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A children's-book-style AI image hit 12.87% CTR on one ad

By Ryan Richardson · Published 8 October 2026

Across 4 AI-generated image concepts tested on the same cold-traffic offer, a children's-book-illustration style scored the highest click-through rate at 12.87%, against 4.33% for the weakest of the 4. None of the 4 produced a recorded purchase.

What was tested

our ad system tags some creative by visual concept, naming the AI image style used (for example 'movie poster', 'workspace photo', 'children's book illustration', 'Twitter-screenshot style'). These 4 had enough spend and impressions to compare.

Results

36 further visual-concept styles (boardgame, ransom-note, film-noir, stick-figure, flowchart, tarot card, newspaper, line art, pixel art, manga, and others) each had under 1,000 impressions or under A$20 spend and are too thin to include.

Visual conceptAdsSpendImpressionsCTRLanding page viewsPurchases
Twitter-screenshot style3A$267.754,2065.09%520
Workspace photo2A$116.672,4474.33%350
Movie poster1A$115.691,8738.12%140
Children's book illustration1A$38.251,53812.87%190

How sure to be about this

The children's-book-illustration and movie-poster styles are each a single ad, so their CTR is one data point, not a tested rate; don't scale a creative plan on either number alone. The Twitter-screenshot style is the only one of the 4 with more than 2 ads and meaningful spend, which makes its 5.09% CTR the steadiest read here. All 4 styles produced zero purchases, so CTR is the only axis this table can speak to.

The numbers
ClaimValueSource
Twitter-screenshot style spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchasesA$267.75 / 3 / 4,206 / 5.09% / 52 / 0Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data
Workspace photo spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchasesA$116.67 / 2 / 2,447 / 4.33% / 35 / 0Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data
Movie poster spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchasesA$115.69 / 1 / 1,873 / 8.12% / 14 / 0Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data
Children's book illustration spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchasesA$38.25 / 1 / 1,538 / 12.87% / 19 / 0Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data
Thin-data exclusion threshold used across this datasetunder 1,000 impressions or under A$20 spendSUMMARY.md, Top 5 robust findings heading
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