your designer.