What counts as an advertorial or listicle
Advertorials are editorial-style pages that tell a story or teach before they sell. Listicles are "reasons why" or "top 5" pages. Both sit between the ad and the product page, which is why they are also called presell or bridge pages. All 13 tests ran on landing pages.
The win/loss record
13 results, 13 marked won, 0 losses. Dave Diederen ran 7, Oliver Kenyon 4, Kasper Dolk 1 and Peter Christensen 1.
Presell page vs product page
- Listicle presell for cold traffic: +47% CVR, +$20k/month (Oliver Kenyon)
- New listicle pages vs the homepage: +54% CVR, +57% revenue, +137% revenue per session over 22 days (Oliver Kenyon, who notes it was not much data)
- Education-led advertorial in place of a generic landing page: +$20,699/month (Oliver Kenyon)
- Pre-sell bridge page instead of the PDP: CAC from €22.10 to €5.37 on low spend (Kasper Dolk)
- Advertorial-style pages for paid traffic: 35% lower CPA at the same spend (Peter Christensen)
The last two are acquisition cost changes, not split tests with a control group.
Biggest wins on existing advertorials
Clear the space under the hero
Dave Diederen won twice by removing things from the top. Hiding the USP bar under the hero gave +10.89% CVR and +11.50% RPV, and hiding the social proof slider at the top gave +2.96% RPV. Dave's point: brands treat advertorials like a longer product page, but readers have not decided they care yet.
Move proof up, fix the hero and headline
The results timeline test (+24.36% CVR) moved proof of when results arrive above the benefits. A hero redesign with rewritten opening copy and product images above the fold gave +12.26% CVR, which Dave puts at $1M additional yearly revenue. New listicle headlines gave +18% CVR, and Oliver Kenyon's longevity vs pain-relief angle gave +28% CTR and +$116k/month.
Smaller fixes
Dave swapped a Trustpilot logo for plain stars and "Rated 4.8/5.0 by 50,000+ customers" for +7.8% CVR, and showed the sticky CTA from the first in-page CTA for +3.10% CVR.
@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederenTests that lost or were flat
None were shared. Oliver mentions the brand behind the listicle-vs-homepage test had poor results with earlier AI-built pages, but no numbers were given.
Design patterns that won
- Lead with the reader's problem or outcome, not the product.
- Keep USP bars and review sliders out of the first screen.
- Put the results timeline and product image high.
- Test the headline and angle before the layout.
- Plain star ratings over a review platform's logo.
Ideas not yet tested
Most of the 25 ideas come from Kasper Dolk: separate advertorials per customer type for the same product, an authority figure in the opening, curiosity headlines for unaware traffic, and before/after images. Dave Diederen suggests testing the button copy on listicles.
How to build advertorials and listicles on Shopify
Most teams build these with a page builder rather than the theme; see the landing page builders. Keep the page on your domain so the cart and checkout stay the same.
How to test it on your store
Hypothesis: sending one cold ad set to a listicle instead of the product page will raise revenue per visitor. Split traffic at the ad or URL level, measure revenue per visitor, and size the test with the sample size calculator.