More Effective Ads for Your eCommerce Store: 11 Tips

Advertising is one of the most effective ways to promote your eCommerce store; it’s unsurprising that digital retail media ad spending in the US is over $70 billion in 2025. As even more online stores recognize the huge opportunities ahead, this number will inevitably increase over the years.

However, creating effective eCommerce ads is more difficult than it might initially seem. All too often, online stores jump in without thinking about the complexities involved. As a result, they waste hundreds of dollars – if not thousands – on campaigns that don’t convert.

Researching the ways to make more effective eCommerce store ads will put you ahead of your competition. In this guide, we’ll help you do precisely that with 12 of our top tips for improving in this area.

To run successful ads, you need to adopt many of the same principles that you would when operating a business in general. The main element of this is to understand your customer’s pain points, needs, and desires.

Creating a buyer persona is one of the most important aspects you should consider. Gather as much information as possible about your target audience; understand their income level, hobbies, and anything else you can think of.

Once you’ve got a buyer persona, look at what your products can do for them. For example, you can showcase how they’ll achieve a level of status by wearing one of your jackets. Use this information to then guide how you create your ad copy.

Another crucial part of building an eCommerce brand is to know where your audience hangs out. You can get an idea of where to run ads by looking at your existing statistics and seeing where you get the most engagement. Once you have an idea of where to go, start targeting your ads in this direction.

Some places you might want to consider advertising are:

• Websites and Blogs: Create ads that you can share on websites frequented by people in your niche. You can sometimes do this via ad networks, but if you have specific publications you’d like to advertise on, contact them directly.

• Instagram: Create ads for in-feed posts and/or Instagram Stories, depending on your audience’s preferences.

• TikTok: If your brand focuses on Gen Z, you might want to consider publishing ads on TikTok to get in front of them.

• Search Engines: You can advertise in Google, Bing, and many other search engines. When you do, your website/landing page will appear above most organic search results.

• Pinterest: Pinterest is another visually oriented social media network on which to advertise. You can add in-feed ads.

Don’t try to cover all of these at once; the rules will differ depending on your choice. A better approach is to focus on getting good at advertising on one before expanding your options.

In the same way that website A/B testing is important, you need to try different ad variations. Each time you create a new campaign, make at least three versions of your advertising copy. It’s also a good idea to mix up your images and calls to action (CTAs).

Once you have varying ads, you can then test to see how each one performs. Segment your audience and see what resonates with them. Test each ad for the same amount of time so that you have better information to work with.

After trying your ad variations, assess what did and did not work. Once you have this data, you can then double down on what your audience is interacting with the most.

Much of what constitutes an effective eCommerce ad will require you to focus on your advertising in and of itself. However, this is not the only element. When potential customers click through to your website, you must ensure that you make a good impression.

Building trust is especially important in eCommerce when, most of the time, the customer will be paying for a physical product. If your site looks unprofessional, it will raise red flags in the user’s head. As part of this, you need to have fast-loading pages and high-quality images.

To ensure that your eCommerce site and landing pages are of the highest quality, make sure that you pick the right hosting. Security should be a key consideration; Verpex, for example, offers free SSL certificates. Plans are also customized based on your store size.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help you create more effective ads and automate numerous processes. For example, creating advertising copy drafts with ChatGPT is one of the most effective ways to use AI in marketing. The problem isn’t using AI in and of itself; instead, the big issue comes when you rely on it too much.

If you rely too heavily on AI, it will become evident throughout your ads – and not in a good way. For example, users can very easily tell when you’ve used ChatGPT to write an ad and not done any editing. Even worse, relying only on AI – without doing any of your own due diligence – can result in factual inaccuracies (and, by extension, misleading ads).

Think about how to use AI sensibly in your advertising. You can use it to help with creating your content, but you should not let it replace every single process. Finding the right balance can help your ads be more effective and also ensure that they remain unique.

Many business owners are drawn to the short-term success that advertising can bring, and it’s definitely a good way to accelerate sales. However, focusing only on immediate gains will harm you in the long run.

While you definitely want to build success in the short term, looking at the longer picture will ensure that you make better decisions. Consider how your ads will play into the overall picture of your business growth and bring it together with your organic campaigns.

As part of focusing on long-term success, you should also ensure that you create your ads well in advance. For example, you should start strategizing for holiday season ads during the summer.

Brand consistency in web design is vital, and the same goes for eCommerce ads. To attract your target audience, you must use appealing visuals and colors. These colors should also be consistent with your branding.

Think about the colors you use in all visual elements. For example, you can ensure that the props you use complement each other. On top of that, you should also use contrasting colors for your fonts.

The only way to ensure that you’re effectively improving your ad campaigns is to measure data and use this information to guide your future choices. Regardless of the platform you use, you will get a significant amount of data to work with after running your ads.

Look at the most important metrics, such as conversion rate and clickthroughs. Determine why some ads work better than others; if you’re unsure, you can always ask your target audience directly.

Besides using the information you get from ads, look at your website data to determine whether you’re missing anything. This policy will serve you well throughout your eCommerce content marketing strategy.

While some people will tell you to go broad, this doesn’t really work with eCommerce advertising. While you’ll probably get more impressions, many of the people who see your ads won’t be qualified leads. As a result, you’re going to spend more money and get a lower return on investment (ROI).

Get as specific as you possibly can with your audience. In many cases, you’ll get a large number of tools with which you can segment users. Target them as closely as possible to get better results, and make sure that you include your ads as part of your eCommerce marketing budget.

You’ll probably feel a big temptation to jump on trends, especially if you see others getting results. However, doing so without knowing what you’re doing is not a good idea. In many instances, it’ll lead to frustration.

Before jumping on trends in your ads, observe why they’re working. Then, determine if those principles apply to your eCommerce brand. If they don’t, you shouldn’t worry about ignoring them and staying in your own lane.

Whether you advertise with Google Ads or use a different platform, having a clear CTA is one of the most important aspects your advertisements can have. If you don’t, it’s hard for prospective customers to know what they should do best.

Your CTA doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Something as simple as “Shop Now” should do the trick. The only rule is that you should guide the viewer to take the specific action you desire.

When making your CTA, ensure that it’s also easy to see. Use contrasting colors compared to the rest of your text.

Creating eCommerce ads that convert customers will require you to think about your ads, but that’s not all. It’s important that users have a good website experience once they click through to your landing pages. To improve your ads in the future, be sure to leverage the data you gather.