In this episode, I break down the ad strategy behind Cal AI by analyzing 131 of their creatives. They’re doing a lot right. Strong UGC, simple messaging, and TikTok-native formats. But they’re also leaving scale on the table. From missing user language and real customer narratives, to ignoring display ads, to relying on repetitive visuals, there are clear opportunities to unlock growth. If you’re running paid ads, this breakdown shows exactly where performance is being left behind.
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Unlocking Growth Opportunities for CalEI Ads 🚀
Shamanth: [00:00:00]
This is how Cal AI can 2X their creative velocity. I roasted 131 ads of Cal AI to understand what opportunities they’re sitting on.
So first of all, they get a lot of things right. The ads are simple. They focus on how easy it is to use the app. A lot of ads are mostly UGC. There’s a couple of ads that show the founder on camera, which is great in building trust, and I can see that the UGCs are mostly built on high-performing TikTok videos because they have a lot of voiceless videos that seem to be doing really well for them.
But they’re sitting on a ton of opportunity, which could unlock a lot of growth on their Meta ads, and I’m going to talk you through three of the big ones that they’re sitting on right now.
Number one is that, in our review of 131 ads, there were very few ads that seemed to reflect actual user language and actual user experience. [00:01:00] A lot of these ads, as I said, seem to be TikTok-native, which is great. Some of them had voices and narratives, which is good, but these were missing a lot of user language and user narratives, which you can see from the app store reviews.
The big ones would just be transformation, which is: here’s how I lost weight. That’s almost a stereotype of health and fitness ads, and it is a stereotype for a reason, because it works. The transformation is one of the most commonly used themes and messages for health and fitness ads, and that is for a reason. You get to show a before and after easily, and there’s a very clear transformation.
The next one would be behavioral insight, which is: in what situations and circumstances do users use the app? In what life situations is the impact of the app? So I ride my bike more.
And then, of course, there are surprising insights, which can be somewhat funny. Like, I’d rather not [00:02:00] snack than open my phone to take a photo. Similarly, authority is a big pillar that they’re completely missing. My doctor suggested this, my friend, my colleague suggested this, that’s a big pillar that they’re missing.
And there are metaphors, like having a personal dietician in your pocket, which again is very powerful. That’s the kind of turn of phrase which can be captured from reviewing the user language directly.
Then, of course, there can also be funny videos that they can build based on a lot of user reviews that could be based on how the AI can sometimes miss some of the foods. So the framing could just be: look, the AI made a mistake, but it still helps me in my weight loss. It still helps me in planning my diet.
So there’s just a ton of directions here which they missed, and I think each of these is a huge opportunity.
The next roast is that they’re running no display ads, which [00:03:00] is very surprising. Now, I can understand why they’re perhaps not doing display because they had a lot of success based off UGC, based off TikTok, and that mirrors in the UGC ads. And I can see why they’re not running display.
But I think the big opportunity is that display unlocks completely new audiences. It unlocks completely new placements that could be Facebook and Instagram feeds. And if the users are primarily younger people, younger users that are primarily on Reels, those users are also going to be on Instagram feed.
And this is a good way for them, for tell AI, to target those users on Instagram feeds as much as they do Instagram Reels. And of course, in placements like Audience Network, when the users are browsing the web, the display ads can reach those users.
In my experience, getting display into the mix helps unlock a ton of additional scale from [00:04:00] adjacent audiences. They could certainly begin with some of the messaging that they already have for their videos, but they could expand that into display. They could certainly test very different formats, some of which I have shown here.
Roast number three is visual diversity. Close to half the ads show somebody in a gym, which again is a lot of creative concentration. Meta’s Andromeda treats a lot of visually similar ads as the same creative or very similar creative and shows it to very similar audiences, and this is very likely throttling their reach.
The solution is to unlock visual variety, to go outside of the gym. You can still show younger people. You can show younger people in other settings, restaurants, offices, or break the gym-kitchen loop, really.
The other big opportunity is food context. In our work with a lot of food-themed apps and products, we’ve seen that images of [00:05:00] food make for great visual hooks.
New formats are big opportunities: calorie infographics, data visualizations, quotes. All of these can be new formats that they can explore.
So in summary, these are the three big opportunities they are sitting on: using the actual user reviews, jumping on display ads, and getting much, much more visual variety in their ads.
If this was useful and if you’d like for us to do a similar analysis for you or help produce high-performance ads for you, hit me up and I’d be happy to chat. I hope this was helpful. If you found this helpful, please leave a comment or subscribe.
