Solved: Best Way to Test Direct-to-Camera Video Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts on your ad testing approach. It’s a great question, and one that gets to the heart of how to scale campaigns properly. You're right to suspect that the old way of testing isn't quite the full picture anymore.

The short answer is yes, you're on the right track by wanting to use multiple text and headline variations within a single ad. But the real gains in ROAS come from a much deeper, more systematic approach to testing that goes way beyond just the creative elements. It involves a fundamental rethink of who you're targeting, how you structure your accounts, and what you're actually asking people to do. Let's get into it.

I'd say you should stop testing creative in isolation...

Let's tackle your main question head-on. The old method of creating dozens of seperate ads, each with a unique combination of one video, one headline, and one piece of text, is a relic of a bygone era. It's incredibly time-consuming, inefficient, and frankly, it doesn't even give the ad platforms' algorithms enough room to do what they do best: find the perfect message for the right person at the right time.

You're right, things have changed. Platforms like Meta now actively encourage you to load up a single ad unit with multiple assets. By providing, say, your 3 videos, 5 different headlines, and 5 different descriptions, you're not losing control; you're giving the system a powerful toolkit. The algorithm will then dynamically mix and match these components, testing thousands of permutations in real-time to see what resonates with different segments of your audience. An older user might respond better to a headline focused on trust and reliability, while a younger one might click on copy that's more direct and highlights a specific benefit. You could never manually create enough ads to account for this level of nuance.

The concern about not being able to "glean the winning copy" is also largely a thing of the past. In the ad platform's reporting, you can use the "Breakdown" feature to see performance by individual asset. It'll show you which headlines are getting the best click-through rates, which descriptions are driving the most conversions, and which of your videos is holding attention the longest. It's not as clean-cut as an old-school A/B test, but it provides more than enough directional data to inform your next round of creative development. You'll quickly see themes emerge. Maybe all your top-performing headlines ask a question, or all your best body copy uses a specific customer testimonial. This is teh data you use to iterate and improve.

But here's the brutally honest truth, and the point where most advertisers go wrong. Obsessing over creative testing is like meticulously polishing the hubcaps on a car with a broken engine. It feels productive, but it won't get you anywhere. Your videos from a trusted messenger are a fantastic asset, but they are just one component. If your ROAS isn't where you want it to be, or if you're struggling to scale, I can almost guarantee the problem lies deeper, in one of two areas: your targeting (who you're showing the ads to) or your offer (what you're asking them to do).

I remember one client we worked with in the environmental controls industry. They came to us with beautifully produced video ads and professionally written copy, but their cost per lead on LinkedIn and Meta Ads was sky-high. They'd tested dozens of creative variations. The problem? They were targeting very broad audiences. We shifted the entire strategy to focus on the specific problems their products solved and targeted niche interests and job titles related to their ideal customers. The creative stayed largely the same, but the cost per lead dropped by 84%. That's the power of getting the audience right first.

We'll need to look at your ICP as a Nightmare, Not a Demographic...

So, before you test another headline, you need to get absolutely forensic about who your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is. And I don't mean the useless, sterile demographic profiles that most marketing departments create. "Female entrepreneurs aged 35-50 living in major cities who like yoga" tells you precisely nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. By their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your customer isn't a collection of data points; they are in a *problem state*. Your job is to understand that state better than they do.

Let’s imagine you’re selling a project management tool for creative agencies.

• The Demographic Profile (Useless): Agency owners, 50-250 employees, in the UK/US.
• The Nightmare Profile (Powerful): The Head of Operations who just had to tell a major client that their project is delayed for the third time because her team is drowning in conflicting feedback from emails, Slack, and Figma comments. She's terrified of losing the client, her best designers are threatening to quit from burnout, and she spends her evenings manually compiling status reports instead of thinking strategically. She doesn't need "a project management tool"; she needs to get her life back and save a multi-million-pound account.

See the difference? The nightmare is emotional. It's specific. And it's what drives a purchase. Once you've isolated that nightmare, your entire targeting strategy becomes clear. You stop guessing with broad interests and start hunting with precision. Where does this Head of Operations live online?

• Podcasts: She's probably not listening to generic business podcasts. She might be listening to something niche like 'The Agency Profitability Podcast' or '2Bobs'.
• Newsletters: She likely subscribes to industry-specific newsletters like 'Stratechery' for high-level tech insights or a tactical one from a respected agency consultant.
• Software: What tools does she already pay for? HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Figma. These can all be targeted as interests.
• Influencers: Who does she follow on LinkedIn or Twitter for advice? People like David C. Baker or Blair Enns who speak directly to the business of creativity.

This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your ad sets. You build audiences based on these "watering holes." You target people who like 'HubSpot' AND 'Figma'. You target people who follow 'Jason Lemkin' on Twitter. This is how you find your nightmare-haunted ICP. Do this work first, or you have no business spending another pound on ads.

I'd say you need to structure your campaigns for clarity...

Once you have a clear idea of *who* you're targeting, you need a logical structure to test everything effectively. Just throwing all your new audiences and creatives into one campaign is a recipe for disaster. You'll have no idea what's actually working. The best practice is to structure your account based on the marketing funnel. This brings order and clarity to your testing.

I typically use a three-tiered structure: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel - Prospecting): This is where you target cold audiences—people who have never heard of you before. This is where you'll use all those new ICP-based audiences you just developed (interests, behaviours, lookalikes). The goal here is to introduce them to the problem you solve and get them to your website or landing page for the first time.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel - Consideration): This is for warming up your audience. You'll retarget people who have shown some interest but haven't taken a key action yet. This could be people who have visited your website, watched 50% of one of your video ads, or engaged with your social media page. The messaging here is different; it's less about introducing the problem and more about showcasing your solution, building trust, and handling objections.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel - Conversion): This is the sharp end. You're retargeting people who are very close to converting. They've added a product to their cart, initiated checkout, or visited your pricing page. These are your hottest leads, and the ads here should be very direct, perhaps with an offer of scarcity, social proof (testimonials), or a final benefit to get them over the line.

Here’s how you would practically apply this structure to your situation:

1. Create a "ToFu - Prospecting" Campaign: This campaign's objective will be conversions (e.g., Leads, Purchases).
2. Inside this campaign, create multiple Ad Sets. Each ad set will target ONE of your new ICP audiences. For example:
   • Ad Set 1: Targets people interested in 'HubSpot' AND 'Figma'.
   • Ad Set 2: Targets a lookalike audience of your past customers.
   • Ad Set 3: Targets people who follow specific industry influencers.
3. Inside EACH of these ad sets, you create ONE ad. This single ad will contain all your best creative assets: your 3 videos, your 5 best headlines, and your 5 best descriptions.

By structuring it this way, the platform will test the audiences against each other in the different ad sets, while simultaneously testing the creative combinations within each ad set. After a few days (the time depends on your budget and cost per conversion), you'll clearly see which *audiences* are performing best. You turn off the losing ad sets and reallocate the budget to the winners. This is how you systematically find pockets of profitable traffic and scale your campaigns. You'd then have seperate MoFu and BoFu campaigns for your retargeting efforts, using a similar logic.

For eCommerce, the audiences you prioritise look something like this, from coldest to warmest. A similar logic applies to B2B or lead generation, you just swap out the events (e.g., 'purchased' becomes 'became a lead').

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Now that you know who you're talking to and have a structure to reach them, you can write copy that actually works. Your existing headlines and text might be good, but you can make them infinitely more powerful by speaking directly to the 'nightmare' you identified earlier. Stop talking about your features and start talking about their pain and your solution.

There are a couple of classic copywriting frameworks that work exceptionally well for this.

For a service business or high-ticket offer, use Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). You don't sell "consulting services"; you sell a good night's sleep.

• Problem: State the nightmare directly. "Are your ad campaigns bleeding money with no clear reason why?"
• Agitate: Pour salt on the wound. Make them feel the pain. "Every day you delay, your competitors are stealing market share while your burn rate climbs. Another frustrating meeting with the board is just around the corner."
• Solve: Introduce your solution as the clear, obvious way out. "We build profitable ad systems that turn uncertainty into predictable growth. Get a clear view of your ROI and start making decisions with confidence."

For a SaaS product or something with a clear transformation, use Before-After-Bridge (BAB). You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief.

• Before: Describe their current world of pain. "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out."
• After: Paint a picture of the promised land. "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every pound is going and waste is automatically eliminated."
• Bridge: Position your product as the bridge to get them there. "Our platform is the bridge that gets you from chaos to control. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

When you write your 5 headline and 5 text variations, make sure you're not just writing 5 slightly different versions of the same message. Create real variety. Try a headline that uses the PAS framework. Try one that uses a shocking statistic. Try one with a customer testimonial. Try one that asks a direct question. This gives the algorithm a diverse set of angles to test, dramatically increasing the chances you'll find a winning combination that truly resonates with your nightmare-haunted ICP.

You probably should fix your offer first...

This brings us to the final, and arguably most important, piece of the puzzle: the offer. This is the single biggest reason why campaigns with great creative and perfect targeting still fail. Your offer is what you ask the user to do when they click your ad, and most B2B offers are, to be blunt, terrible.

The "Request a Demo" button is the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to. It's a high-friction, low-value proposition that instantly positions you as just another commodity vendor begging for their time. It screams, "I want to take value from you (your time) before I've given you any."

Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must give them a taste of the solution for free to earn the right to talk about the whole thing.

• For SaaS: The gold standard is a free trial or a freemium plan (no credit card required). Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality.
• For an Agency/Consultancy: Bottle your expertise into a tool or asset. We offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. We solve a small part of their problem for free, which demonstrates our expertise far more effectively than any sales pitch could. You could offer a free, automated SEO audit that finds their top 3 keyword opportunities, or a 'Data Health Check' that flags issues in their database.
• For a high-ticket service: Create a high-value piece of content. Not a flimsy eBook, but a detailed masterclass, a free interactive workshop, or a calculator that helps them understand the financial impact of their problem.

A better offer will do more for your ROAS than any amount of creative testing. If your cost per lead is high, before you blame the videos or the copy, look at your landing page. Are you asking for a marriage on the first date with a "Request a Demo" button? Or are you offering a coffee with a high-value, low-friction lead magnet? The difference is everything.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers...

Finally, to make all of this work and to know if your testing is actually successful, you have to stop focusing only on ROAS. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Once you know what a customer is worth to you over their entire relationship with your business, you can make much smarter decisions about your advertising. You'll know exactly how much you can afford to spend to acquire them and still be wildly profitable. Suddenly, a £150 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive if you know that customer will be worth £15,000 to you over the next three years.

The calculation is relatively straightforward:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's break it down:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

Knowing your LTV unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. A common goal is to maintain a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. So if your LTV is £10,000, you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead. This is the math that frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and allows you to compete for the best customers in the most competitive channels.

To make this tangible for you, here is an interactive calculator. Play around with the sliders to see how small changes in revenue, margin, or customer retention can dramatically impact your LTV and, consequently, how much you should be willing to invest in your ad campaigns.

I know this is a lot more than just answering "how do I test my videos," but I hope you can see how all these pieces fit together. A truly high-ROAS advertising machine isn't built on just great creative. It's built on a deep understanding of the customer's pain, a logical campaign structure, a compelling offer, and solid financial metrics.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Getting this entire system built, optimised, and running smoothly requires significant expertise and hands-on time. It involves constant monitoring, iterating on audiences, refreshing creative based on data, and ensuring the delicate balance between the funnel stages is maintained. While the principles are straightforward, the execution can be complex.

If you're looking to scale your results and want an expert team to implement this kind of rigorous testing framework for you, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation. We can take a look at your current setup, discuss your goals, and give you some more specific, actionable advice on how to move forward.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh