Advertorials have been part of our playbook for over three years now. For supplements, skincare, and health brands especially, they're the highest-converting page type we've tested for cold Meta traffic.

Not product pages. Not generic landing pages personalised to no persona. Not homepages with a phat offer. Advertorials.

The reason is simple: they feel like written personalised content. They educate before they sell. They build trust before asking for anything. And for cold traffic, people who've never heard of you and have zero reason to believe your claims, that matters more than any design trend or offer stack.

Here's how to write ones that work. 10 Minute read - this is stacked….↓🗣️

What is an advertorial?

An advertorial is a long-form, mainly story-driven presell page.

The ad looks like native content, no product shots, no logos, no obvious branding. The page continues that illusion. It reads like an article someone might actually want to finish it structured like a news article, personal blog or editorial.

You're not trying to close the sale on this page. You're warming the visitor up and handing them off to your product page or offer page ready to buy.

The distinction matters: advertorials move people from sceptical to curious to believing. Product pages assume belief already exists. If you send cold traffic straight to a PDP, you're skipping the part where they decide you're worth trusting.

Advertorials aren't right for everything. They work best when:

The product requires education. Supplements, skincare, health and wellness, anything where you can't just show a bottle and expect someone to buy. If people need to understand why it works before they'll consider it, an advertorial gives you the space to explain.

The category is new or misunderstood. If people don't know what the product does or why it's different from what they've tried before, you need to teach them before you sell them.

Your audience likes to read. Older demographics especially. They buy from people and stories, not flashy design and countdown timers. They want to feel informed before they commit.

You have a real story to tell. Strong founder stories, compelling customer transformations, a genuine origin, advertorials let you tell these properly instead of cramming them into a hero section.

If your product solves a problem people don't fully understand, or if they've tried other solutions that failed them, an advertorial is probably your best format.

This is where most advertorials fail. People start writing before they have the raw material. Before you write anything, gather:

Customer reviews. Your site, Amazon, Trustpilot — anywhere customers talk about the product. Export them. Read them properly. Look for the same words, the same phrases, the same outcomes mentioned repeatedly. That repetition tells you what actually matters to buyers.

Post-purchase survey responses. Why did they buy? What problem were they trying to solve? What nearly stopped them from purchasing? If you're not running post-purchase surveys, start. The insights are irreplaceable.

Meta Ads Library. Look up the brand. Scroll to the bottom for the longest-running ads, these are likely the best performers (Meta doesn't keep spending on ads that don't work). Screenshot the creative and copy. These winning angles become your starting point.

Support tickets. This is where you find objections, confusion, and friction points. The exact things that stop people from buying. Your advertorial needs to address these before they become reasons to bounce.

Competitor reviews. Same product type, different brand. What are their customers saying? What complaints come up? What benefits get mentioned? This gives you category-level insight, not just brand-level.

Don't write until you have this. No raw data means no resonance.

The output should be what we call a "VOC Doc", a document of exact phrases customers use, emotional trigger words, transformation language, objection patterns. You'll pull from this constantly as you write.

Every high-converting advertorial follows this arc. Don't skip sections. Don't rush through them. Each part does a specific job.

Book a call with us if you are interested in funnel optimisation for your brand…

Part 1: The Hook

This is where you earn or lose the scroll.

Open with a personal story or a statement that challenges what they believe. An immediately relatable problem. A promise that something useful is coming.

The hook has to create curiosity. If they don't read past the first paragraph, nothing else matters.

Three hook approaches that work:

The Specific Discovery: "MIT Scientists Discover Why Collagen Stops Working After 40"

The Unusual Method: "The 'Upside-Down' Routine That Cleared My Acne in 2 Weeks"

The Contradiction: "Everything dermatologists told me about retinol was wrong. Here's what a Korean skincare chemist taught me that changed everything..."

Your headline should combine a pain point, a promise, and curiosity. The subhead should remove a constraint or add specificity, make them think "this might actually apply to me” depending on the persona you’re going after.

Part 2: The Problem Deep Dive

This is where you agitate.

Go deep on the pain points. Explain why current solutions fail. Use statistics where you have them. Use emotional language pulled directly from your research.

The goal here is recognition. When they read this section, they should think "this person understands exactly what I'm going through."

Show them you get their struggle better than they can articulate it themselves. Call out the failed attempts. The frustration. The money wasted on things that didn't work.

This section should be substantial, at least 500-600 words. You're building the weight of the problem so they're genuinely hungry for a solution by the time you introduce one.

Generic pain points kill this section. "Feeling tired?" is weak. "Waking up at 3am with your mind racing about tomorrow's meeting, then dragging through the day on your fourth coffee, wondering if this is just what life is now?" is specific. The specific version comes from your research. The generic version comes from guessing.

Part 3: The Discovery

This is the transition from problem to product. It needs to feel invisible.

Tell the story of finding this solution. Initial scepticism followed by hope. Scientific backing or credibility markers that made it seem worth trying.

The key: this has to feel like a genuine discovery, not a pitch.

Bad transition: "That's why I'm excited to tell you about Brand X, the revolutionary new supplement that..."

Good transition: "That's when I found Brand X. I was sceptical — I'd tried so many things that promised results and delivered nothing. But something about the science made sense. And the reviews from women my age were hard to ignore. I figured, one more try couldn't hurt."

The first version announces "the sales pitch starts now." The second version continues the story. The product enters as part of the narrative, not as an interruption to it.

If you can see the seam between story and pitch, you've done it wrong.

Part 4: The Solution Revealed

Now you introduce the product properly — but through the lens of discovery, not through the lens of selling.

Explain the mechanism. Why it works differently. What makes it worth trying when other things haven't worked.

Frame benefits as outcomes, not features.

Not "contains 20% Vitamin C" but "brightens dark spots and evens skin tone."

Better still, take it one step further. What does that outcome mean for their life? "Feel confident going out without makeup" or "Stop dreading the mirror in the morning."

Feature: What it is. ("Contains 20% stabilised Vitamin C")

Benefit: What it does. ("Brightens dark spots and evens skin tone within 4 weeks")

Meaning: What that means for their life. ("Feel confident going makeup-free")

Features inform. Benefits create interest. Meaning creates action. Most advertorials stop at benefits. The best ones get to meaning.

Part 5: Social Proof & Objection Handling

Don't save all your proof for one section at the bottom. Weave testimonials, before/afters, and data points throughout the entire piece.

More importantly, use proof to handle objections.

If people worry about price, show a testimonial from someone who thought it was expensive but found it worth every penny. If they worry it won't work for their specific situation, show someone similar who had the same doubt.

Stack testimonials from people who mirror your target customer, age, lifestyle, situation. When readers see someone like them getting results, belief builds.

This isn't about volume of proof. It's about relevance of proof. Three testimonials from people who match your avatar beat twenty generic five-star reviews.

PART 6 - CTAS. MAKE THEM COUNT.

Generic CTAs like "Learn More" or "Click Here" don't give people a reason to click. The CTA should hint at what's waiting for them, an offer, a result, or the next piece of information they need.

Outcome-focused CTAs:

Offer-teasing CTAs:

Curiosity-driven CTAs:

Specificity CTAs:

The CTA should feel like the next logical step, not a hard close. You're handing off someone who now understands the problem and believes in the solution — give them a reason to take that next step.

CTAs should appear 3-4 times throughout the advertorial:

Match the CTA to what you've just told them. If the section above is full of before/afters, the CTA should be "See More Transformations" or "See If You Qualify." If you've just explained the mechanism, the CTA should be "See the Full Routine" or "Watch How It Works."

The tone is still inviting, not pressure, but now there's a clear reason to click.

The formatting rules that matter

Advertorials need to feel native. Like content, not ads.

Short paragraphs: 2-3 sentences maximum. Walls of text kill readership.

Subheadings every 150-200 words: Break up the content. Let people skim.

Pull quotes and statistics: These draw the eye and add credibility.

Images in every major section: Ideally UGC-style, not polished product shots. Show the problem visually. Show real people. Show transformation.

Max 3-line paragraphs: Keep text readable on mobile.

Match the platform's content style: News sites need a journalistic tone. Lifestyle sites need conversational, trendy language. Health sites need authoritative, researched content.

The goal: make it feel like an article they'd actually want to read, not an ad they want to skip.

Book a call with us if you are in need of this.

The invisible transition

The hardest part of any advertorial is moving from story to product without jarring the reader.

If the transition feels like "and now here's the sales pitch," you've lost them.

The discovery section does this heavy lifting. The product should emerge naturally from the story, as the solution the narrator found, not as something being sold to the reader.

Bad transition: "That's why I'm excited to tell you about Brand X, the revolutionary new supplement that..."

Good transition: "That's when I found Brand X. I was sceptical at first, I'd tried so many things. But something about the science made sense, and the reviews from women my age were hard to ignore. I figured, what's one more try?"

See the difference? One sells. One shares.

The proof requirements

Advertorials demand proof more than any other page type.

Back every claim with statistics, studies, or real data. If you say "clinically proven," show the clinical proof. If you cite a percentage, link to the source.

Cold traffic is sceptical. They've seen enough fake claims to assume yours are fake too. Proof is how you break through that wall.

This is especially important for health claims. If you're selling in the USA, verify FTC compliance before publishing. Claims need to be substantiated.

The process we use

Here's the workflow:

Step 1: Gather all source materials. Product page, reviews, survey responses, winning ads, support tickets, competitor research. Everything goes into one folder.

Step 2: Find a winning model advertorial to reverse engineer. Go to weather.com, usatoday.com, msn.com, yahoo.com — scroll to the "Sponsored" section, click through product ads, find one with strong structure and a believable narrative. Export it as a PDF. This becomes your framework.

Step 3: Build your research vault. Analyse the product in depth. Document pain points, benefits, competitive advantages, customer fears, emotional motivators, logical objections, key phrases from real customers.

Step 4: Build your avatar bank. Create 3-5 customer avatars with specific frictions, emotions, objections, and buying motivators. Each avatar gets its own messaging angles.

Step 5: Break down your model advertorial. Label each section — hook, pain, discovery, transformation, CTA. Understand what copy approach was used in each. This becomes the framework you follow.

Step 6: Choose your angle and avatar. Pick one avatar. Pick the narrative angle and narrator (customer story, expert POV, editorial tone). Write the advertorial section by section.

Step 7: Polish to a 10/10. AI can give you a solid first draft. But AI copy sounds like AI copy. Read it aloud. Cut the fluff. Fix robotic phrasing. Replace words like "transform," "unlock," "skyrocket," "revolutionise" — anything that sounds like marketing. Match every claim to real proof. Check CTA and offer accuracy. Make sure the tone matches your avatar.

Step 8: Create headline variants. Generate 10 options focused on emotional hooks, curiosity, or specific benefits. Pick the best 3 to launch. Keep the rest for split tests.

Book a call with us if you are in need of this.

Rushing to the product. The product shouldn't appear until at least 30-40% of the way through. Build the problem and story first. If you mention the product in the second paragraph, you've turned your advertorial into a long ad.

Generic pain points. Vague problems don't create urgency. Specific, visceral descriptions of the problem — pulled from real customer language — do.

Obvious transitions. If readers can feel where the story ends and the pitch begins, trust breaks. The discovery section should make the product feel like a natural part of the narrative.

Weak proof. Vague testimonials ("Great product!") and unsubstantiated claims don't build belief. Specific testimonials with details, timelines, and relatable situations do.

Hard CTAs too early. "Buy Now" in paragraph two bounces people. They haven't been educated yet. Keep CTAs soft until the story has done its job.

Ignoring mobile. Most traffic is mobile. Long paragraphs, small text, and cluttered layouts destroy readability. If it's hard to read on a phone, you've lost most of your audience.

Breaking ad-to-page congruence. If the ad angle is "I tried everything for my joint pain," the advertorial must open with that same thread. Any disconnect between ad and page loses the visitor immediately. They clicked because something resonated. If they can't find that thread on the page, they leave.

The summary

Advertorials work because they match the content consumption mindset. They build trust through storytelling. They educate before selling. They feel like discovery, not pushy sales.

The structure: Hook → Problem Deep Dive → Discovery → Solution Revealed → Social Proof & Objection Handling → Soft CTA.

The requirements: Research before writing. Proof throughout. Native formatting. Invisible transitions. Ad-to-page congruence.

The goal: Hand off a warmed, educated, believing visitor to your product page. Let the advertorial do the heavy lifting of building trust.

Let the product page or buy box with the offer at the bottom of the page close the sale.

EXTRA VALUE!! 😌

Want to go deeper on cold traffic and funnels? Watch the slideshow breakdown on how we do it from a zoomed out perspective that you can integrate today into your process.

If you want help applying this

If you're running cold traffic and not seeing the conversions you expected, there's a good chance your funnel isn't matching where your customer actually is mentally.

We work with 7-9 figure DTC brands on full-funnel CRO, research, strategy, landing pages, advertorials (duhhhhh), checkout optimisation, subscription growth - whatever the brand goal is aligned to performance and scale.

Book a 30-minute call and I'll walk through your funnel live, show you where the gaps are, and explain what we'd do differently.

Paddy