We all know how crowded digital channels are. You have a split second to get someone scrolling through their feed to stop and notice your ad. We call it being “thumb-stopping”.
There are several ways to ensure your ad is thumb-stopping:
- Surprise – people are more likely to stop if you surprise them either through your image or your message so make them as astonishing as possible. Curiosity is a powerful human emotion. Play into it.
- Colour – it is not just about picking the brightest colour image. Sometimes that is the game but in some categories that people expect to be all about bright colours and messages that shout, there can be a virtue to whispering. Sometimes giving the viewer a moment of calm, a bit of beautiful light or clean and clear space around the subject, can make your ad stand out. See what everyone else in your category does in terms of colour and then go a different way.
- Differentiation – zig when everyone else zags. If everyone uses images of smiling happy people, consider going a completely different direction and using a weird and wonderful object.
