Ad fatigue is something every affiliate will have to face when running campaigns. When you run the same ads for a while, users that get targeted multiple times get tired of the ad and start ignoring it. This leads to lower engagement and performance as well as much higher costs.
Most affiliates aren’t proactive with their creatives and usually only change things once the performance starts dropping. This can cause other issues like negatively impacting your ranking with the algorithm. But luckily, finding the key metrics that indicate ad fatigue before it appears is quite easy if you know what to look for!
What Causes Ad Fatigue?
Ad fatigue happens when your audience sees the same ad repeatedly. We have all heard that sometimes users seeing ads multiple times helps convince them to convert, but in the digital world, this is not quite the case.
While users might respondbetter to being retargeted, for it to be successful, it has to be different ads! If you don’t change your creatives from time to time, users will stop paying attention and the ad becomes less effective.
This is a common issue on social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, though the same to a lesser extent applies to things like Google Display ads and Native ads as well.
While keeping the same creatives for a long time is the main cause of issues like this, it doesn't have to be the only one. Depending on your targeting, if you use a small group of people, that can be an issue as well. Try expanding your audience so that there is a smaller chance of someone seeing the same ad multiple times.
What Are The First Indications?
If you know what to look for, you can figureout when your ads are ready to be refreshed even before they impact your bottom line.
The clearest sign is usually a big drop in click-through rates. New ads usually have high engagement rates, and as more and more people see them, the CTR levels and then start declining. Once the decline starts, it's likely to continue, and if you let it go down for long enough, it will drop a lot.
The same happens to metrics like cost per click (CPC). As engagement decreases, the ad platform adjusts its bidding prices and you can expect worse results. This also impacts the conversions, and general ROI, so it should be straightforward to realize when it starts happening.
If the platform you advertise on has an ad frequency score, those can also be used to see when ad fatigue is becoming a problem. In some rare cases, you can even find that users complain directly on your ads (if it supports comments). Monitoring all of these isn’t that hard. Just check your stats every day, and take note on the main KPIs. As soon as they drop, ensure you have something ready to replace the running ads.
How To Prevent Ad Fatigue
While the most obvious answer is just to make new ads, there are things you can do to refresh your ads without having to redo everything.
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Rotate Ad Creatives
Affiliates should know that their creatives are what make their campaigns work or fail. Making new creatives all the time would be ideal, but sometimes it's just not possible as there can be too much work to do and not enough time.
To keep your ads engaging, a good strategy could be to prepare creatives ahead of time, and then rotate them. You can also make small variations to your creatives, changing things like the hook, CTAs, or other parts of the creative, making it more engaging and longer lasting.
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Use Multiple Ad Formats
Running the same type of ad ain’t the best strategy as users get bored of the same thing over and over again. Running multiple ad formats can boost your engagement and help maintain interest long term.
On Meta, you can try switching between carousel ads, video ads, and static images to improve results. On TikTok you can try alternating user generated content style and better production quality ads to make the campaigns more dynamic.
Google Display and Native ads also offer different formats, including banners, responsive ads, and interactive ads. Keep in mind that having a lot of formats doesn't mean that the campaign will perform well. Sticking to one format might be the best idea for some niches, audiences, and campaigns, but you can't know without trying first!
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Limit Ad Frequency
While not all platforms offer it, for those who do, ad frequency can be a great tool you can use. This is basically how often your ad is shown to the same audience. The higher the frequency, the more the same audience is getting served the same ads.
You can limit frequency caps that reset on creative changes. This way you have a hard cap on how many times you will target the same users and lower your engagement with them.
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Use Sequential Messaging
Some experts swear by it, but most affiliates don't even consider it. Sequential messaging is targeting the audience specifically with a story that unfolds. Let's say you run a product for office workers. You would first run an ad just showing it off and talking general stats about it. After a while, your second ad would be a review that shows off the features and pros/cons. And lastly, you could post ads that show how that product improved someone’s life in a UGC style.
This way users get used to the product and learn a bit about it every time they get hit with the ad, without being annoyed by repetitive ads. The only issue is that it can be quite pricey, and if you don't know what you are doing, it's going to be ineffective.
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Expand Audience Targeting
It's hard to reach ad fatigue if you expand your audience now and then! Things like new placements or platforms you can advertise on are always a great idea. Testing multiple placements can not only give you a wider audience but it can give you insight into what placement might work the best for your ads and product.
Another way to expand your audience is by using lookalike audiences and creating custom audiences that you can target that are unique. Some of your audience will overlap this way for sure, but it's better than nothing!
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Ad Scheduling
Sometimes you get the same users if you target the same times. Try doing a bit of all day targeting if your offers allow for it, or split your campaigns into different dayparting. Let's say the first x hours of the day could be one campaign, and the second Y number of hours would be the second campaign.
This way you split your audience by their daily routines, and you can change the ads more effectively to lessen ad fatigue.
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Retargeting With New Content
As always, new content is the only surefire way to improve ad fatigue. To get that new content off to a rolling start, make sure to do retargeting campaigns of users who were interested in previous campaigns, but didn’t convert.
This might be the thing that convinces them, and you can use it to test if your creatives have improved at all. Try providing additional incentives when retargeting, as maybe the deal just wasn't right the first time. Earning a smaller profit is better than earning no profit at all!
Conclusion
Ad fatigue can and will impact your campaigns. It will bring back profitability, lower interest, and be a general negative trait until you fix it. Fixing it doesn’t have to be that hard! Try some of the tips we shared, or just change up the creatives a bit with new angles and styles, and you should be good again!
Regular monitoring and performance analysis is key if you want to notice the right patterns and optimize your campaigns before they go red! With the right approach you can maintain high engagement and deliver great results over time, but it does take some skill to master!
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