These are the questions we actually get, from briefs, sales calls and client Slack channels. Short, straight answers, no filler. Every answer also has its own page, so you can link colleagues directly to the one that settles the discussion.
The basics
What are street interview ads?
Street interview ads are paid social video ads built from spontaneous interviews with real people on the street. A creator asks strangers questions related to a product or a problem, and the genuine, unscripted reactions are edited into short ads for Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts.
Because nothing is scripted, the ads read as organic content rather than advertising. That is what makes them stop the scroll, and it is why the format converts cold traffic that polished studio ads struggle to reach.
How does a street interview ads production actually work?
It starts with an angle workshop. Together we define the offer, the audience, and the five to eight questions most likely to produce real, ad-worthy reactions on camera.
Then comes the shoot day: a two-person crew, interviewer plus camera, at a scouted high-traffic location where your customers actually walk by. A full day typically produces around 20 unique interview videos.
Finally, the edit. Each usable interview is cut into several different hooks and lengths, so one shoot day turns into 40+ unique ready-to-run ads, tagged and organised for your ad account.
Why do street interview ads perform so well?
The format does three things at once that no other creative type combines. It stops the scroll, because people love watching real strangers react. It delivers social proof at scale, a dozen real opinions in thirty seconds. And it feels native to the feed, because it actually is native content.
The gap versus polished creative is widest on cold traffic, which is exactly where scaling brands need performance most. On top of that, one shoot produces dozens of genuinely different variations, which gives the algorithm enough fresh creative signal to keep learning.
Are street interview ads the same as vox pop videos?
They share the same DNA, real people answering questions in public, but the job is different. A vox pop is a journalistic format built to show a range of opinions.
Street interview ads are engineered as ads from the first step. The questions come out of an angle workshop tied to your offer, the edit is hook-first so the strongest moment opens the video, and every cut is delivered in platform-ready formats with captions. The spontaneity is real, the structure around it is not accidental.
Are the people in street interview ads paid actors?
No. The entire point of the format is that responses are real and unscripted. Everyone who appears gives clear consent on the spot, and interviews that do not produce genuine, usable moments simply are not used.
That authenticity is not a nice-to-have, it is the mechanism. The moment viewers sense a script, the format loses exactly the thing that makes it outperform.
Do people actually agree to be interviewed on the street?
Yes, enough do. Our interviewers are trained to make people comfortable within the first ten seconds, and the format is volume-based by design: across a full day of approaching people, you do not need everyone to say yes to come away with around 20 usable interview videos.
Everyone who appears consents clearly to their clip being used in advertising, and anything ambiguous is left out of the edit.
Production and shoot days
How many ads do you get from one shoot day?
A well-planned shoot day with one creator and one cameraman typically produces 40+ unique ads. A day on the street yields around 20 interview videos, every interview generates multiple usable moments, and each moment can be cut into different hooks, formats and lengths.
That volume is the strategic point. It feeds the algorithm enough genuinely different creative signal to keep scaling, which is what most brands' creative pipelines cannot deliver.
How fast are the finished ads delivered?
Because everything comes from a single shoot day, delivery arrives as one batch of launch-ready ads rather than a slow trickle of individual assets. Each cut is tagged and organised so it can go straight into the ad account.
The exact timeline depends on the package and the number of markets, and it is agreed up front in the brief, so there are no surprises between shoot day and launch.
Where do you shoot street interviews?
Shoots run in the streets of Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and beyond. We scout high-traffic spots based on your audience, think Karl Johan, Drottninggatan or Strøget, wherever your customer actually walks past. Permits and public-space rules are handled as part of the production.
Crews are local, with native languages and native accents. We do not fly one team around to every market; we have people on the ground in the markets that matter to you.
What happens if nobody gives usable answers?
That risk is what the process is designed around. The questions come out of an angle workshop and are specifically built to produce reactions worth filming, and a full day of interviews creates enough raw volume that strong moments are the norm, not the exception.
Weak or flat moments never reach the edit. Only interviews with genuine, usable reactions get cut into ads, which is also why the finished batch feels so consistently alive.
Who writes the interview questions?
The questions come out of an angle workshop we run with you before any shoot. We dig into the offer, the audience, and the language real customers use, including the objections that come up in reviews, support tickets and sales conversations.
Out of that we design the five to eight questions most likely to produce real, ad-worthy reactions on camera. You approve them before anyone hits the street.
Do we need to be on set during the shoot?
No. Your involvement is concentrated where it matters: the angle workshop and the approval of questions before the shoot, and the review of finished cuts after the edit.
The shoot day itself is handled end to end by the crew. You are welcome to join, some clients enjoy seeing the reactions live, but nothing about the production depends on it.
What formats and aspect ratios do you deliver?
Deliveries are built for feed-native placements first: vertical cuts for Reels, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts, with captions and on-screen text done the way each platform expects.
Each interview moment is cut into multiple hooks and lengths, so the same shoot covers quick scroll-stoppers and longer story cuts. Everything arrives tagged and organised, ready to upload.
Can street interview ads be localized into other languages?
Yes. A street shoot does not have to stay in the language it was filmed in. AI dubbing matches each interviewee's voice, syncs the lips to the new language, and rebuilds captions and on-screen hooks per market rather than machine-translating them.
Shoots themselves can also run natively in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, English and Spanish as standard, with more languages by request. One day of interviews can end up ad-ready in every market you sell in.
Performance and strategy
How are street interview ads different from regular UGC?
Standard UGC is one creator talking to a camera from a script or a brief, and viewers increasingly recognise that format as advertising. Street interviews replace the script with real reactions from many different people.
That gives you built-in social proof, dozens of natural hooks per shoot, and content the algorithm reads as fresh and diverse instead of one more talking head. In Curve.no client accounts, street interview creatives typically outperform standard UGC, often around 2 to 3x on ROAS for the same spend.
Which platforms do street interview ads work on?
The format is built for feed-native platforms: Facebook, Instagram Reels, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts. The same shoot day produces cuts for every placement.
Because the content is genuinely native, it does not fight the platform. It looks like what people came to watch, which is exactly why it earns attention that interruptive formats have to pay extra for.
How should street interview ads be used in an ad account?
Treat them as the volume engine of your creative testing. One shoot day gives you dozens of genuinely different hooks, which is exactly what a structured testing system needs: enough variation to find winners instead of guessing.
Launch the batch into a clean testing structure, scale what wins, retire what does not, and feed the learnings into the next shoot. The loop is the strategy: which hooks won this round decides what gets asked on the street next time.
How many variations should you test?
More than almost everyone runs today. At full volume, our creative method works with around 10 angles and 12 concepts per angle, because finding outliers is a numbers game before it is a taste game.
A street interview shoot slots straight into that: one day yields a 40+ ad starting batch. For brands we run media buying for, the cadence continues at 10 new ads per week, so the account never runs dry of fresh creative signal.
What results have street interview ads actually driven?
Two public examples from Curve.no partnerships: roughly 10x sales growth for Collagen for Hund, and a 252% higher bottom line for Propr.no. Across partnerships, 91% of clients see a bigger bottom line within 45 days.
The honest framing: street interviews are one part of that system, not a trick on their own. They work because they solve the hardest part of scaling paid social, producing enough genuinely different creative, fast enough, to keep the algorithm learning.
Do street interview ads work for supplements?
Yes, supplements are one of the format's strongest categories, because the products live on questions real people already have opinions about. Health habits, skepticism, results, price, all of it produces honest reactions on camera.
The clearest example in our portfolio is Collagen for Hund, a pet supplement brand that grew sales roughly 10x working with Curve.no, with street interview creative as a core part of the mix. Claims in the finished ads always stay within what the product can actually support.
Do street interview ads work for e-commerce and DTC brands?
Yes. The format was effectively built for DTC: feed-native video, social proof, and enough creative volume to keep paid social scaling. That is the core of what Curve.no runs for its brand partners.
It performs best when the product solves a problem people recognise instantly or provokes an opinion on the spot. If a stranger on the street can react to the question in one sentence, the format has something to work with.
Do street interview ads work for apps and services?
They can, with one honest caveat. The format thrives on instant recognition: a question about something people already feel, like prices, habits or daily annoyances. Apps and services that tap a frustration everyone recognises give the street plenty to react to.
Where the format is weakest is products that need a long explanation before anyone can have an opinion. In those cases the interviews become setup instead of reaction, and other creative formats will usually earn their place in the mix first.
Are street interview ads brand-safe?
Yes, because control sits at the right points. You approve the questions and angles before the shoot, so the conversation space is defined by you. Consent from every person on camera is explicit, and any clip where it is ambiguous is never used.
The edit is the final gate: what reactions make it into the ads, how they are framed and captioned, is reviewed before anything goes live. Spontaneous footage, controlled pipeline.
Don't street interview ads look cheap next to polished brand ads?
They look native, which is a different thing from cheap. The shooting and editing are deliberate: real crews, real hooks, platform-correct captions. What the format refuses to look like is an ad, and in the feed that is a feature, not a compromise.
The results settle the aesthetic debate: in Curve.no client accounts, street interview creatives typically outperform standard UGC, often around 2 to 3x on ROAS. Polish wins awards; native wins cold traffic.
Pricing and rights
What do street interview ads cost?
Street interview ads are sold as a fixed-price content package, agreed up front. The price covers one creator, one cameraman, one shoot day and the full edit into a batch of ready-to-run ads. No hourly surprises, no scope creep.
If you would rather have the media buying handled as well, the same shoots can sit inside a full performance partnership where our fee is tied to results. Book a call and you will get a concrete number for your case.
Do we own the finished ads?
Yes. With the fixed-price package the finished ads and the usage rights are yours. You can run them in your own ad account, hand them to your in-house team or pass them to whichever agency manages your spend.
Everyone who appears on camera has given explicit consent covering paid use, so the rights chain is clean from street to ad account.
Can we buy street interview content without the media buying?
Yes. Street interviews and UGC are sold as fixed-price content packages, and we offer content-only packages where we simply deliver the creative as a creative partner agency. Your in-house team or existing agency runs the ads; we supply the ammunition.
Plenty of brands start content-only and later hand over the media buying too, once they see how the creative performs. Both doors stay open.
What's included in a street interview package?
The package covers the whole pipeline: the angle workshop and question design, location scouting with permits handled, a full shoot day with a two-person crew, consent from everyone on camera, and the complete edit.
What lands with you is a tagged, organised batch of 40+ ready-to-run ads in feed-native formats, with hooks and lengths varied for testing. Fixed price, agreed up front.
What changes if Curve.no also runs the media buying?
The content itself stays the same; what changes is the loop around it. Inside a performance partnership our fee is tied to results, and the street interview shoots become part of a continuous system: launch, measure, scale winners, and feed what won into the next shoot's questions.
That system currently manages 1.5 million EUR in monthly ad spend across 20+ brand partners, and across partnerships 91% of clients see a bigger bottom line within 45 days.
How do we get started with street interview ads?
Book a free 30-minute call. We look at your setup before the call and walk you through exactly where the opportunity is, whether we work together or not.
If it is a fit, the path is short: brief and fixed price agreed, angle workshop, shoot day scheduled in the right city, and a launch-ready batch of ads delivered to your account. From there you either run them yourself or let the performance partnership take over.
