By Ryan Richardson · Published 8 October 2026
'Ugly' is our own label for deliberately rough, native-feeling creative built to look like a phone photo or screenshot rather than designed ad art, as opposed to polished graphic design. It's one of 18 creative-format tags used across the book funnel's creative pool.
16 other format tags (cartoon, bold-text, UGC-labelled, screenshot, before-after, receipt, testimonial, book-only, comparison, listicle, problem, advertorial, mechanism, founder, quiz, authority) each had under 1,000 impressions or under A$20 spend and recorded zero purchases, too thin to read.
| Format | Ads | Spend | Impressions | CTR | Landing page views | Purchases | CPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ugly (rough/UGC-style) | 17 | A$386.69 | 9,611 | 3.52% | 185 | 10 | A$38.67 |
| Meme | 6 | A$119.89 | 2,429 | 3.25% | 41 | 2 | A$59.95 |
Ugly's 10 purchases sit right at the edge of a usable sample; meme's 2 purchases is a directional read only, not a rate. Within that limit, in this test the rougher, less-designed format produced both the higher landing page view count (185 vs 41) and the lower cost per sale, which argues against assuming a more polished ad will convert better for this funnel.
| Claim | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ugly format spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchases/CPA | A$386.69 / 17 / 9,611 / 3.52% / 185 / 10 / A$38.67 | Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data |
| Meme format spend/ads/impressions/CTR/LPV/purchases/CPA | A$119.89 / 6 / 2,429 / 3.25% / 41 / 2 / A$59.95 | Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data |
| Ugly beats meme on CPA and is the cheapest creative-format value tested | A$38.67 vs A$59.95 | SUMMARY.md, 'Top 5 robust findings' item 4 |
| Number of other creative-format values tested, all too thin to read | 16 | Sixty Steps ad account, Meta Ads data |
| Thin-data exclusion threshold used across this dataset | under 1,000 impressions or under A$20 spend | SUMMARY.md, Top 5 robust findings heading |