Make your ads uglier

👋 Hi friends -

Welcome to The Newsletter Growth Memo. Twice a month, I share short reflections with my newsletter clients + other operators.

Zero formality, ads, or affiliate links - just a guy sharing learnings from working with media operators doing $25k-$2M+ / month with newsletters.

New reader highlights: Ruben, Founder @ The VC Corner | Brian, CBO @ Pray.com | Becca, Co-founder & COO @ Workweek

Want to know what ads are performing for the top-spending newsletter brands?

Me too.

So I hosted an invite-only roundtable as part of the Newsletter Accelerator I ran this summer.

People Inc., Puck, 6AM City, and 30+ other publishers joined to listen in.

I sat alongside 1440, Morning Brew, and Industry Dive (we collectively represent the majority of the newsletters spending 7-8 figures annually on paid growth) and had a frank conversation about performance marketing.

Closed doors, no recordings allowed.

It was awesome - everyone went full transparency on CPLs, spend, channel mix, etc.

All that will stay secret! But the session confirmed something I’ve believed for a while now:

70% of the winning creative formats right now are "ugly ads."

What do ugly ads look like?

Even DTC brands like Flakes are using text over video for purchases. Pretty cool!

First, no one cares about your brand or product.

They care about what you can do for them.

Even if you don’t believe me, this is an idea that will serve you when copywriting.

I see a lot of polished, on-brand creative that probably felt good to make for some brand marketer somewhere, but has 0 efficacy.

You want to be clear, not clever.

Second, AI will only make this more important - authenticity (real people or content that feels native to the organic feed) becomes the differentiator.

Since our roundtable, publishers are experimenting.

Puck launched text-over-video ads… let’s see if they stay live!

I do think the ‘range’ of newsletter ad formats is smaller than that of industries like DTC.

Ultimately, you sell a digital product that is often free for the consumer on the front-end.

(Instead, you have much more work to do on the measurement/LTV side - my newsletter on that here, even more so if you monetize with affiliate/subscriptions/products).

HOWEVER… all we’ve discussed so far are formats.

There are other elements of an ad.

The angle (the ICP / problem you speak to) and copy are big areas of differentiation.

And you need to be much more specific than you think.

Take AI newsletters as an example.

I’ll oversimplify and say there are two types of readers on these newsletters:

Two years ago, "Will AI replace me at work?" crushed for white collar.

That angle is done now.

No one believes AI is going to replace them.

But "your co-workers using AI will get bigger bonuses and more recognition" - that still works (and it’s true!).

The market got more sophisticated.

And the angles had to evolve in response.

That’s just 1 problem getting in the way of “perform better at work” though. There are more.

The person doing Excel / PowerPoint busywork all day feels like they are doing menial tasks.

They want to be strategic and run a team someday.

Hit them with messaging about wanting to be director+ or a CEO.

CEOs delegate - so they should use Gamma for PowerPoint, Tool XYZ for Excel, etc. and other tools they learn from [your AI newsletter here].

Same outcome (perform better at work), different motivation (status and meaning vs. this year’s bonus).

Focus on the angles - this is how you start to map out a creative strategy.

1) Study where your readers hang out.

We found the "co-workers using AI will get promoted more" angle by reading Reddit discussions.

2) Use your behavioral data.

Look at reader surveys, email replies, and the content that gets the highest opens/clicks.

A fitness newsletter we worked with gets great ROAS for Eight Sleep as its sponsor.

The ad account had 0 angles about sleep.

That’s a treasure trove - better sleep leads to weight loss, more energy, longer life, etc., there are 20+ ads that can come out of that observation.

Disagree.

First, Morning Brew is almost exclusively running text-over-video for newsletters like Revenue Brew.

Second, your ads can retain their ‘status’ as long as they feature someone who reflects your ICP.

The Industry (Hollywood trade pub) runs authentic testimonials - a director at a red carpet event talking about why he loves their newsletter.

SUCH a good ad - real, authentic testimonials are still ugly ads, but the ICP reflects the reader this publication wants.

B2B needs another step beyond creative: qualification.

Here’s what’s dangerous about not qualifying readers in B2B.

A newsletter came to us needing a certain, very specific role for readers.

This role earns $200-500k a year and, even more specifically, that role must have a certain personal finance profile (being vague here out of respect for the client).

They were getting a 5% qualification rate working with the other agency.

95% of leads they could do nothing with. Awful.

We added a simple qualification form - a few questions, and we send ZERO conversion events back to Meta unless a sign-up fits their ICP criteria.

This trains Meta on the right reader.

Overnight, they went from a 5% to a 70% qualification rate.

They’re gradually scaling their ad account, working with us, and doing it the right way.

Another newsletter that sits in front of a brand agency started getting Tier 1 readers from BCG, Dollar Shave Club, and big agencies when we began qualifying readers.

This is exactly what all kinds of B2B publishers should be doing - A Media Operator, Industry Dive, Workweek, Morning Brew B2B, Puck, etc.

And I think they should be doing it with us :)

That's the letter.

- Nathan