We stopped using stock, and our funnels caught fire.
A six-week experiment across three D2C accounts: removing stock photography from every ad in the funnel.
In Q1 we ran a controlled six-week experiment across three D2C accounts: Kora, Tranquil Teas, and a clothing brand we won’t name. The hypothesis was simple — modern Indian audiences have learned to detect stock photography in under a second, and that detection costs us money.
We removed every piece of stock from the ad accounts. Replaced it with a mix of in-house shoots, founder-led UGC, and AI-supervised image generation where the brand voice was clearly the source. The shoot budget went up. The performance went up more.
The detection threshold.
What surprised us most was how fast the detection happens. We ran an eye-tracking study (n=42) and found that users could identify stock-vs-original in 280ms on average — well under the threshold of conscious thought. That means the “cheapening effect” of stock isn’t a creative critique — it’s a physical, pre-cognitive signal that the brand isn’t serious.
Stock isn’t a creative critique. It’s a pre-cognitive signal that the brand isn’t serious.