Types of creatives in affiliate marketing: what are they and where to get them

Hi all! Today we are talking about creatives or, in more formal terms, promotional materials. What is this creative of yours in general, what are they (with examples) and where to get them, if you are not a graphic designer and are not particularly friends with Photoshop - we will tell in our new material.

What is creativity in affiliate marketing

Creative or promo material is a combination of text and graphic elements in an ad that motivates the user to go to the pre-landing/landing page of the offer. This is the first point of contact of the audience with the product, so your promotional material should catch the attention of a potential client and involve them in the funnel.

In other words, your promotional material is the first to introduce your product and already forms some emotions and expectations from the offer in the Internet user. Therefore, it is important that the creative is relevant not only to the offer, but also to the target audience, 

The guys from ADLEADPRO perfectly told about this, how to create a high-quality creative in the article: "20+ questions to get creative started. The second material from the rubric #smart launches".

Creative types and ad formats

Creatives are created and selected based on the chosen advertising format and target audience. Let's stop at the first point. 

The ad format is the way and place where the ad is placed on the site. Depending on the site itself, device, operating system, and even the way the user connects, different formats may be available to the webmaster. In addition, many sites offer the so-called dynamic format, which shows the user different formats depending on the settings of the advertising campaign. 

At the moment, the following formats can be distinguished:

Banner is a graphic creative with or without a caption. Used in banner, native and teaser advertising. Also, contextual ads in the form of banners are often placed on sites with dynamic formats. Banner images are the most common type of creative.

Can be static, dynamic (GIF, Java, Flash) or interactive (JS or HTML images that allow the user to interact with them. Most often found in slideshow format).

Advertising networks buy spaces for banner “spots” on websites and place their blocks there. The location of these blocks does not change over time or depending on the scrolling of the page content by the user.

Examples of dynamic banners

Native advertising - are ads that are organically embedded in the site's feed and are similar to its regular content. Native banners are also placed in blocks, but in this case the block mimics and adapts to the content of the news site and does not look like a banner we are used to.

Teaser advertising is a type of native advertising, where shock content is used as an enticing element, as well as clickbait headlines. It usually looks like this block on some information site.

Context advertising— the type of advertising in which ads are displayed in search results in accordance with the user's request. Unlike other formats, here the webmaster must briefly state the USP of the product or service in order to attract the attention of a potential client. 

The ad appears in the top or bottom ad unit in the search results of Google, Yandex or other search engines. It consists of a title, a short description, a set of links to landing pages. The peculiarity of this promo is variability, depending on the request formulated by the user.

Push Notifications — advertising offers in pop-up notifications in browsers or mobile applications. Push itself is creative. It consists of an icon, title, description, banner, link to a resource (it is sewn into an image or text). Sometimes there is an additional button with a call to action.

E-mail newsletters — type of emails that are used as a tool to attract potential customers. The advertiser for the mailing list independently collects the user base (for example, through questionnaires) or buys it. 

The e-mail contains a subject that makes it clear its content. The letter consists of a mandatory greeting, explanatory text that reveals the subject of the letter and a picture. Depending on the resource, the internal content of the letter changes. For example, in the catalog of an online store there will be a photo of a product, and an educational resource will send a long read.

In-stream —promotional videos that are embedded in video content. Used on Facebook, Tik-Tok, YouTube, etc. There are three types:

• skippable —  video that can be skipped after a certain time (from 5 seconds);
• unskippable — ads that cannot be skipped, most often their length does not exceed 30 seconds;
• bamper —promotional video 6 seconds long.

The key information in an in-stream creative must be presented at the beginning of the video so that even an uninterested user learns the important information contained in it. Videos increase the awareness of a product or company in the market and increase customer loyalty.

An example of an in-steam promotional material from a popular bookmaker:

Where to get creatives for your advertising campaign

There are actually a lot of options: 

• Order from a designer. There are enough specialists on the market who work on promotional materials of any complexity: from pictures to videos with actors. An example of a channel of a specialist who develops promotional materials for gambling advertising:
• Create your own in a graphics editor like Canva, Crello, Pablo, InShot. The ad templates in them are trivial, but the creatives made with this tool are suitable for testing hypotheses. Here's a great guide to getting started with Canva. Knowledge of trends and understanding of the audience is desirable.
• Find in Facebook Library. It is important to remember that if you take creatives from there, they must be changed and adapted in order to avoid a ban for plagiarism. This was discussed in the article: "How to uniqueize a creative so that Facebook moderation skips it".
• Download from spy- service. This is a special tool for monitoring competitors, tracking and analyzing advertising on sites. How to use the spy service is also described in this article: "How to find ready-made bundles in a SPY service using ADHEART as an example".
• Request from affiliate network. Many CPA - networks make creatives based on TK for trusted webmasters. Also, if you are working with a branded offer, its card will contain examples of creatives that can be used in an advertising campaign.

In general, at this stage of preparation for the launch of an advertising campaign, it is also important to include a head. Sometimes a ready-made promo can even be simply cut from a YouTube video or you can find a suitable ready-made video on TikTok. For example, when working with sweepstakes as a creative, it is quite possible to take a video from a blogger’s review or a video from the moment of presenting a gift to your girlfriend. That's it. 

Closing remarks from the editors of AffJournal

When a user scrolls through the feed, he most often does not plan to buy anything. The main task of the creative is to quickly hook the reader and capture his attention from the first second. If it is incomprehensible, boring and uninteresting to him, he will turn over and not even read your super-profitable offer. Keep this thought in mind all the time while you are working on creating your promotional material and then the results will definitely please you. Good luck!