Finding Breakout Ads

Howdy readers 🥰

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🎨 The 3×3 Creative Risk Grid for Finding Breakout Ads: The proven framework for balancing safety, scale, and surprise, without blowing the budget

🧲 Pinterest’s New Visual Strategy

 🏆 Ad of the Day

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🎨 The 3×3 Creative Risk Grid for Finding Breakout Ads: The proven framework for balancing safety, scale, and surprise, without blowing the budget

If you’re only testing safe variations, you’re just A/B-ing your way to stagnation. If you only chase wild ideas, you’ll torch your ROAS.

The sweet spot? A system that lets you scale predictably while still finding breakout creative. That’s what the 3×3 Creative Risk Grid was built for. It’s not just a creative idea, it’s a test discipline.

🧩 The Framework: 3 Levels of Risk × 3 States of Intent

Here’s how to map your ad concepts based on how bold they are and how ready the audience is.

• Cold = unaware, likely first-touch or scroll
• Warm = engaged, visited or clicked, familiar with the brand
• Hot = abandoned cart, subscriber, returning customer

If your media mix leans heavily on one row or one column, you’re exposing yourself to risk either from overspending on safe, or from not discovering high-leverage creative at all.

Real Example: Mid-AOV Beauty Brand

A skincare brand ran into creative fatigue after scaling basic UGC and “3 reasons why” product demos.

Here’s how they broke out of the loop using this grid:

• Safe/Cold: “Clinically proven ingredients for clearer skin”
• Weird/Cold: “Your moisturizer is making your acne worse.”
• Wild/Warm: A mock infomercial with intentionally bad acting and ironic narration
• Safe/Hot: Customer review slideshow with overlayed trust stats
• Weird/Hot: “You’ve tried 6 routines. This one ends your Sunday panic spiral.”

Result: The Weird/Cold and Wild/Warm combinations delivered 2.1x CTR and +27% % ROAS over the previous top-performers because they caught attention without feeling like ads.

Creative Brief Prompts by Quadrant

Build a Cadence, Not a Fluke

Testing this grid isn’t a one-off. The highest-performing teams:

• Review their quadrant coverage every 2 weeks
• Benchmark top ads by quadrant, so performance isn’t judged equally
• Layer spend toward quadrants that outperform the audience heat

Recommendation: One new concept from each row every 14–21 days. Use variations within the quadrant for iteration, but rotate across to unlock breakthroughs.

Final Thought: Predictable Breakout Power

This grid doesn’t just help you take risks, it helps you take the right risks.

It’s the difference between creative chaos and creative ROI. When every ad has a place, a purpose, and a level of boldness tailored to audience intent, you stop guessing and start compounding.

🧲 Pinterest’s New Visual Strategy  

Pinterest just shared fresh tips to help brands align with its expanding visual search tools and shifting user behavior. As in-image scanning and aesthetic-driven discovery become central to how people shop, product Pins need to be built for visual intent, not just keywords.

The Breakdown:

1. Keep Catalogs Fresh – Upload a detailed product catalog with attributes like brand name, pricing, color, and size. Pinterest’s AI uses this data to understand and match products to user queries more accurately.

2. Use Lifestyle Imagery at Scale – Pinterest prefers product Pins that feature lifestyle imagery with varied aesthetics and backgrounds. Performance+ creative can automatically generate lifestyle-style backgrounds for each product Pin, making this easy to scale.

3. Expand Reach With Visual Targeting – Performance+ targeting scans the creative content of your Pins to understand their visual style. It then expands your audience by finding users engaging with similar visuals, without relying on keywords or interest targeting. 

Visual-first shopping is Pinterest’s core strength, and now, with tools like Performance+, brands can align their Pins with how people actually browse. With 570M+ active users and a new dedicated space for managing content. 

🎥 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Big Pain Points in a Single Line - “Stop bloating, skin acne, gut pain” is a high-impact opening, it's the trifecta of modern gut-skin fatigue. This headline doesn't explain, it promises, pure results-first copy built for impulse.

Trust by Star Rating - Featuring a 4.8/5 star rating with visual orange stars builds instant credibility. Even without a testimonial, the average rating softens doubt and nudges conversion.

Clinical-Sounding Benefits, Simplified - “Eliminate waste, support microbiome, healthy skin” uses semi-scientific terms without being alienating. That blend of digestibility and authority is perfect for wellness shoppers who want natural + data.

Broader Insights:

The ad taps into the growing belief that skin health is deeply tied to digestion. It doesn’t waste time explaining the mechanism, it just connects the two directly and lets the viewer assume credibility.

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