Have you ever scrolled through your Facebook, Instagram or TikTok feed and encountered the same ad you remembered not clicking on that morning…and four times the day before that? How often was it the same exact ad you’d seen dozens of times before, without once feeling any urge to engage with it?
Somewhere, someone was paying real money to show you an ad you didn’t want to see and were never going to engage with. If you’re anything like me, at some point you probably asked yourself, “why in the world would they keep doing that?“
It’s a perfect embodiment of the famous saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (Einstein? Nope, Rita Mae Brown!). The people who were going to engage with that ad already have, and everyone else—including all the people just like you who it just didn’t connect with—have either tuned it out or are gradually becoming more frustrated with the advertiser behind the ad as they continue withholding their click.
What this one fictional (and “insane”) advertiser is experiencing is “ad fatigue,” which is a huge problem in the online advertising world. In our work with Paid Media clients we try to identify ad fatigue as soon as it presents itself, and plan campaigns in such a way that we can quickly nip it in the bud.
Identifying ad fatigue is pretty simple. If a particular ad was performing great at some point and gradually begins to see a decline in—for example—impressions or CTR (Click Through Rate), or an increase in average CPC (Cost per Click), there’s a good chance that it’s facing some ad fatigue—assuming other factors, like seasonality, have been ruled out. But once fatigue is identified it takes some specific techniques to eliminate, offset, and prevent it from recurring.
We’ve noticed that ad fatigue sets in at different rates depending on several factors. One of the leading factors is advertising platform. For example, we’ve found that Facebook is especially problematic and must be constantly monitored, but no platform is immune. One common thread is that the smaller, more targeted an advertiser’s audience is, the more chance there is of overexposing any one audience member to an ad.
The good news is that there are several tools available to prevent ad fatigue from happening in the first place—and for combating it once it has.
The first tool, and one of the most important for stopping fatigue before it starts, is A/B Testing (sometimes called “split testing”). This is simply the technique of running two versions of the same ad simultaneously and seeing which one works best. Once that’s determined, then it can be done again using another version of the ad—and again and again to infinity and beyond! This results in a message and aesthetic that gradually improves as well as evolves alongside the audience.
Refreshing and rotating ad content is another tool to fight fatigue. If an audience is showing signs of tiring of your ad, show them something fresh! This could be a complete refresh or it could mean moving your TikTok ads to Instagram and vice versa. Or it could simply mean taking that background photo of a kitten and making it a house centipede for a while. Whatever it takes to make your audience perk up and say “hey, that’s something new!”
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) is similar to manually refreshing and rotating content—as described above—but it involves automating the creation and delivery of personalized ad variations based on user data, often with the help and input of AI. It allows us to deliver tailored content in real-time, ensuring that ads remain relevant and engaging (and never even get the chance to turn stale).
When I’m running a campaign for one of our clients I use all of these tools—in addition to others, dependent on context—to minimize any negative effects of ad fatigue. Because the last thing I want—besides to do any less than spectacular work for our amazing clients—is to annoy the innocent people on the internet with boring, outdated and irrelevant content.
At Rooted Rock Marketing we know that running a paid advertising program is a full-time job and requires active, continuous engagement to be successful. The days of “set it and forget it” are long gone. Are you seeing declining online advertising returns? Are you falling asleep just thinking about the words “ad fatigue?” We can help! Our team of paid advertising specialists can put together a plan that minimizes or reverses the effects of ad fatigue and gets your message in front of an audience that actually wants to see it.
About the Author
Adam McCarthy is an SEO Specialist at Rooted Rock Marketing. With over 20 years of marketing experience, Adam loves diving into data analysis, especially when it leads him to some unexpected results.
About the Editor
Shelly Cihan is Founder and Lead Strategist at Rooted Rock Marketing. For over a decade she has dedicated her professional career to learning, executing, and speaking about SEO and Digital marketing.
Comments