Truth bomb alert: no matter how awesome your ads are, your audience will eventually get sick of them.
And if you keep serving the same ads over and over, their performance will start to drop.
This is called ad fatigue, or creative fatigue.
And as Jon Loomer points out, it’s difficult to know how to fix ad fatigue because there are multiple factors that impact it, including:
- Budget. The more you spend, the more impressions you’ll have – and the quicker you’ll reach the point where everyone has seen an ad at least once.
- Audience size. If your audience is huge, your ads are more likely to “hold up.” If it’s small… well, the more likely your ad will get seen by the same people over and over again.
- Number of ads. If you run an ad set with only one ad, it’s natural for it to run its course quicker than if you serve, say, five ads in an ad set.
How do you detect fatigue?
Meta sometimes notifies you in the Delivery column if your ads have reached “Creative limited” or “Creative fatigue.”
But that’s not enough.
Jon says you need to make sure you’re viewing the maximum number of days that your ad set has run by selecting “By Time” and then “By Week” in your “Breakdown” column.
This will help you follow trends over time. And yes, there will be oscillations, but is there a steady increase of costs during past weeks? Is it not profitable anymore?
If not, then here’s what you should do:
- Create a new ad or ads. Show new images, videos, and ad copy to your audience that will throw them off or “resonate in different ways.”
- Increase audience size. This way you’ll reach more people and “stretch” your existing ads. You can use Advantage Detail Targeting or Advantage Lookalikes to allow Facebook to automatically move beyond your target audience.
- Try Meta Advantage+ creative. This feature helps you create variations of your ad automatically – but you’ll have to trust the system for it to work. Uh-oh…
That’s it! Ad fatigue is not a complex issue, but it is something to be aware of. Otherwise, your audience will yawn and sigh while they scroll past your ad… and nobody wants that.