9+ High-Performing Instagram Ads Examples to Steal
We know that Instagram is a powerful sales-driving tool to have in your eCommerce marketing arsenal.
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The trick is using the right ad to target the right shoppers at just the right time in your sales journey.
This is not always as easy as it sounds, but it is something that the following top eCommerce Instagram marketing campaigns got just right.
What are the secrets to their successes, and how can you duplicate their results?
Read on to find out!
1. KiwiCo Uses Instagram Reels-Style Ads to Engage Users and Drive Acquisition
KiwiCo’s Instagram is on point! From their account layout to their content marketing stories, they offer ideas in spades. However, it’s their Reels ads that really pack a ROAS punch.
If you’re unfamiliar with this store brand, KiwiCo is a subscription eCommerce brand selling age-specific kids’ projects. These projects come in various themes, such as robotics, physics, electronics, and more. Their store and Instagram account offer a ton of inspiration.
By using Reels-style ad creatives on both Instagram and Facebook — in perfect unison — through Ads Manager, they were able to increase their ROAS by 30%. Let’s take a look.
Their Campaign Strategy
To attract new customers and increase subscription sales, KiwiCo wanted to test Reels creatives that would run on both Instagram and Facebook Feeds and Stories. This meant using a mix of elements designed to entertain that would still be digestible and easy to understand.
“We’ve seen that Reels can be a significant acquisition lever if we engage audiences in an authentic way that reflects an understanding of their needs. Based on the success we’ve seen, we’ve optimized our ad creatives to mirror Reels-style content featuring catchy sounds and text stickers, and plan on investing more in the strategy as part of our holiday efforts.” — Lisann Arndt, Paid Social Marketing Manager
In addition, Meta guides KiwiCo to ensure they follow “creative essentials,” which include:
- Building vertical video assets (9:16 aspect ratio)
- Adding audio
- Making sure key messages are within what Meta calls “safe zones” (leaving the bottom 35% of the ad space free from text, logos, and other critical creative elements)
[Source: Instagram]
They then ran a multi-cell conversion lift study to compare the performance of the brand’s standard video ads with new Reels-style creatives. They used the Advantage+ campaign budget feature, which distributed their ad budget to the best-performing ad sets. Here’s a breakdown of three campaigns they tested on the same audience:
- Cell 1 included their usual video ads, which ran across Feed, Stories, and Reels on both Facebook and Instagram
- Cell 2 included Reels-style creative only, which ran across Feed, Stories, and Reels on both Facebook and Instagram
- Cell 3 included Reels-style creative and video ads, which ran across Feed, Stories, and Reels on both Facebook and Instagram
The Results
After 14 days, KiwiCo found that when they used Reels-style creatives together with the usual standard creative, they saw the following:
- 27% lower cost per purchase
- 30% higher ROAS
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
You don’t need to be a mega retailer to duplicate their strategy. In fact, when it comes to effective Reels, all you require is your smartphone and an idea. There are a lot of tools out there, like Adobe Express, that will let you create top-quality reels (Reels-style videos you can even place in an Instagram Story) for free.
Once you have a few types of content, you can run the same test KiwiCo did on smaller budgets to find the best combination for you in terms of ROAS. Here are some Instagram Reels creation tips to get you started:
- Become an expert in your niche by giving away free advice
- Take advantage of Instagram’s Reels templates
- Consider co-branding
- Keep Reels authentic and natural
- Opt for Instagram marketing automation and other PPC AI tools outside of Ad Manager to free up creation time
Pro Tip: Want to automate your Instagram and Facebook ads? Try Traffic Booster — an advanced service specializing in AI-powered eCommerce advertising. StoreYa’s Traffic Booster enables brands to automate their Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads, not only taking the burden off their hands but ensuring the best ROAS.
You can read about these and other top Instagram Reels strategies here.
2. Sephora Harnesses the Power of Augmented Reality Instagram Ads to Reach New Gen Z Customers
Sephora is all about creating the ultimate shopping experience for their customers. They have also cultivated a thriving network of brand ambassadors and beauty influencers through their Sephora Squad program. By bringing these two assets together with AR (augmented reality) and Instagram, their newest marketing strategies are having resounding success.
Looking to acquire new Gen Z customers and drive awareness and message association between their brand and the fragrance category, Sephora ran AR ads aimed at helping them “find their fragrance vibe,” resulting in a 2-point lift in brand awareness. Let’s take a look.
Their Campaign Strategy
Looking for ways to get customers to engage with the brand for longer on social media, Sephora decided to try out a new interactive and fun ad format. They also wanted to ensure that it would boost the brand’s fragrance category awareness, so it was also important that the campaign profoundly connect with Gen Z audiences. The idea was to run with the concept of trying a fragrance virtually. As this was a complex theme, they got their Sephora Squad to help create an authentic Instagram Story ad.
Each of their ads featured an Instagram beauty influencer or creator, with the text overlay of “Find your fragrance vibe based on your aura. Press your thumb to start.” After pressing, the user’s camera opened, and they would see an augmented reality effects filter.
[Source: Instagram]
These AR ads were delivered via Instagram Stories, Feeds, and Reels, as well as to remarketing audiences, for four weeks.
The Results
After four weeks of running their AR Instagram campaign, Sephora saw a:
- 2-point lift in brand awareness
- 3.6-point lift in message association between the brand and their fragrance category
“We are proud of the results we saw with the “Find Your Fragrance Vibe” augmented reality ad campaign on Instagram. It helped us engage and connect with Gen Z audiences in an innovative way that also leveraged our diverse set of Sephora Squad creators to promote the experience authentically.” — Brent Michelle, VP of Social Media and Influences at Sephora
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
You may not have the budget to partner with Simone, an augmented reality producer and agency, to create highly sophisticated filters as Sephora did.
However, their main premise of using brand interaction to drive brand awareness can definitely be duplicated on a budget. You don’t need to make considerable investments in huge influencer accounts; micro-influencers can help you tap into niche markets on a more personal level.
Lower costs isn’t the only incentive; using micro-influencers has a few other benefits, including these top ones from Forbes:
- Elevated trustworthiness
- Higher engagement rates
- Better authenticity
- Elevated ROIs
- Deeper audience insights
Bonus Content: How to Find the Best Influencers for Your eCommerce Brand
3. Savage X Fenty Leverages Stories to Reach New Audiences and Increase Purchase Intent
Savage X Fenty, the lingerie brand co-founded by Rihanna, is well-acquainted with creating social media buzz. A key element of their brand identity is inclusivity, and they were looking to use that to reach new, broader audiences — which is where brand-focused Instagram ads came in.
Their Campaign Strategy
Savage X Fenty’s ultimate Instagram campaign goal and strategy was to increase sales and awareness. This meant being able to quickly portray and expand on their inclusive values. However, they also wanted to ensure they reduced ad frequency. To do this, they added brand-focused campaigns to their Instagram marketing strategy, running simultaneously with their direct response campaigns.
Targeting adult women living in France, they built stories around product displays, unboxing, and influencers trying on the clothes. This content was then boosted by ads on Instagram, Facebook, and Audience Network.
[Source: Instagram]
They then ran two tests:
- The brand lift test, which measures ad recall, brand awareness, and message association by taking audience polls (which you can set up through Ads Manager)
- The conversion list test, which uses data from a variety of sources to compare the actions of control groups and real people
“Incorporating reach objective campaigns in the Savage X Fenty media strategy has proved a successful way to drive incremental reach in our EMEA markets. Through Meta’s brand lift studies and conversion lift tests, we have been able to increase unaided ad recall and purchase intent. Direct response and upper-funnel advertising have been combined for the first time, demonstrating a successful way to reach new potential audiences while keeping our efficiencies in line.” — Sara GARCÍA EXPÓSITO, Senior Paid Media Manager at Savage X Fenty
The Results
Their Instagram marketing campaign ran for just over two weeks and resulted in the following:
- 28% decrease in cost per thousand impressions
- 50% more brand awareness to their key target demographic
- 5.3-point increase in purchase intent
- 6.9-point increase in unaided ad recall
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
The bottom line is any successful marketing strategy should use a mix of campaign types and creatives. It’s vital to test various combinations to find the best fit for your brand’s performance. Agogie, for instance, gets 5X ROAS through a combination of campaigns on a few platforms and channels, including Shopping, YouTube, Dynamic Remarketing, Dynamic Search Ads, and customized Search ads. Here’s how:
4. Nugu Capitalizes on Influencers to Drive Shopping Trends
South Korean omni-store brand nugu recently partnered with Japanese creators and brands as part of their expansion efforts. Using strategic Instagram Branded Content ads, they created a cross-border campaign that boosted their usual campaign sales volume by 64%.
[Source: Instagram]
“The nugu team has been working with influencers to effectively promote Korean products in the Japanese market. With this campaign of Branded Content ads, we not only minimized the resources needed to create localized marketing content that appeals to Japanese shoppers, but also achieved significant increases in key performance metrics, including return on ad spend.” — Chunghoya Park, nugu marketing lead from Medicare Labs
Their Campaign Strategy
To roll out this campaign, the nugu team chose four Japanese influencers to collaborate with to create content for Branded Content ads. These were posts in a carousel format on Instagram and included strategic CTAs that linked to nugu’s website.
They conducted A/B tests to compare the results of the new Instagram Branded Content ads to their usual photo ad campaign. Both campaigns were sent to women living in Japan, aged 19–40.
And the results?
The Results
Nugu’s Branded Content ad on Instagram, compared to their usual Instagram campaigns, resulted in the following:
- 53% lower cost per click
- 39% lower cost per sale
- 12% higher ROAS
- 64% more sales
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
The key to any good Instagram advertising example is testing. There are several ways you can set up an A/B test (also known as a split test) in Meta’s business account manager. Choosing between methods will depend on your workflow preferences. Here are two strategies to get you started:
- Duplicating an existing ad set and changing one variable to see how performance changes
- Using Meta Experiments to create Instagram A/B tests
5. Rhoback Used Instagram Shop to Gain Marketshare in a Saturated Niche
The next Instagram ads example comes from leading activewear brand Rhoback. By making a small change to Advantage+ shopping campaigns, they improved their Instagram campaign ROAS by 33%. At the same time, they fulfilled their campaign goal of attracting new customers and driving website and Instagram Shop sales.
Here is a creative example from their campaign. As you can see, it doesn’t deviate from the brand’s desire to create content meant to inspire people to crave activity.
[Source: Instagram]
“We were interested in testing Advantage+ shopping campaigns and Shops ads to reduce friction between our ads and checkout. While initially hesitant to give up control over where we directed traffic, between our Meta Shop and website, we were shocked to find how much our cost per conversion decreased when we gave the Meta algorithm this additional layer of flexibility.” — Matt Casciani, Marketing Director at Rhoback
Their Campaign Strategy
Looking to attract new customers and increase sales on their website and Instagram Shop, Rhoback tests Meta’s Advantage+ shopping campaigns. The most significant appeal to this campaign type is the ability to exploit AI to automate and streamline their marketing (something you can duplicate across your entire marketing funnel with Traffic Booster).
For this campaign, they added Shops ads to Advantage+ shopping campaigns. This meant that instead of creating a bunch of campaigns with varying creatives, placements, budgets, and targeting, they could set up an Advantage+ shopping campaign. Ultimately, this meant they could automatically test up to 150 combinations to find the highest performers; they could then optimize to peak performance.
By adding Shops ads to their Advantage+ shopping campaigns (which takes just one click to do), traffic was automatically sent to either the website or Instagram Shop. This depends on what Meta thinks the user’s preferences will be. If they are sent to their preferred preference (what they are actually shopping for), then conversion potential increases.
Here’s a breakdown of the two campaign types they A/B tested:
- An Advantage+ shopping campaign that sent users to Rhoback’s store site
- An Advantage+ shopping campaign with “website and shop” as the conversion location
And the results?
The Results
In three weeks, Rhoback saw the following results in campaigns that used “website and shop” as the conversion location:
- 33% improvement in ROAS
- 29% decrease in cost per conversion
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
Implementing this strategy is as simple as changing the conversion location on your current Advantage+ shopping campaigns. But you may need to wait for Advantage+ shopping campaigns to launch in your area. If you’re new to Advantage+ shopping campaigns, you can take this Meta blueprint course. And be sure to stay up to date with changing platform campaign types and other news by signing up for our blog updates.
6. Homesick Drastically Decreases Acquisition Costs with Shops Ads
Another Instagram ads example that shows the power of adding Shops ads to Advantage+ shopping campaigns comes from Homesick.
Owned by WIN Brands Group (WIN), Homesick was looking to increase sales on their website and Shops on Instagram and Facebook.
They were also eager to exploit Advantage+ shopping campaigns’ AI automation, as this would enable them to do away with having to set up their campaigns manually, and instead set up just one shopping campaign.
[Source: Instagram]
Their Campaign Strategy
Their Instagram campaign strategy followed the same theory as Rhoback. They tested campaigns that directed potential customers to their website against those that automatically sent users to either the website or Instagram shop, depending on the specific behavior of those online shoppers. These two campaigns looked like this:
- An Advantage+ shopping campaign that sent users to Rhoback’s store site
- An Advantage+ shopping campaign with “website and shop” as the conversion location
Like the previous Instagram ad example, placements, audiences, budgets, and formats were precisely the same for both campaigns. And, like the last campaign, their results showed that Advantage+ shopping campaigns plus Shops ads performed better together.
The Results
Homesick ran the A/B test over a space of two weeks and revealed that by selecting “website and shop,” you can:
- Improve ROAS by 27%
- Lower ad costs by 18%
“We’re always looking for and testing new tools to scale our brand as efficiently as possible. By leveraging Advantage+ shopping campaigns and Shops ads, we were able to reach our target customer with relevant products by taking advantage of Meta’s automated machine learning. We look forward to continuing to run Advantage+ shopping campaigns as a scalable and efficient evergreen strategy.” — Laura Wenzel, Paid Social Manager at Homesick
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
Even with the automation Advantage+ shopping campaigns offer, there are still many things eCommerce marketers can do on their end to boost performance. Here are Facebook’s top four:
- Vary your creatives. Combine Advantage+ catalog, video, and image ads to improve ROAS, using 10–20 assets to keep things fresh and engaging.
- Don’t tweak your budgets. You want to ensure you commit enough budget to drive at least 50 sales during a 14–50 day campaign, without making any budgetary changes during a live campaign.
- Opt to go broader with your targeting. With Advantage+ shopping campaigns, you want to use country-level targeting — but be sure to target only one country per campaign.
- A/B test any new campaigns or changes. You want to run an A/B test, splitting the budget equally and setting the same duration for each of the two competing campaigns.
7. Azadea Uses Instagram Live to Bring In-Store Consultations Online
Setting out to boost brand awareness and sales, Middle Eastern brand Azadea designed an Instagram marketing plan to position themselves as an innovative brand that appeals to young people. Essentially a marketplace for their 40 leading international retail franchises, they wanted to drive online clothing sales in the UAE for specific styles.
By combining Instagram Live with strategic campaigns, Azadea raised brand awareness by as much as 9.9% after a single event. Let’s take a closer look at how they achieved this.
Their Campaign Strategy
First, with the help of Meta Creative Shop, Azadea set out to build an Instagram Live plan that would bring in-store, stylist-type consultations online. The idea was to feature brand stylists to deliver a customized live shopping experience.
This meant investing in automated eCommerce messaging that integrated with Messenger for one-to-one direct messages during the live. This Messenger integration was automatically activated by users commenting on Instagram Live using these three hashtags: #casual, #office, or #street. (For this, they partnered with Paloma and used their integration with the Messenger API for Instagram.)
[Source: Instagram]
They also ran a series of Instagram Stories ads before the event to attract new audiences to their live event.
[Source: Instagram]
These promotional ads were measured with brand lift and conversion, and here were the results.
The Results
From their Instagram campaign, they saw the following results from Live activation added to business-as-usual ads:
- 32% increase in purchases
- 2.8X increase in “content view” actions
- 2.49X increase in “add to cart” action
- 9.9% increase in brand awareness
“Immaculate results came out of our first livestream, and the feedback was indescribable. We found a new way to tap into an audience using a real-time approach. The livestream was a great way of keeping up with social media trends and also maintaining trust with our customers by creating a two-way dialogue. Being able to provide them all the information and tips they need helped grow assurance in our services and created a bridge between Azadea and our target audience.”— Hiba Abdulrahim, Social Media Specialist at Azadea
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
Instagram Live is a great way to engage directly with your customers as well as new potential shoppers you target with pre-event targeting campaigns — and you don’t need a huge budget or to invest in new tech to see benefits. It can be as simple as a Q&A, but you will still get great results.
Here’s an example from Jones Road Beauty, where their founder, Bobbi Brown, answered viewers’ questions during a quick live.
View this post on Instagram
Additionally, here are some top tips by Shopify to run a successful Instagram Live event:
- Allocate a livestream moderator for real-time management
- Create excitement and have a clear event theme (such as Q&A, tutorial, or product launch)
- Have a rough outline or plan for your event
- Make sure your Instagram Shop is set up so viewers can seamlessly buy during the stream
- Save livestreams to your profile to use for other content marketing strategies
8. Aise Combines Instagram Feed Ads with Shopping Tags to Drive Product Sales
Aise is a South Korean underwear brand that inspires their customers to feel healthy and confident. Looking to capture younger audiences, they set out to create an Instagram campaign that encouraged audiences to visit their Instagram shop to browse products. This meant making use of strategically placed product tags that helped them lift sales by as much as 17%.
Their Campaign Strategy
To make sure product-tag optimized creatives would work for their brands, they set out to compare these three Instagram campaigns:
- Without product tags, which linked to their website only
- With product tags, which linked to product description pages on their Instagram Shop
- With product tags and creatives optimized with product tags, which include models photographed or videoed, pointing at product tags and eliciting viewers to engage with the tag by clicking it
Working with Meta and creative agency 1LITER Studio, they produced various creatives that included combinations of photo ads in the carousel format and video ads showcasing a wide range of sizes.
[Source: Instagram]
The campaigns all ran using the same automatic placements, targeting (women 18–54 living in South Korea), and budgets — with automatic placements enabling them to benefit from Meta’s machine-learning capabilities.
At Aise, we needed effective solutions for a digital transformation that maintained visibility into customer activity while capturing a young audience on Instagram. Working with Meta and 1LITER Studio, we discovered that using creatives that draw attention to the tags can not only lift sales and return on ad spend, but the number of new visitors to our Instagram Shop too. — Hyeyong Sul, Marketing Team Lead at Hyundai Home Shopping
The Results
Using the three campaigns to run a conversion lift study and split test, Aise saw the following positive performance results when optimizing ads with product tags and using product tag-optimized creatives:
- 30% higher average conversion rate
- 17% higher sales lift
- 20% higher ROAS
- 22% higher CTRs
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
One of the key elements to the success of this campaign is automation.
With the right optimized automation in place, you can continuously tweak eCommerce ad performance in real-time. And you don’t need a huge budget to do it. Every advertising channel has a degree of automation, or, even better, you can invest in one platform that will handle all your ads for you.
For instance, Old Guys Rule managed to increase ROIs by 500% using Traffic Booster’s Instagram, Facebook, and Google PPC automation and eCommerce AI.
9. Nasty Girl Exploits Dynamic Ads to Sharply Lift Purchase Intent
Nasty Girl is the perfect story of someone starting an online clothing business from home that went on to grow into a mega online retail brand. A brand that now sells in over 60 countries as part of the Boohoo Group. They also make excellent marketing decisions, including a strategic Instagram campaign designed to raise brand awareness while increasing sales intent.
How? By running Dynamic ads for broad audiences on Instagram. Here’s an example of the ads they ran.
[Source: Instagram]
So, how did they do it, and what results did this winning Instagram ads example yield?
Bonus Content: How to Drive Sales with Facebook Dynamic Ads [+ Examples]
Their Campaign Strategy
Working with digital marketing agency SocialAmp, Nasty Girl wanted to ensure their clothing range was front and center in the minds of fashion-conscious young women in the US and UK. By using Dynamic ads (mostly on Instagram) the brand was able to automatically show products to shoppers based on their specific preferences.
“One of the main goals with our campaign was to find out the effectiveness of our Dynamic ad formats on brand awareness and the impact on purchase intent against a control group. The US and UK market is strategically important for us and the outcome has been great — the large number of people that we managed to influence in a positive way really exceeded our expectations.” — Andrew Parry, Paid Media Manager at Nasty Gal
Showcasing Nasty Gals’ product catalog in video, image, and carousel format, they used an Instagram advertising traffic objective to push for clicks to their store and app. With regard to targeting, they created custom audiences and broad audience targeting to reach people who had shown interest in similar products.
The Results
Over the month the campaign ran, Nasty Gal saw the following results in the UK:
- 12-point purchase intent increase
- 18-point ad recall increase
And in the US they saw a:
- 9-point purchase intent increase
- 7-point ad recall increase
How to Duplicate Their Instagram Campaign Strategy on a Budget
You don’t need to invest in expensive agencies to get the same job done. Instead, services like Traffic Booster can handle all your campaigns (not just Instagram) without any additional spending beyond what you spend on ads. This means fantastic ROAS without any additional costly retainer contracts and commitments.
If you are DIY-ing your ads, you can also check out our How to Drive Sales with Facebook Dynamic Ads [+ Examples] post for tricks and hacks to improve your performance.
Wrap Up
There you have it, a collection of winning Instagram ads examples you can duplicate in your own marketing strategy. Whether you are looking to upgrade an Instagram Story or reboot your entire Instagram campaign strategy, there is inspiration for everything.
Ultimately, a high-performing strategy should include at least one of these types of ads:
- Instagram Reels ad examples
- Instagram Stories ad examples
- Instagram Advantage+ shopping campaign examples
- Instagram Livestream ad examples
- Instagram Feed ad examples
- Instagram Dynamic ad examples
But, there’s a but! You should be testing for your market, brand, and audiences before investing big in someone else’s strategy. If you’re still stuck with your eCommerce ads, feel free to reach out in the comments — our PPC experts are always here to help.
Happy selling!
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