Most companies struggle to create ads that actually get clicked. The proof is in the numbers—major ad platforms consistently report average click-through rates under 1%, and in many cases lower than 0.5%. That’s not just inefficiency—it’s wasted opportunity. The problem isn’t the channels or the targeting necessarily. It’s more often the creative. Ads are failing to stop the scroll, spark interest, and compel action. Over the years, I’ve tested countless variations and noticed a pattern: the highest-performing ads always lean into proven psychological levers. Below are a dozen approaches that consistently separate the winners from the noise.

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For these levers, let’s use a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) as the example target, with display ads appearing on several platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads.

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Amusement

Amusing your buyer can let them know you understand them, what their sensibilities are and how they go about their work. Taking an example startup CISO buyer, we know they often have a different mindset around what constitutes risk.

Headline: CISO Summit

Hero Image: Cartoon of CISOs at the top of the bridge looking hesitantly at a bungie jump

Sub-headers: “Seems risky” Your Company Doesn’t Need a Thrill Seeker

Call to action (CTA): Change the Narrative

We’ll create headlines for other approach examples, but hopefully from the above you’re beginning to see how those headlines need to fit together and complement other ad components.

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Anger

Anger can be powerful if it’s well founded. Be careful here, as positioning vs. a competitor masked as anger can backfire. Often it’s more effective to approach via anger if there is an outside force affecting your industry. For example, if a new tax has been placed on startups and you’ve written a blog post on how to address changes (which may help establishing your voice in the industry and eventually showing up in search engine results), you might use a headline like:

This Law Unjustly Targets CISOs

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Aspiration

One of the most effective ways to connect with your audience is to tap into aspiration. If there is something common to the experience of who you are trying to reach and a standard of success, these are fairly straightforward. For example:

You Can Reduce IoT Breaches by 300%… Without Killing Yourself

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Desire

Romantic or sexual desire can pull in elements of aspiration and other approaches. These can be polarizing if your target demographic is more diverse. But for those with significantly skewed demographics, it can be effective. Combined with visuals, you could use something like:

She Knows What You’re Hiding

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Empathy

Letting your buyer know you understand their pain puts you on the same side. It subsequently makes it easier to connect with them. Just make sure you fully understand the pain and who it affects. If it only affects a portion of your buyers, consider another approach or only use it on platforms where you know targeting tools can limit ad exposure. An example common in trying to address a security issue:

Wading Through Access Logs is Soul Crushing

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Escape

If there is a pain so acute in an industry that it’s understood to be part of the process of being successful, there is an opportunity to tap into that and give them some relief. If you have a retreat coming up for security team mental health, you might say:

Your Team Needs You to Recharge

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Fear

Tapping into a common fear is a “scare tactic.” While it can create powerful responses, consider the state someone is in when they give you their contact info. Do you want fear to be associated with your brand? While this is a big decision, there may be times when your confidence in helping buyers avoid something likely—something you know you can direct them away from—becomes a positive based on your overwhelmingly good buyer feedback. Given that, here is an example of using fear as a motivating approach:

Breaches are a CISO’s Worst Nightmare

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Pain

Pain is another approach that can elicit powerful responses. Be careful how you use it. Zeroing in on a common pain can get you clicks, but who might you be leaving out? Is there a danger in labeling your company as addressing just a certain type of pain? Playing on common CISO pain might look like this:

Unplanned Downtime is a Weekend Killer

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Peer Pressure

There are some decisions that require “out-of-the-box” or creative, iterative thinking. Most don’t. If someone has been there before, why re-invent the wheel? Using this mindset and approach can be particularly effective if you have already captured a significant portion of market share in an industry. It can also be combined with doing an incomplete reveal of what you are selling. For example:

9 Out of 10 CISOs Leverage This

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Scarcity

Scarcity is a great tool to spur action. It works particularly well with events and sales promotions. A simple example here is if you are having an event with an important industry personality. You might promote it with something like:

Expert Panel of Fortune 100 CISOs—Only 14 Spots

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Statistics

Data and analysis appeals to many, particularly those that are numbers oriented. Here you just need to be careful that the data is verifiable. This approach is great for engaging with buyers around more lengthy content, often with your viewpoint infused. Let’s say you had an industry benchmark report, you might use the ad approach of:

87% of CISOs Are Making These Changes

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Status

Status is another way to align the end goals of your buyer with an outcome you can potentially provide. While aspirational approaches focus on a positive business result typically, a status approach is often more personal. If you have less diversity in your buyers, this often works, particularly if you cue off of humor. For example, if you have offerings that help ease the pain that CISOs feel when going in front of their board, you might use the approach of:

Your Board Will Love You

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Test Using These Levers

Ads don’t fail because of algorithms. They do, however, fail because of unimaginative execution more often than not. Starting with the right psychological lever changes the outcome. The levers above show how leaning into humor, fear, aspiration, or data can transform an ad from ignorable to compelling. I’ve seen campaigns using these consistently outperform industry norms—sometimes by 3x to 4x average click-through rates. That kind of lift doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by being deliberate in your creative process.

In the next post, I’ll share how combining these approaches with broader ad experience design can create sustainable results across ad platforms.

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