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When it comes to running successful ad campaigns, it seems there are a million and one things we need to do to maintain success and keep consumers happy. One particularly important factor to consider as a brand or marketer is ad fatigue. We’ve all experienced the monotony of seeing the same ads over and over while browsing online. Even in the physical world, we get tired of looking at the same billboard on the way to work. When the ads aren’t relevant to us, it’s even more frustrating.
If you are aware of ad fatigue, and have even experienced it yourself, make sure your company doesn’t get a reputation for contributing to it. In this guide, we’ll explain how to monitor ad fatigue and explore its effect on business. Then, we’ll discuss what you can do to overcome the issue on Instagram and Facebook. Let’s get started.
Simply put, ad fatigue is the result of too much advertising. It’s when marketers deliver advertisements so frequently that viewers become frustrated or bored and ignore them. When ads are ignored, the conversion rate and ROI decrease. An effective ad will lead to conversions, but presenting the same one to many times will have the opposite effect.
This occurrence is far from devastating, and in fact it’s normal. Even the most successful Facebook ads will experience ad fatigue at some point. The backdrop for ad fatigue is on a bell curve; as interest increases, conversions and interest peak until eventually your target audience sees the ad so many times that they lose attention. If you create ad campaigns only to ignore them, they probably aren’t performing well. To gain long-term, sustainable success, continual management is essential.
Here’s the overall impact of ad fatigue:
Since the algorithm is always the same no matter how much you spend, you could spend millions or just a couple hundred and ad fatigue will still play a role in your ongoing campaign management. Before even thinking about solutions, we must know how to identify the problem.
To recognize ad fatigue, assess the profitability of your ads through ROAS. From here, you can measure ad performance using four major metrics: frequency, CPM, cost and relevance.
We recommend visiting Ads Manager and clicking on the Columns drop-down menu to find Customize Columns. Once here, choose the Website option and find Conversion Value: Website (Facebook Pixel). Now, click on the Website Purchase ROAS button and this will add the ROAS metric to conversion reporting data.
For those not measuring their campaigns with purchase conversions, it’s easy to calculate ROAS by considering the difference between ad spend and generated revenue from the campaigns. A key sign of ad fatigue comes when the amount you spend is more than the revenue the campaign generates in return. This means your campaign is ROAS-negative and you’re wasting money.
How do you find the ads that aren’t ROAS-positive? This comes through CRFC (CPM) metrics. Assess the differences in relevance scores, cost per result, CPM and frequency metrics. Over the course of a week, you should notice that those suffering from ad fatigue have a high frequency and reduced ROAS. At the same time, the relevance score is lower, which decreases cost per result and CPM.
Now that we know how to recognize ad fatigue, what are some ways we can avoid/fix it? Before answering this question, it’s important to note that ad fatigue doesn’t mean that people hate the brand and never want to hear from you again. Many consumers aren’t actually aware of ad fatigue, they just stop paying attention to ads and therefore are unlikely to enter the funnel. To get people excited about your brand again, we recommend the following:
If you haven’t used ad customizers before, you could be missing out on a goldmine. We recommend this tool for all marketers using PPC campaigns. Without needing your input, ad customizers will keep your ad updated with time-sensitive CTAs and unique messaging. The countdown feature is useful when you have a temporary sale on products/services. Others use customizers to update ads with location-specific details. Either way, consumers get unique ads and ad fatigue is reduced.
Normally, one of the biggest factors of ad fatigue is the background used in image ads. When we see the same background repeatedly, we don’t stop to read the content because we assume it’s the same ad. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to play around with the background color. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant; a simple change in the color used can bring an ad back to life. With a fresh visual, people start to take notice again.
When potential customers stop noticing ads, it’s time to take action. We need to make changes that encourage interest. You’d be surprised what a simple change in background color can do for your campaign.
Keep in mind that the first thing your audience notices is the creative. To bring your ads back to life even more, the next consideration is the copy. Now that you’ve regained consumer interest, don’t keep the same message. If you create a copy of the ad, you can edit the second as a draft without affecting the first.
There’s no need to step away from the tone or style you’ve been using—just refresh the message, and you’ll soon notice more consumer interest.
If you’ve stuck with us so far, you’re ready to create diversified ads each with a unique creative and copy. Why not take advantage of this by rotating ads indefinitely? With an ad schedule that encourages prospective customers to take the right actions at the right times, ad fatigue should never be a problem.
To do this correctly, we recommend looking at the data to determine when conversion rates are highest. In this way, you’ll show the right ads at the right times. Ad fatigue won’t be a problem, conversions will increase (and so will ROI).
Another good method to fight off ad fatigue is to change the aim of your campaign. Again, duplicate the campaign and you’ll be able to set a new objective as you create this second campaign. For those who are currently running a post engagement campaign that aims to push people from Facebook to a website, traffic is a good complementary objective. At the same time, try new conversion events. If the new audience is higher in the sales funnel, more people will see the ad and hopefully take the action you desire.
If you want to keep the objectives the same, another option is to refresh targeting. If an ad set isn’t performing, duplicate it and then adjust the audience for the draft. After making this change, you should keep other settings the same including optimization, placements and bidding so that you can evaluate one change at a time. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you might want to try lookalike audiences or even a cold audience based on those who have an interest in the niche.
Our final tip is to refresh the offer; no matter the stage of the funnel, changing the offer has proven effective. Just as we saw with the ad refresh, you’ll need to duplicate and start working on a draft. Let’s say you’re warming up a cold audience at the very top of the funnel; if there’s an increase in cost per video view, a good technique is to add new content ads to the campaign.
Your marketing skill set will increase significantly once you recognize ad fatigue and apply these seven techniques for overcoming the problem.
