The Top 5 Digital Advertising Agencies In The UK

Data driven performance creative is crucial to any eCommerce brand looking to scale on paid social. Interestingly, 63% of businesses have increased their digital marketing budgets just this past year. And as digital marketing continues to play a pivotal role in the marketing strategies of businesses across various industries, this figure is only going to rise.

But when it comes to hiring an agency for DTC video advertising that performs, it can be tricky knowing who to trust. The creative industry is highly competitive and agencies will promise every result in the book to try and win over your business. And while it can be easy to do so, it’s important not to fall for these vacant promises. You deserve a true digital advertising expert who can guarantee passion, expertise and real results. 

This is why we’ve rounded up our top 5 digital advertising agencies, all with exceptional results and services that won’t break the bank, to help you make the best decision for your business. But first, let’s understand exactly what a digital marketing/advertising agency is. 

What Is a Digital Advertising Agency?

To put it simply, a digital advertising agency is a specialised firm that focuses exclusively on creating and video assets  for brandin the eCommerce space. This includes strategy, creating and launching and monitoring ad perforamnce across various paid media platforms to promote products, services, or messages to a targeted audience. 

The primary objective of a digital advertising agency is to help their clients successfully achieve their marketing goals in the digital realm, whether it be to drive traffic, increase app downloads, boost conversions or increase brand awareness.

Many companies looking to create scroll-stopping ads across social platforms use creative digital advertising agencies like Aura Ads, as it allows them to outsource the work they may not have a specialised in-house team for, or simply haven’t the time, expertise or experience in order to produce the ad to a high standard. Learn more about what we do and how we do it.

The Top 5 Creative Ad Agencies

The top creative ad agencies include, but are not limited to:

1. Aura Ads 
2. Nusa Films
3. Dream Factory
4. Creative Milkshake
5. Insense

1. Aura Ads 

Of course we couldn’t round up the top digital agencies without starting with our award winning ecommerce video ad agency - Aura Ads. 

Based in the heart of Cardiff, Aura Ads are a leading full-service performance creative agency, meaning we take care of our client’s whole campaign, from start to finish. We leverage our in-house creative strategy team to track and analyse a brands ad performance and build concepts. Our team of videographers & motion designers shoot and edit your assets to the highest standard, allowing us to produce beautifully vibrant scroll-stopping branded video and static ads month on month that have a proven track record of converting. 

But don’t just take our word for it, check out the results from some of our past client work:

Huel Case Study

Huel is one of the fastest growing DTC brands in the world, and in order to keep up with their aggressive growth, they needed a creative solution that delivered consistent results and volume across key markets, which is where we came in! 

We worked with Huel over a two year period where we were able to produce hundreds of assets in 8 different languages. Our high quality ad creative was a key component of Huel's growth strategy and all in all they saw a 10:1 return on investment over the duration of the relationship. Over 100 million global views later, Huel has been one of our most successful relationships to date.

Wild Case Study

As a disrupter in the natural cosmetics market, acquisition has been the primary focus for Wild. And in order to unlock growth, Wild needed a creative solution that could capture attention, drive results and meet the volume needs of their rapidly growing ad account. 

Our approach has been a success for Wild over the past three years. We've been able to support a 4.6x increase in Wild's profitable ad spend, and our creative consistently drove a 20% lower CPA when compared to assets produced internally, and converted 10% higher too. Over 100 million views later, we helped Wild become a household name, with recognisable creative across a number of channels. 

Like the sound of what we do? Schedule a call at a time that suits you to find out more about how one of our content plans can help your business grow.

2. Nusa Films

Founded back in 2017, Nusa Films is a social-first content studio based in East London, and has worked with, and continues to work with some well-known household brands such as M&S, Fussy, Watch Shop & Sports Direct. Here are some of their recent projects:

Sports Direct Case Study

Sports Direct (the UK’s number 1 sports retailer) created the Level-Up Club to bring together runners of all levels, and Nusa worked with the brand to film three different runners across three different terrains across London: a trail, a road and track. Deliverables included paid social videos, organic social cut-downs and 750+ photos to be used across social and e-comm. 

Watch Shop Case Study

WatchShop is the UK’s largest online watch retailer, and they came to Nusa to execute their yearly brand awareness campaign.

Nusa provided an end-to-end content solution, working closely with their marketing team and their paid media agency to develop the creative, produce, shoot and edit over 56 assets for rollout on Facebook and Instagram over 4 months.

3. Dream Factory

The Dream Factory, founded in 2021, is a content creation house for startups with a main objective to help founders create high-quality studio based organic social content. By offering quality video, photography, and podcasting services for startups, the Dream Factory helps founders increase engagement, grow brand presence and scale their startup effortlessly. 

In addition to these services, The Dream Factory also offers two iconic multi-functional buildings in the heart of Shoreditch, East London, which have hosted former inhabitants including Damien Hirst, Gucci, Burberry, Beats by Dre and Adidas. From Kitchen sets to stages and balconies with city skyline views, their venue is truly unique and customisable for any business event.

Some examples of the well-established brands they’ve worked with include Candy Kittens, Fussy, Chefs for Foodies and Reset. 

4. Creative Milkshake 

When it comes to high-quality UGC (user generated content) for socials, Creative Milkshake are the experts. Founded in 2020, Creative Milkshake have worked hard to establish themselves as a full-service creative strategy and content studio. 

From ideation to final delivery of content, Creative Milkshake creates direct response ads with ROAs at the forefront of their strategy. Simply tell them what you need and they’ll handle it all for you, including mapping out your creative strategy, scripting ads, hiring content creators, shooting and editing. 

While they’re based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Creative Milkshake aren’t restricted when it comes to location. In fact, they currently work with brands and agencies from around the world, and source creators locally to create content in a range of European languages, such as: Spanish, Italian, Dutch, French, German and of course, English. 

5. Insense

Founded in 2016, Insense is a one-stop shop allowing DTC businesses to collaborate with creators for UGC, organic posting, and whitelisted ads on Instagram and TikTok Spark Ads.

They have an impressive global community of 20,000+ vetted Instagram, UGC and TikTok creators, allowing businesses to find the perfect talent for their ads. From location to age to language to body type, brands will receive a curated selection of creators that perfectly fit their requirements and brand identity.

Insense are the first-choice creator content & ads platform trusted by over 1500 DTC, Amazon brands and growth agencies. Pretty impressive, right? Here’s an impressive case study from a recent campaign:

Made Good Case Study

MadeGood is a brand that produces organic and allergy-friendly snacks, and they came to Insense as they were looking for a user-friendly, fast and effective solution for partnering with influencers. The brand was seeking to build brand awareness from seasonal campaigns that targeted specific profiles, including school teachers in both the US and Canada, with an ultimate goal to drive conversions.

Using Insense’s Instagram creator filters, Made Good managed to hire a total of 75 creators who generated posts with an overall engagement rate of 2%. Remarkably, certain posts even achieved an outstanding 5% engagement rate, significantly amplifying their previous engagement rate of 0,40%. What’s more, with just 5 campaigns, they achieved an impressive total reach of 280K.

Why Hire One of the Best Creative Agencies in the UK

With up to 70% of campaign performance rooted in ad creative, we believe in the power of a creative-led growth strategy for your digital channels.

So, if you’re looking to take your ecommerce business to the next level in the digital world, our creative strategists are here to help! From planning, to talent management to editing and delivery, we will work with you to create the best possible creative for your goals. We’ll also take care of post-campaign results, by tracking & analysing the performance of our creative in your ad account and benchmarking against key AIDA metrics in order to drive results.

We are Aura Ads, a unique performance creative agency designed for D2C eCommerce brands. We help clients sell more online and grow at scale with our bespoke video and static creative delivered on a monthly basis.

For more top tips from our experts, check out our social media marketing blog. And for a friendly chat about how we can help your business, schedule a call with one of our team here. 

Written by Kate, for Aura Ads.