One of our clients updated all Facebook placements with a single creative that had the objective of positioning their new brand + converting. After seven months of them adopting the new brand (and a few weeks with us onboard), we noticed the results weren’t great.
The ad frequency was under 3 for the last 30 days, not a great indicator, and if we filtered by the previous couple of weeks, it was under 2. It is easy to correlate these results to the usual ad fatigue scenario. The ads had been running long (seven months); they had a single creative across placements, and engagement could have been better. Yet, after digging a bit deeper, we found the problem was that there needed to be more resonance with the ads’ target audience.
Frequency became the signal that helped us identify the FB algorithm was deprioritizing this advertisement because of one or several of the following reasons:
- There is a general lack of interest in the product.
- We are targeting the wrong audience.
- We need to communicate the value of the product better.
Even though we usually think of ad fatigue as a visual problem, this was not the case in this particular scenario.
Ad fatigue has multiple components: the creative, message, and overall topic. Using the metrics at your disposal to connect the dots and determine what to do is the challenge to get over fatigue and remain relevant.
Wrong solutions for ad Fatigue you should avoid
As performance marketers, keeping an eye on ad fatigue (audiences getting tired of seeing the same ad multiple times) is essential to maintain a healthy pipeline. If your target audience is tired of seeing the same ad, or the same message, or topic, it will negatively impact your brand, burn through your budget, and hurt conversions.
Mistakenly, some marketers may do the following to solve ad fatigue:
- Update the way it looks, hoping the ad’s new angle and feel genuinely refreshes the perception of the product (usually a flawed process).
- Decrease the budget on the low-performance campaign, and build another set of campaigns targeting the same audience (hurting your efforts by cannibalizing the audience via multiple ads).
In our experience, these simple solutions often need to be revised. Instead, exploring other ways to connect the product’s value with the values and problems of your target audience has a more significant impact.
