Your Guide to Creating Attention-Grabbing Ads

Have you ever found yourself scrolling on the internet endlessly, barely noticing any ads that appear in between? That is a challenge that every marketer faces in the current era where the internet is constantly updated with new content. No matter how great an ad is, it will not catch your attention if there is no hook. The user will scroll before they even know what the ad is all about. Essentially, consumption on the internet nowadays is fast, frequent, and most of the time, sound-free. This is where scroll stoppers ads come into play. Scroll stoppers are designed to overcome the challenge of capturing and maintaining user attention in an ever-distracting digital landscape.

Here’s all you need to know about scroll stoppers and the essential steps for creating the best scroll-stoppers, starting with understanding your audience first.

Understand Your Audience

Before you create an attention-grabbing scroll stopper ad for various display advertising platforms, you need to determine who you want to stop from scrolling away. While you may create an attention-grabbing advertisement, it will not pique your audiences’ interest if it does not resonate with their needs and preferences. By understanding who your target audience is, what they want, and what motivates them, you can craft messages that help you truly connect with them on a deeper level. Always ensure that the message you put on your ads is clear, direct, and tailored to the specific requirements of your target audience. This not only grabs their attention but also holds it, increasing your chances of high user engagement and conversions.

In addition to having a clear, direct, and tailored message, it is also important to use the right language and tonality while crafting your message. This will help ensure that your audience feels valued. To create such compelling scroll stopper ads, use online tools like surveys, or customer feedback to understand your audience and what interests them. Furthermore, you can also use buyer personas to create detailed profiles of your target customers and use them to guide your marketing efforts.

The Creative

In today’s cluttered online landscape, creativity is your saving grace. With your audience being bombarded by a constant barrage of content every second, your ads need to be visually appealing to catch their attention. An average internet user scrolls through hundreds of pages daily; hence, creating a compelling creative can indeed help you cut through the clutter. Here are some of the tips that you can keep in mind for creating the best scroll-stoppers:

• High Resolution: Audiences are looking for high-quality content. So, you must use high-resolution creatives and optimize your ad for different platforms. Use sharp images in your creative or video scroll-stopper to maintain a professional look and convey the right message.
• Contrast: Colors attract attention, so try playing around with contrasting colors to highlight key elements and draw the audience to important information. For example, a contrasting yellow or orange CTA button will stand out in a predominantly blue ad.
• Emotion: If an ad resonates on an emotional level, users are more likely to engage with it. Try to evoke strong emotions, such as curiosity, joy, or excitement, with your visuals. Building emotional engagement is key to memorable ad experiences that increase brand recognition and recall.
• Formats: Variety is important to keep audiences engaged and build interest in your brand. Try various ad formats and different placements offered by your video ad-serving platform to improve your engagement rates. You can consider formats like surveys, 3D ads, videos, and carousels to create attention-grabbing dynamic ads.

The Copy

While stunning visuals are essential for grabbing attention, all of the best examples of scroll-stopper ads have an ad copy that helps seal the deal. The right copy in a rich media ad can urge your audiences to interact with your ad, which makes copies an important part of any great ad. Your copy must be clear, direct, and compelling. Without a strong scroll-stopping copy, even the most visually appealing ad can fall flat and fail to convert your interest into action. Picture yourself browsing the internet and coming across two ads for the same product, a fitness application. Both ads have equally impressive creative, but while one copy is dry and boring, the other is asking about you and your worries. Which ad will you be more likely to engage with? Advertisers can use ad copies to induce fear of missing out on something great, entice the audience with a reward on the other side of the interaction, create a sense of urgency, or include an emotional trigger in the copy to encourage interactions.

Examples of Weak Copies:

• Get in Shape Now.
• Download Our App.
• Join Us.

Examples of Strong Copies:

• Your Dream Body Is Just 30 Days Away!
• Join Our Community and Find Out What Makes 10,000+ Users So Happy with Our Services!
• Don’t Pay Blindly. Take Our 7-Day Free Trial!

Unlike weak copies, strong copies are clear, benefit-driven, and use action-oriented language. It tells your audience exactly what they will get, invokes a sense of community, and provides a specific call to action. Remember the golden rule for creating a compelling copy: Be Concise; Less Is More.

Using Interactive Elements

Interactive elements in your ads can transform a passive viewing experience into an engaging one. Use interactive elements in your ads, such as polls, quizzes, and interactive scroll-stopper videos, that can pique curiosity, hold the attention of your audience for a longer time, and enhance brand recall. Creating ads with interactive elements increases interaction and keeps users on your ad longer. It makes your ad more intriguing and memorable. Lastly, ads with interactive elements enhance the likelihood that your user will remember your brand.

The Call to Action

A strong Call to Action (CTA) is not just a button; it's a strategic move. It is the final nudge in any display or video scroll stopper ad that directs your audience to take a particular action. Be specific while writing a CTA for your ads. ‘Download Our Free Guide’ always works better than ‘Click Here’. You must also create urgency by using certain phrases in your ad, like ‘Offer Ends 2 Hours’, instead of ‘Register Now’. Next, always ensure that you can track the effectiveness of your CTAs. Use A/B testing to compare the performance of different CTA variations to understand what works for your audience and what does not. This strategic approach to your CTA will keep you goal-oriented and focused on your conversion targets. 

The Timing

When an advertisement is served to the audience at the right time, it is more likely to reach your target audience. Best examples of scroll-stopper ads can include an ad for breakfast cereal served in the morning, which is more likely to drive immediate traffic rather than the same ad being served in the afternoon. Serving ads when your audience is online and active increases the chances of them seeing and engaging with your ad. An advertisement served at a time when your audience is offline or less active may get lost in the constant flow of new content.

To time your ads effectively, leverage data analytics and tools to help you understand when your audience is most active. For crafting scroll-stopper ads, examples of tools that you can use are A/B testing, serving an ad at different times, and measuring which time yields the best results.

The environment of today’s digital advertising platforms is fast-paced and constantly evolving, making it challenging for marketers to capture user attention and make a good first impression. However, by implementing the best scroll-stopper strategies as outlined in this guide, you can create ads that break through the clutter and resonate with your target audience. By following these tips, you can increase your chances of halting your users’ scroll, driving engagement, and achieving your advertising goals.