10 product ad examples and how to make your own

It’s one thing to make a product ad, but it’s another to make one that actually converts. 

From highly produced videos, to minimalist animations and vector designs, let’s explore successful product ad examples and what makes them effective.

But we won’t stop there. We’ll also show you how to create your own static or animated ads using Linearity’s templates. 

What makes an effective product ad

Here are five things to consider when crafting your next product ad:

• Creative hook: Whether it’s the use of vibrant colors and big, bold fonts, a comedic and playful touch, or the appearance of a famous personality — an effective ad lures the audience in with creativity and builds a memorable experience.
• Clear messaging: Ads must clearly communicate the one thing the product or feature in question does and why people should convert. You have a fleeting chance to get it right so your value proposition must be direct and leave no room for second guessing.  
• Fabricated emotional connection: If you want to sell a product, you have a higher likelihood of being successful if you craft a narrative that tugs at people’s heartstrings — or mouth corners. People remember ads that make them feel something, be it happy, sad, or just curious. An ad that resonates, is an ad that potentially sells.
• Target audience understanding: To build that emotional bond and to get the message right, you first need to understand who you’re trying to attract. Your target audience dictates the tone, visual aesthetic, and the particular product benefits or features you communicate. 
• Strategic placement: Where you place your ad will determine how successful it will be. And to choose the right platform, you have to know where to find your target audience. If you’re interested in a wider reach and don’t mind not being able to track results, offline ads are for you — though “where” offline is still a big question. Online platforms make the decision easier, as they all have a specific “vibe” and purpose. For instance, your B2B SaaS product should go on LinkedIn but the lipstick that’s trying to reach Gen Z should definitely be placed on TikTok and Instagram.

10 product ad examples

Tinder

The promo video opens up with a girl sitting cross legged in a candle-lit room surrounded by crystals and reciting positive affirmations. Her roommate walks in, interrupting her “chill vibe”, so she screams at her and then proceeds with her ritual. Lettering appears on the screen claiming that what the girl is doing might not be for everyone, but it is for someone. The video then transitions to a bright pink screen showcasing Tinder’s new “Explore” feature, which helps you find matches with similar interests more easily.

Why it works: 

• The target audience is clear — Gen Z/Millennial people trying to date. 
• It has a funny, unexpected twist — the roommate threat. 
• The product messaging is clear — find someone that matches your niche interests.
• It taps into a topic that was very prevalent online (while also poking fun at it) — self-care.
• The medium and platform used fits the target audience, which is very video centric, so the likelihood to reach them is higher. 

Blinkist Business

This is a LinkedIn ad by Blinkist to promote their “Blinkist for Business” product. It uses a minimalist aesthetic with muted colors to make the neon green CTA really pop.

Why it works: 

• It has a clear and low-commitment offering (free trial). It provides all the necessary details, leaving no room for questions, making the call to action feel natural. 
• It creates a sense of urgency by adding an expiration date to the offer. 
• It showcases the product and how people can use it with very simple visuals. 
• The platform chosen (LinkedIn) and the amount of information packed into this one visual shows a clear target audience understanding.

Bolt Business 

Just like Blinkist’s ad, Bolt takes to LinkedIn to promote their product for businesses. They use a minimalist design with distinct brand colors and fonts. 

Why it works

• Value proposition is clear — paperwork-free (hassle free) business travel.
• The ad is laser focused on sharing a promo code for businesses. 
• It makes converting attractive by offering a significant discount.
• It’s aware of its audience, hence the choice of platform and minimal, professional design.

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Airbnb

A series of snapshots from a friend group’s holiday accompanied by the Toy Story song “You’ve got a Friend” (Japanese version). That was the setup chosen to promote a particular accommodation for this Airbnb Japan video ad. 

Why it works:

• It makes the travel experience feel authentic by displaying what seem to be real photos of a real vacation to an Airbnb location. This authenticity makes the experience feel aspirational.
• The song and the friend group’s pictures craft a warm and nostalgic feeling.
• It shows the product and how to find on it the exact location shown in the video — so that you too can live a similar authentic experience with your friends. 
• It doesn’t tell people what to do, it just shows the audience a possibility and nudges them, without asking them to, to use the app and book the accommodation.

Barilla 

A minimalistic vector design product ad by Barilla that compares iconic Italian landmarks to pasta shapes, implying how authentic they actually are. This one depicts penne pasta as the tower of Pisa surrounded by tourists marvelling at it. 

Why it works

• It makes something mundane seem monumental, making the product stand out. 
• The visuals and tagline make this commercial pasta brand seem to be an Italian classic, a symbol of culture. It makes the brand feel legitimate. 
• It’s creative, striking, and fun, making the ad memorable.
• The value proposition is clear — real, authentic, Italian pasta.

BetterHelp

This Meta ad by BetterHelp uses simple, vector graphics to focus the message down to the effectiveness of their product: how it helps people improve. 

Why it works:

• It uses data to showcase the product’s success and evoke trustworthiness and credibility.
• It uses big shapes and bold, contrasting colors to highlight the most important  information they want to convey.
• The simple vector design and evident value proposition is an invitation, not a direct ask, for conversion. 
• By choosing to advertise on Meta, they’re ensuring a wide audience reach. Since therapy is something that could be useful for just about anyone, it’s the right move. The design choice is also neutral enough to appeal to a wide range of people. 

Monday

This Meta ad contrasts a messy spreadsheet with a simple project management board by Monday.com. The copy confidently implies that Monday.com offers a better and more streamlined solution than traditional spreadsheets. 

Why it works: 

• It’s a competitor comparison without being in your face. 
• It understands user pain points (dealing with clunky spreadsheets) and highlights product benefits (streamlined, organized boards) through simple vector design and cheeky copy.
• It invites conversion by showing the audience a clear “before and after” in their workflows.

Booking.com

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Booking.com partnered with celebrity Tina Fey to showcase the world of possibilities they have to offer, allowing you to “book whoever you want to be”. 

Why it works

• It’s a creative and fun ad that uses a well-known celebrity to get people’s attention. 
• It’s short, and snappy, and clearly communicates the product’s value proposition. 
• By casting a celebrity, it makes the product feel aspirational while also trustworthy, as it’s being endorsed by a well-known person. 
• It invites you to rethink holiday bookings as a state of being. Who do you want to be and which place allows you to embody that?

Headspace

This short Headspace animated ad chooses a particular use case — the need for sleep — and walks you through the product, pointing to the feature that will help you achieve your goal.  

Why it works

• It has a clear, non-committal CTA — free trial. 
• The design choices prove the concept they’re trying to sell: the soothing voice over, meditative music, and dark color palette start to make you feel ready to sleep.
• It shows the product and communicates different value propositions clearly (ease of use, different use cases, effectiveness) while keeping it short.

Where is example #10?

We thought your own product ad should be showcased here. 

So, now that you know what makes a winning ad, let’s jump into learning how to make one using Linearity Curve and Linearity Move.

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Best practices for product ads using vector design and animation

Most companies don’t have the budget to hire someone like Tina Fey to do the selling for them. Or to shoot high-end commercials making fun of self-care rituals. 

What your company has access to is probably a designer and/or an illustrator. That means, you need to get creative when crafting product ads by using minimal resources — just like all the other example ads in this article.  

Let’s explore the best practices you should follow to craft impactful advertisements using vector graphics and animation.

Use clean and simple designs 

Less is more with vector graphics. Punchy and short copy, minimal illustrations, and playing around with shapes and shadows can help you craft sleek and professional ads. Just look at how Monday.com and Barilla did it. 

Think of scalability

You can resize vector designs as much as you want without losing quality. That means you can use the same design for an Instagram story and a billboard on the street. Just make sure to test the look and feel of the design in the different formats before rolling with it. For instance, the ads from Bolt and Blinkist might not have accounted for this scalability since they use raster images in their designs.

Use color boldly

Since your ad will by nature be simple and minimalistic, you need to make it visually pop with vibrant, contrasting colors. You want people to stop scrolling and take your product promo in, so use color strategically to help you evoke the emotion you want to generate in your audience. Like Betterhelp did with their soothing yet hopeful color palette.

Stick to your visual identity

Just because you’re trying to be bold, that doesn’t mean you should steer away from your actual brand. You want the ads to make your brand memorable and recognizable, so use elements and colors that are congruent with your visual identity.

Highlight product features with animation

Did you notice how Headspace smoothly walked you through the flow of their app and how to access the particular feature they were promoting? They matched screen recordings with simple fades to emulate their app's flow. That’s exactly what you want to do. Short animations, with subtle transitions to create a sense of organic flow and movement that keep the ad focused. 

Make your CTA pop with animation

Animations guide the audience in a logical, chronological order through all the different messages you want to convey. Since it adds this sense of flow and emphasis, don’t let the CTA be just another boring button. You could use your logo to your advantage to create a smooth transition away from the product feature and into the CTA, just like Headspace did.

Creating product ads with Linearity Curve

Let’s explore how to create your own impactful product ad using intuitive software like Linearity Curve and leveraging the available template gallery.

1. Download Linearity Curve and open the app. 
2. Choose how to start creating. When the app opens, you will be given the option to create a new document, import a design, or explore all available templates.

3. Open a template. After you have found the template you want to work with, just click on it and click on “Use template”. A new editable view will appear. This is your Curve workspace. 
4. Adjust the colors, elements, and fonts. Now you’re free to resize the existing elements, exchange them for your own product, change the font for one that matches your brand, and play around with the colors.

5. Export when you’re done. Once you’re happy with the adjustments, export your design in your preferred format. And that’s it, you’re ready to share your new product ad on the platform where you can best reach your target audience.

Adding motion with Linearity Move

Your product announcements don’t have to just be static designs. 

“But I don’t know how to do animations!” I hear you say. Well, with Linearity Move you don’t have to — that’s why you use software that animates for you. 

Or you can choose product ad templates to aid you in your animation process.

Let’s explore how you can edit a template in Linearity Move.

1. Download Linearity Move . 
2. Select and download your template. Browse the template gallery on the website and choose the one you want to work with. Once you have it, click on “Open template”. This is how you download the asset to your computer.

3. Open the template. Go to your computer files and double click on the template item. This will automatically open it on Linearity Move.

4. Edit the video. You will see the video is divided into scenes. In order to edit the different elements, you have to double click on each scene. This will make an editable view appear. On the left you will find the animation presets, on the right you can adjust colors and text. This is the time to adjust all the colors, elements and fonts to match your visual identity and ad goals.

5. Animate! You can either play around with the presets, manually animate by setting keyframes in the timeline with the playhead and moving each elements however you want. Or you can stick to the template’s animations.
6. Export when you’re done. Once you’re happy with the adjustments, the animations, and the video duration, you can export your design as MP4, MOV, or GIF. And that’s it, you’ve created an animated product ad!

Create the missing product ad with Linearity

You’ve gone through the ins and outs of producing effective ads, learned how to use vector design and animation to your advantage, and studied plenty of sources of inspiration.

Now it's time for you to close this article and open Linearity to create the 10th product ad example we wanted to share. But there’s no need to sit before a blank canvas and come up with a design from scratch. 

Linearity offers a vast template gallery to help you get started. Designer’s block is no longer an excuse. The best part? When using Linearity Curve, you can access all templates directly within the app. 

And when you're done crafting your static design, you can quickly add movement using Linearity Move's auto animate feature, or play around with the animation presets.

Ready to design our next source of inspiration? Get started with Linearity for free.