Ugly ads — and when brand caution is justified

TL;DR

• Feeds are full of polished content; an unpolished or even shocking ad breaks the scroll. “Nothing is too ugly” (Yuliya Lennox).¹
• In the first second the viewer must understand what you sell and which pain it solves — don’t open with lifestyle/brand shots.²³
• Push hooks to the extremes of the emotional spectrum (awe, weird, scary) — Alex’s advice for AI-made hooks.⁴
• Don’t let AI assistants talk you into pretty, on-brand 15-second spots; Yuliya explicitly warns against “listening to Claude” here.¹
• Brand caution is justified only when the product sells trust (babies, health, doctors) — test, but watch comments.⁵
• Clickbait that over-promises lowers trial-to-paid; “ugly” ≠ misleading.⁶

Details

Why ugly works. Yuliya’s reference is BetterMe’s illustrated “belly fat” ad from her time there (David Barnard still remembers it a decade later) — memorable and long-running precisely because it shocked people out of a feed of fit models. Performance ads are always at the “launch” stage of traditional marketing: nobody knows you, so talk about the product and the pain first, not feelings.⁷²³

Brand vs performance. Unless you’re Coca-Cola, “brand exists only in the heads of you, your family and some employees.” Run awareness ads if you can afford them, but they bring nothing short-term; if you need results, run performance ads that name the category (“fitness app”) rather than your brand. Earn the right to brand marketing with performance revenue.⁸⁹

When it backfired. At Solid Starts (baby-led weaning), Yuliya ran an AI “fruit babies” ad — a format popular on Instagram — and got comments asking whether a company that made this could be trusted to feed babies. Lesson: check whether “ugly” fits what you sell (trucks, baby food, medical) — but don’t assume it doesn’t just because you love your brand.⁵¹⁰

Ugly ≠ dishonest. Ethan Ethier (Built With Science) saw click-baity ads get cheap trials but a “huge drop” in trial-to-paid; ads grounded in a specific avatar’s pain and what the app really does brought better users. That is also why they run Meta in-house rather than through an agency.⁶¹¹

Disagreements / caveats

• Yuliya’s claims are experience-based, not test data. David Barnard pushed back that brands at scale (Ladder with Hilary Duff) saw an immediate lift from a brand-style influencer bet.¹²
• Shocking body-image creatives can breach Meta ad policies (and get accounts restricted — see Alex’s 6–8 bans); check current policies.

See also

• Creative volume and hit rate — why you need dozens of ads per winner — you need volume to find the ugly winner
• The UGC app-ad format — captions, green screen demo, phone in hand, wild hooks — a concrete UGC format
• Structure and concepts for paid app video ads
• Yuliya Lennox

Footnotes

1. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 06:39 — Yuliya Lennox ↩ ↩²

2. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 07:30 — Yuliya Lennox ↩ ↩²

3. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 08:17 — Yuliya Lennox ↩ ↩²

4. Copy This Facebook Ads Strategy, It'll Blow Up Your App @ 29:47 — Alex (Boost App Social) ↩

5. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 24:25 — Yuliya Lennox ↩ ↩²

6. Why 90% of their paid traffic goes to a quiz, not the App Store @ 21:54 — Ethan Ethier ↩ ↩²

7. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 18:54 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

8. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 20:06 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

9. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 21:46 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

10. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 25:10 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

11. Why 90% of their paid traffic goes to a quiz, not the App Store @ 20:23 — Ethan Ethier ↩

12. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 23:37 — David Barnard ↩