How to recognise signs of ad fatigue and tackling it

Whether we like it or not, we’ve all been fatigued by advertisements.

Whether it’s the ugly billboard you see day after day on your commute to work or the pop-up to “go to your nearest fast food chain to dine on this amazing burger” that keeps appearing when you’re reading the news online.

Ad fatigue? It’s what happens when your audience becomes overly familiar with your ads, gets bored of them, and stops paying attention.

Ad fatigue causes your ad campaigns to become less effective over time, hurting your ROI. And on Facebook, it happens fast.

Ad fatigue can begin in as little as three to four days for a campaign with a very large budget because that budget lets the advertiser reach so many people. Or, it could take as long as one to two weeks for a campaign with a much smaller budget.

A pattern can be seen every time: as spending increases, ad fatigue sets in and performance drops.

So how does one manage creative fatigue?

An advertiser spending $1 million per month needs 10 times as much creative as an advertiser who spends $100,000.

That’s because advertiser A is buying ten times as many impressions. So, why all this focus on creative? It’s the only real way to beat the competition.

As Facebook’s advertising features have gotten better and better, the playing field of advertising has largely been levelled.

This became especially true after 19 February 2018, when Facebook retooled their advertising algorithm and started offering ad features that basically made the native tools in the Facebook advertising platform on par with the most sophisticated third-party advertising tools around.

Creative may be the last competitive advantage, but it’s not an advantage that comes easy.

Ask any advertiser or agency and they’ll tell you: it’s difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the need for new creative.

Why? Because advertisers don’t just have to come up with enough creative to stay ahead of creative fatigue. They have to come up with 20 times that.

For example, let’s assume you spend a medium amount on Facebook every week. Ad fatigue takes down your top-performing ad only once a week.

To replace that one winning piece of creative, you need to create 20 pieces of new creative. Of course, 20 ads a week is no small task, but it can definitely be done.

But, that’s not all you have to do. You’ll want to have your winning ad run on more than one social media platform, right? So you’ll need to make versions of that winning ad for each platform.

Yes, it’s a lot of work however ultimately the return of investment is much greater.

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