Home / Answers / Hooks and hook rate
How many hooks should I test per ad?
Three to five hooks per ad body is a common starting point. Keep everything after the first three seconds identical so the test isolates the opening, launch them together in the same campaign, and give each enough impressions before judging. Keep the winner and write new hooks in the same angle.
Why three to five
Fewer than three rarely gives you a clear signal, and more than five splits the budget so thinly that each version takes too long to gather data. Three to five distinct openings is a common starting range among media buyers (r/FacebookAds discussion).
How to set up a hook test
- Keep the body identical. Everything after the first three seconds stays the same.
- Change one thing: the spoken line, the first shot or the on-screen text, not all three at once.
- Make the hooks genuinely different: a problem call-out, a question and a story opener, not three rewordings.
- Launch together in the same ad set with the same budget.
- Read early, decide late: hook rate shows up first; wait for purchase data before declaring a winner.
After the test
Keep the winning hook and write two or three new ones in the same angle to try to beat it. If no hook beats the account's typical hook rate, the angle itself may be wrong, so test a different problem or format rather than more lines.
Making hook variations cheaply
With creators, ask for extra openings in the same shoot; it's cheaper than reshooting later. With AI production, alternative openings are a re-render spliced onto the same body.
Every ad we deliver at ScrollStop Labs comes with alternate opening hooks, so you can run this kind of test without a reshoot.