Hey guys, we've checked the trends to bring you some tips regarding push creatives. Below the tips you can find the link to the entire blog post, also featuring some insights on A/B testing of your creatives. Enjoy!
#1. Choose a Simple and Catchy Image
In Zeropark the required image size for push ads is 192×192 px, which is… pretty small. It means that selecting a design inspired by Hieronymus Bosch paintings wouldn’t be the best idea for your campaign.
Contrary to the focused on details by the Dutch masters, you need to choose something simple. More and more objects make an image too complicated and hence unreadable to your audience. Instead of making them confused, attract their attention with a simple and catchy picture, icon or logo.

#2. Icons Convert Better Than Images
We checked the trends in terms of creative type used. What we found out is that icons give better results than photos of real people.
Servando Silva, an affiliate marketing expert, came to the same conclusion. “I use icons most of the time as they covert better for me than regular images due to the small square size."
Unreadable graphics with too many details had the worst results.
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#3. Make Your Push Campaigns Green
Another important factor concerning choosing the best design for your push notification ads campaign is related to colors.
Red light raises your awareness while driving a car, it’s also a warning signal in the wildlife. But it doesn’t work so well in the affiliate marketing environment. Our research showed that green icons convert better than red ones. Probably people would rather feel safe than aware while surfing online.
Talking about colors, it’s also good to check how black and white images work for your campaign. They are catchy and stand out from the colorful and motley competition.
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#4. A Clean Image Is a Better Converting Image
As you know, push ad creative size is rather tiny. Therefore it needs to be simple and legible for your audience, otherwise, it would be harder for them to understand your message.
Although adding some additional text on your image may be tempting, leave it clean. There’s enough space in the title and description sections to jot down some power words with a clear call to action incentive.
One more time: make your image as simple (and catchy) as possible.

#5. The Power of Emojis in Affiliate Marketing
Some time ago emojis took over social media and most digital communication channels. Now they are doing the same in performance marketing. Well, at least to some degree…
According to multiple sources, emojis may increase CTR up to 25-40%. Of course, a click doesn’t mean a conversion (and you still have to pay for it in the CPC pricing model) but more traffic combined with a good offer and your persuasive skills may lead you to decent profits.

While choosing emojis for your campaign make sure that they are suitable for the offer.
As CleverTap analysis showed, emojis work best with these verticals: business and finance, utilities and services, retail, and – on the other hand – are not the best option for entertainment and events, travel and hospitality, health and fitness.
Don’t hesitate to conduct lots of tests to select optimal emojis. We’ll tell more about it in a minute.
#6. Show People What They Want to See
In social media, there’s plenty of funny movie clips, memes or gifs. Cute animals are probably one of the biggest online time consumers of our time. It’s bad news for employers but good for affiliate marketers.
A study presented by Taboola claims that G-rated images with adorable pets get 13% higher CTR than those without animals.
Showing people what they want to see in ads may be successful when played fair. Otherwise, it’s risky for your efforts. Probably the majority of men would love to receive a push ad with an image of a nude busty model. Sounds great? Quite opposite. It’s the quickest way to have your campaign rejected.
Play fair to gain some profits.
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not a bad guide, but as a guy that has spent over $500,000 on push i can tell you that this isn't always true
sometimes the cluttered icons outperform the simple icons, it all depends on whats in the picture... for example, having money in a picture, vs having boobs & money in the picture (first one is just focused on 1 thing like an icon, but the second one is way more attention grabbing) so this is a straight up fact that cluttered works better
there's also having like 10 exclamation marks or question marks random style, vs having one, it's different so people notice it more
as with all affiliate marketing, it's best to test, test, test and compare and see what the data says

Actually, those are really valuable info to be considered.
Thanks a lot 
Nice case study ZP! - Definitely can relate to a few of these points so far after testing some push lately.
The colour one is big, posted in another thread the experience of using colours. Especially obscure colours people are not used to seeing... or exactly like you mentioned 'lack-of' colour 
But like Attila has mentioned clutter has worked well for us too and emoji bombs in headlines
Anyway thanks for some nice clear information here - you guys would have lots of data to back it haha
Solid tips right there, I can attest to most of them based on my campaigns. As guys above mentioned already, it's not a 100% match for everyone, but that's the nature of AM.
What's been a rather huge game changer for me, was properly cropping the images ... the preview thumb is very small, so a properly cropped icon can literally turn a losing campaign green 