How to Acquire Customers with Instagram Ads in 2025
Advertisers are starting to get a little more bang for their buck on Instagram.
In the years after Apple made it harder to track iPhone users' online activities in 2021, the metrics on social marketing mostly headed in one direction: more expensive, less effective. But recently, the data has started looking better. The number of customers who click on Facebook and Instagram ads grew 14 percent year-over-year in the first five months of 2025, while the cost for each of those clicks dropped 10 percent during the same period, according to marketing agency Belardi Wong.
There's no one reason online marketing has suddenly opened up again. In the last year, Meta added more AI tools through a platform called Advantage+, which it launched in 2022, that makes it easier for brands to target the right audiences with specific types of ads they're most likely to engage with. A study the company conducted last year found that brands using Advantage+ have seen a 22 percent higher return on ad spend on average, according to Jackie Pimentel, global lead of ads product marketing for Meta. (The company is reportedly planning to fully automate ad creation and targeting in 2026.) (BoF Team)
As ads get cheaper, and more effective, it's creating an opening for a new generation of fashion start-ups. Many new brands have leaned towards building a following through their own social media content because paid ads were too expensive, especially when customers who click on them often fail to return. Now, performance marketing is a bigger part of the mix again.
What those ads look like has changed since 2021, however. AI may enhance targeting capabilities, but consumers often recoil if the ad itself looks like it was generated by a machine. Potential customers still want to see great storytelling, whether it's glossy still images or pithy reels that show off a brand's personality.
Womenswear brand Damson Madder, for example, 'takes a really bespoke approach to what creative we are servicing at every stage in [the] customer journey,' said Emma Shepherd, the brand's head of marketing. Damson Madder uses more polished campaigns to draw in new customers and product-specific imagery to retarget existing customers. Repurposed user-generated content helps fill in storytelling gaps. In two recent videos repackaged as ads, creators Polly Sayer and Poppy Almond show off different outfits they wore during Copenhagen Fashion Week, providing a deeper look at how specific pieces and looks can be styled for everything from café hopping to meetings.
'If you looked at Instagram a few years ago and just Meta ads in general, it used to be like, how do you figure out your targeting to make sure that you target the right audience,' said Emanuel Cinca, founder and chief executive of the Stacked Marketer newsletter. 'It's changed in the past year or so, where almost 80/20 percent of the performance is given by how good your creatives are.' Polished Campaigns A top-performing Instagram ad from With Nothing Underneath's summer 2025 campaign. (With Nothing Underneath) A still from Damson Madder's top-performing January 2025 campaign. (Damson Madder) A still from Set Active's spring 2025 "Coastal Countryside" campaign. (Set Active)
When advertising on Instagram, the biggest challenge is getting people to notice an ad when they're quickly scrolling.
Brands need to ensure their personality shines through so audiences can quickly get to know their brand identity and also remember them more easily. With these campaigns, consistency in aesthetic and tone of voice goes a long way.
Women's shirting brand With Nothing Underneath produces all of its imagery in the brand's signature film camera style, which can have a soft, diffused look that appears more organic than digital photos. It also helps keep costs down; images from a summer 2025 campaign shoot in the South of France were used for both paid ads and posts on its page. One of those ads, which featured a photo of a woman sunning herself overlaid with with the quote 'To be worn effortlessly, without thought or anything underneath,' had 28 percent lower cost per acquisition than its average ad.
'When they get hit with an ad, it would be so weird for them to be hit with something that was not from the same shoot, with a different tone of voice and super corporate copy when they're used to our tone of voice,' said Pip Durell, With Nothing Underneath's founder. 'Our tone of voice is very British … It's a little tongue in cheek. It's not that serious.'
Damson Madder uses campaign imagery that tells a story and leans into its playful, quirky style to draw new shoppers in. In January, for instance, it released one of its top-performing campaign carousel ads of 2025 featuring models faced with the slightly surreal chaos of returning to the office after the holiday season.
'Stuff that has some storytelling and intrigue, but is also really beautiful, slick, inspirational fashion campaign imagery and video … is what really draws customers in at the top of the funnel,' said Shepherd. User-Generated Content A UGC video posted during Copenhagen Fashion Week, which Damson Madder repurposed as an ad. (Damson Madder) One of Lisa Says Gah's UGC-style ads produced in-house. (Lisa Says Gah) A college ambassador video Set Active repurposed as an ad. (Set Active)
Many brands have turned to repurposing user-generated content to create ads that feel less pushy.
The original videos are mostly non-sponsored posts made by influencers walking viewers through a product's functionality or offering styling tips, although some brands are creating in-house versions starring team members.
To grow that strategy, brands are getting more strategic about how they work with creators to re-use product content they post. Instead of overloading on gifting, as consumers get better at sniffing out inauthentic sponsored posts, brands are developing longer-lasting partnerships with creators who can choose to post about a product if they wish, and repurposing styling or educational videos that emphasise a product's utility.
'We've done that in the past … where 1,000 people would post the same thing on the same day,' said Vicky Boudreau, founder of micro-influencer platform Heylist. 'Now if you do a campaign asking everybody to post the same messaging within the same format, it looks super staged.'
Set Active sees user-generated videos working 'because consumers can see how it moves, how it flows, how it fits into a daily life,' said Johnson, and the brand has recently scaled this content to make up 25 percent of its ads, up from 15 percent. The brand directly collects videos created by its community, and then requests usage rights.
Some brands have even taken to producing content in-house that mimics what users might create. One of Lisa Says Gah's top five performing campaigns in the past year, for example, featured the brand's creative producer modelling the Jenny dress, and generated a $6 return — while its typical return on ad spend has been $5 for the year thus far. Product-Focused Imagery A Damson Madder ad highlighting some of its accessories. (Damson Madder) A Lisa Says Gah ad highlighting pieces from its summer collection. A Set Active video ad featuring pieces from the brand's core collection. (Set Active)
Brands are learning when to push product-specific imagery — whether flat-lay product images or e-commerce product shots — which were once known to clog users' feeds but can be effective at converting shoppers who are already familiar with a brand.
While Spanish womenswear brand Hand Over primarily focuses on campaigns and creator content, it uses product shots 'when we feel people need to just add it to the cart, maybe on Black Friday or a day after a drop,' said Lucia Mac Lean, the brand's creative lead.
Product-focused visuals can be similarly effective in a video format. One of Set Active's top-performing ads is an 11-second video overlaid with the caption 'pov: your summer 2025 capsule wardrobe has arrived,' which showcases how a variety of pieces from their most recent collection can be styled.
Whether a brand is producing polished campaigns, repurposing user content or drilling down to product-specific imagery, it needs to ensure its ads are reaching consumers at the right point in their shopping journey.
New AI tools are helping brands quickly put an ad in front of a group of customers and see how they respond to it before pushing the ad out to a larger pool of users, said Cinca from Stacked Marketer. 'The biggest benefit is just the ease of testing,' he added. The tools are also helping brands reach larger audiences on Instagram, Meta's Pimentel said.
'Instead of like 100 people, where we look to see who among these 100 people are right for your ad, for your business? Who might convert? We actually can do that at a much larger scale,' she said.
While many brands are still figuring out how much AI targeting they want to use, especially around tools that tailor the content of ads to specific customers, it's important to continue prioritising the quality of their content.
'It's reached a point where, really, the creatives are what matter the most,' said Cinca.
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