The first three seconds of a Facebook ad do roughly 80% of the work. If the hook fails, none of the body copy matters. The product can be brilliant. The offer can be irresistible. Nobody will see it.
So this is mostly a hook playbook. The body copy section is short because, honestly, the body copy is the easy part.
What a hook actually does
A hook earns the next three seconds. That's the whole job. It doesn't need to sell, persuade, or even mention the product. It needs to interrupt a scrolling thumb long enough that the brain decides to keep watching.
The mistake most ad copy makes is trying to sell in the hook. "Get 30% off our new collection" doesn't stop scrolls. It is a scroll.
14 hook structures that work
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The contrarian claim: "Everyone says X. They're wrong." Works when you have a genuinely heterodox take. Fails when you're being edgy for its own sake.
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The specific number: "I tested 47 face creams. Only 3 actually worked." Specificity earns trust. Round numbers (10, 100) feel made up.
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The before / after curiosity gap: "I had 12 of these. Now I have 1." Implies a story worth waiting for.
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The named enemy: "Why I stopped using [well-known competitor]." Polarising, high-CTR, requires the comparison to be honest.
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The mistake confession: "I wasted £4k on the wrong protein powder. Here's what I switched to." Vulnerability buys attention.
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The insider warning: "This is what supplement brands don't want you to know." Use carefully. Cynical when overused.
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The pattern interrupt visual: Hook isn't the words, it's the frame. Unexpected object, odd angle, motion in the first half-second.
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The direct question to the avatar: "How long does it take you to fall asleep?" Specific to the audience's lived experience.
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The "POV" frame: "POV: it's Sunday night and your skin is wrecked from the week." Works for younger audiences. Forced when older.
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The credentialed authority: "I'm a dermatologist. Here's what I actually use." Earns instant credibility if the claim is real.
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The unboxing tease: "I didn't expect [outcome] when I opened this." Curiosity hook for product-led stories.
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The myth-bust: "You don't need 8 glasses of water a day. Here's what you actually need." Educational, builds trust before selling.
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The timeline reveal: "Day 1 vs day 30 vs day 90." Time-lapse structures work because they imply real evidence.
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The price flex (when honest): "This costs more than the competition. Here's why I still buy it." Risky, only works when the value is genuinely defensible.
What kills hooks
- Starting with the brand name. Nobody scrolling cares about your brand yet.
- Starting with the offer. The offer is the close, not the open.
- Generic openings: "Looking for X?" / "Tired of Y?" Your audience has scrolled past 80 of those today.
- Cute wordplay that requires reading to understand. Hooks have to land at audio-off, captions-half-read speed.
Body copy: keep it short, structured, scannable
After the hook, you've got maybe 15-30 seconds of attention. Use it for:
- The promise (what the viewer gets)
- The proof (why they should believe it)
- The push (what to do next)
Three beats. Each beat one or two sentences. No filler. No "as we mentioned earlier". Nobody mentioned anything earlier; they're 4 seconds into the video.
Captions and overlay text
Around 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound. Captions aren't optional. Overlay text reinforces the hook and key claims for the audio-off viewer.
Rules that actually matter:
- Keep on-screen text under 7 words per beat
- Burn captions into the video, don't rely on auto-captions
- Match the visual tone (overly polished captions on rough UGC feels off)
The test you should run this week
Take your best-performing current ad. Write 5 new hooks for the same body. Cut 5 variants. Run them in a clean test against the original. The body and offer haven't changed, so any difference is the hook.
You'll learn more about your audience in that one test than in a month of brand research.