The 5 Habits of Highly Effective Advertising

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Principal Creative Director, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
Sometimes, being distinctive and well-branded can be enough to get your ad noticed. 
But when it comes to building brand awareness and credibility, informing consumers about your products, growing your revenue or demonstrating value for premium pricing, you need to show how your brand fulfills consumers’ needs, while also illustrating how your solution and core values are unique. 
Showing your value in action
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Amazon’s home security company, Ring, aims to bring peace of mind to its customers. The brand connected to a cultural moment that not only resonated around home security, but also allowed the brand to join a trending conversation in a new space.
With the release of The Batman, Ring created Batman-themed Quick Replies, which are a feature that allows visitors to interact with the Ring doorbell—like an answering machine for the door. This marked the first time Ring partnered to create a custom Quick Reply. Across social media, hundreds of thousands of users shared videos of The Batman Quick Reply in action. The campaign even garnered larger media attention in publications like Apartment Therapy, Rolling Stone, The Guardian and more.
These kinds of innovative campaigns can help brands reach new audiences in creative and meaningful ways. Showing the reactions of people interacting with your brand’s product or service is valuable, as the Amazon Ads analysis found that 65% of top-performing campaigns across all categories feature people in the creative to drive intent.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Bring to life what sets your brand apart and what unique benefits will resonate most with your audience. To execute this habit, home in on a specific core audience you’re looking to reach in a meaningful way. Ask yourself, ‘What excites them? How can your brand naturally meet their needs in a way that’s unique from the competitors and disrupt the category status quo?’ To be meaningfully different, you must take calculated risks to push the brand forward.”  
—Heather Kehrberg
Director of Global Creative Success, Amazon Ads
Sometimes, being distinctive and well-branded can be enough to get your ad noticed. 
But when it comes to building brand awareness and credibility, informing consumers about your products, growing your revenue or demonstrating value for premium pricing, you need to show how your brand fulfills consumers’ needs, while also illustrating how your solution and core values are unique. 
Showing your value in action
Your browser does not support this video
Amazon’s home security company, Ring, aims to bring peace of mind to its customers. The brand connected to a cultural moment that not only resonated around home security, but also allowed the brand to join a trending conversation in a new space.
With the release of The Batman, Ring created Batman-themed Quick Replies, which are a feature that allows visitors to interact with the Ring doorbell—like an answering machine for the door. This marked the first time Ring partnered to create a custom Quick Reply. Across social media, hundreds of thousands of users shared videos of The Batman Quick Reply in action. The campaign even garnered larger media attention in publications like Apartment Therapy, Rolling Stone, The Guardian and more.
These kinds of innovative campaigns can help brands reach new audiences in creative and meaningful ways. Showing the reactions of people interacting with your brand’s product or service is valuable, as the Amazon Ads analysis found that 65% of top-performing campaigns across all categories feature people in the creative to drive intent.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Bring to life what sets your brand apart and what unique benefits will resonate most with your audience. To execute this habit, home in on a specific core audience you’re looking to reach in a meaningful way. Ask yourself, ‘What excites them? How can your brand naturally meet their needs in a way that’s unique from the competitors and disrupt the category status quo?’ To be meaningfully different, you must take calculated risks to push the brand forward.”  
—Heather Kehrberg
Director of Global Creative Success, Amazon Ads
People are motivated not only by logic, but also by emotions. Good creative doesn’t appeal just to the head, but also to the heart or the gut. People feel before they think.
Effective ads elicit some kind of emotion from consumers and connect that emotion back to the brand or product. Holiday ads, for example, often play to the joy or nostalgia people feel that time of year.
Many successful ads make an emotional connection by using the voices of the communities the brand serves. These ads talk less about the product proposition, focusing more on consumers’ inspiration than conversion. When done with intention, emotional differentiation can relate what the audience is feeling back to the brand, sharing how the brand may seem caring, funny, famous, lovable or simply “for me.”
Emotional response in action
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“Love Has No Labels” is a movement that promotes acceptance and inclusion of all people, across race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability. And the long-running campaign from the Ad Council inspires audiences to take meaningful action toward creating a more inclusive world.
A recent installment was inspired by the number of consumers who ask their Alexa-enabled device, “What is love?” In lieu of Alexa’s default answer, the prompt instead shared responses from real people giving their personal definition of love.
The campaign also featured a short documentary film and a 30-second ad, along with digital ads, that further compelled consumers to ask Alexa what love is—which they did three times more than they had prior to the campaign, per Amazon. Coupling display and video helps to enhance performance, as the Kantar analysis found that for campaigns that include video and display, brand awareness is 2 times higher than campaigns with display alone. Overall, 88% of top-performing campaigns across all categories feature video.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Getting consumers to engage and act is more difficult than ever. But the brands I’ve seen be most successful have told a different side to a story or have made an issue relevant by reducing the barrier to taking action.
“Brands that put some skin in the game get more respect and engagement if they truly believe in the cause they are standing for.”
—Joseph Delhommer
Head of U.S. CPG & Grocery, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
People are motivated not only by logic, but also by emotions. Good creative doesn’t appeal just to the head, but also to the heart or the gut. People feel before they think.
Effective ads elicit some kind of emotion from consumers and connect that emotion back to the brand or product. Holiday ads, for example, often play to the joy or nostalgia people feel that time of year.
Many successful ads make an emotional connection by using the voices of the communities the brand serves. These ads talk less about the product proposition, focusing more on consumers’ inspiration than conversion. When done with intention, emotional differentiation can relate what the audience is feeling back to the brand, sharing how the brand may seem caring, funny, famous, lovable or simply “for me.”
Emotional response in action
Your browser does not support this video
“Love Has No Labels” is a movement that promotes acceptance and inclusion of all people, across race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability. And the long-running campaign from the Ad Council inspires audiences to take meaningful action toward creating a more inclusive world.
A recent installment was inspired by the number of consumers who ask their Alexa-enabled device, “What is love?” In lieu of Alexa’s default answer, the prompt instead shared responses from real people giving their personal definition of love.
The campaign also featured a short documentary film and a 30-second ad, along with digital ads, that further compelled consumers to ask Alexa what love is—which they did three times more than they had prior to the campaign, per Amazon. Coupling display and video helps to enhance performance, as the Kantar analysis found that for campaigns that include video and display, brand awareness is 2 times higher than campaigns with display alone. Overall, 88% of top-performing campaigns across all categories feature video.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Getting consumers to engage and act is more difficult than ever. But the brands I’ve seen be most successful have told a different side to a story or have made an issue relevant by reducing the barrier to taking action.
“Brands that put some skin in the game get more respect and engagement if they truly believe in the cause they are standing for.”
—Joseph Delhommer
Head of U.S. CPG & Grocery, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
Your creative can’t be effective if you don’t know what customers actually want.
This can be a challenge for many marketers. They can become so focused on themselves and their brands that they lose sight of what resonates with their audience. They end up producing messages that communicate their brand story but don’t necessarily engage customers, which negates effectiveness.
The truth is, you can’t embrace the first four habits without executing this one. Every campaign needs to be tested to ensure it delivers in terms of distinctiveness, branding, showing value and evoking emotion.
Getting consumer input is not a onetime event; it requires a process of initial engagement, listening and follow-up. The strongest brands test throughout the creative development process.
They start by putting consumers’ needs first when developing ads. For top-performing automotive creative in the Kantar/Amazon Ads analysis, 47% provide critical information that consumers regularly seek out when considering a new vehicle, such as safety features, awards won and interior images. And 77% of top-performing hospitality creative spotlights how the brand can help consumers learn more information and consider the service in the future.
Brands also test to see what resonates with the audience, comparing different combinations of creative elements within an ad, such as imagery and messaging. For example, according to the Kantar analysis, multichannel campaigns with multiple creative variations can be very impactful; in fact, 49% of top-performing campaigns across categories feature more than one creative. That said, it’s critical that​ messaging is consistent—because too many messages within the same campaign can dilute retention—and creative needs to be customized for each channel.
They also A/B-test call-to-action copy or split-test a landing page. Once live, brands track metrics closely to optimize creative performance. They use qualitative testing to understand what prospective customers think. They use social listening to find out what people are talking about on social networks.
In the digital world, there are endless opportunities to test and learn. Don’t be afraid of feedback.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Taking in customer feedback is not always easy. It’s clear that temporary solutions seldom work but setting a long-term plan and taking steps to act on it does earn customer trust. We are lucky to be in a time where we can test and optimize creative, and easily swap out work that isn’t performing well. But having the capability to do so doesn’t negate the necessity to address the core issue customers highlighted in the first place.”
—Joseph Delhommer
Head of U.S. CPG & Grocery, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
Your creative can’t be effective if you don’t know what customers actually want.
This can be a challenge for many marketers. They can become so focused on themselves and their brands that they lose sight of what resonates with their audience. They end up producing messages that communicate their brand story but don’t necessarily engage customers, which negates effectiveness.
The truth is, you can’t embrace the first four habits without executing this one. Every campaign needs to be tested to ensure it delivers in terms of distinctiveness, branding, showing value and evoking emotion.
Getting consumer input is not a onetime event; it requires a process of initial engagement, listening and follow-up. The strongest brands test throughout the creative development process.
They start by putting consumers’ needs first when developing ads. For top-performing automotive creative in the Kantar/Amazon Ads analysis, 47% provide critical information that consumers regularly seek out when considering a new vehicle, such as safety features, awards won and interior images. And 77% of top-performing hospitality creative spotlights how the brand can help consumers learn more information and consider the service in the future.
Brands also test to see what resonates with the audience, comparing different combinations of creative elements within an ad, such as imagery and messaging. For example, according to the Kantar analysis, multichannel campaigns with multiple creative variations can be very impactful; in fact, 49% of top-performing campaigns across categories feature more than one creative. That said, it’s critical that​ messaging is consistent—because too many messages within the same campaign can dilute retention—and creative needs to be customized for each channel.
They also A/B-test call-to-action copy or split-test a landing page. Once live, brands track metrics closely to optimize creative performance. They use qualitative testing to understand what prospective customers think. They use social listening to find out what people are talking about on social networks.
In the digital world, there are endless opportunities to test and learn. Don’t be afraid of feedback.
What Amazon Ads experts say
“Taking in customer feedback is not always easy. It’s clear that temporary solutions seldom work but setting a long-term plan and taking steps to act on it does earn customer trust. We are lucky to be in a time where we can test and optimize creative, and easily swap out work that isn’t performing well. But having the capability to do so doesn’t negate the necessity to address the core issue customers highlighted in the first place.”
—Joseph Delhommer
Head of U.S. CPG & Grocery, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
About Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads helps brands design ad experiences that delight customers and deliver meaningful business results. With hundreds of millions of global active customer accounts, and first-party insights into shopping, streaming and browsing, brands can craft relevant campaigns that enhance the customer experience. Solutions on Amazon.com; services like Twitch, Freevee, Alexa, Amazon Music’s ad-supported tier; and collaborations with third-party publishers and exchanges make Amazon Ads an amplifier for brands to reach the right audiences in the right places, both on and off Amazon .
Illustrations by Laurène Boglio
About Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads helps brands design ad experiences that delight customers and deliver meaningful business results. With hundreds of millions of global active customer accounts, and first-party insights into shopping, streaming and browsing, brands can craft relevant campaigns that enhance the customer experience. Solutions on Amazon.com; services like Twitch, Freevee, Alexa, Amazon Music’s ad-supported tier; and collaborations with third-party publishers and exchanges make Amazon Ads an amplifier for brands to reach the right audiences in the right places, both on and off Amazon .