What is Ad Fatigue and how to avoid it in your digital campaigns
We live in an environment that is hyper-exposed to communicative stimuli. Without realizing it, and even though we often overlook them, these stimuli have an impact on us. This lack of attention to the impacts is an adaptive reflex of the human being known as banner blindness and it is usually the cause that the performance of Paid Media campaigns is affected.
What is Ad Fatigue?
In this context, Ad Fatigue occurs. That is to say, when the user gets used to an ad, he hates it and stops paying attention to it, causing its effectiveness to decrease.
Due to the overexposure of the audience and in terms of metrics, when the performance of your campaigns decreases, the relevance of the ad also decreases and this implies that the CPM increases.
This process makes the campaigns less effective and a lower ROI, so it is important to constantly show updated Ads, with high content and with a well-defined target. This way we will be able to continue to inspire the audience, instead of frustrating them and turning views into conversions.
How do we know a campaign is causing Ad Fatigue to our audience?
The main metric that indicates that a campaign begins to lose effectiveness is a high frequency, that is, when the user has been impacted many times by the same Ad. There are 3 other triggers:
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Low CTRs: When the audience stops interacting with your ad, the number of users who click decreases.
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Less engagement: Reduced engagement with your ads implies that the audience is seeing it but it does not attract their attention or motivate them to interact with it.
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Decrease in impressions: The algorithm in social networks is designed to show relevant content in the first place and the same happens with Ads. If users do not interact with your brand, they will not see the content in the future.
How can we avoid Ad Fatigue?
Constantly examining campaign metrics will allow us to better understand how the audience feels about our ads, how they perceive them.
Sometimes, small changes in the look & feel of the campaigns can solve the problem. Even so, there are some factors that allow us to combat Ad Fatigue and taking them into account can prevent it from happening in future campaigns.
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Ads Rotation: Breaks the monotony that the audience feels when being constantly impacted by the same content. Limit the frequency (also called frequency capping) with which a user can be impacted by the same Ad and use a strategic calendar to show multiple versions of the same content with different texts and designs.
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Bring your creatives to life: Update the design of your Ads frequently and make them look new to your audience.
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Update the elements of your Ad: Not only the visual elements but also the links, messages, CTAs...
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Optimize audiences: Use A/B tests to impact the most valuable audience for your campaign. Exclude users who have already interacted with your Ads so that they are seen by those who have not yet been reached.
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Use dynamic ads and retargeting strategies: Personalize the content that appears to users based on their previous interests. Hyper-segment your Ads audience to recapture those users who have shown interest and dynamically update creatives with content tailored to your audience.
It may seem inevitable that any campaign will cause Ad Fatigue, but it doesn't have to be this way if you take into account these recommendations and without losing sight of the audience. Remember to monitor the performance of your campaigns and focus, above all, on frequency and CTR to achieve the highest possible ROI.
As you have seen, Ad Fatigue can play a trick on your brand in digital marketing campaigns. That's why our Creative Lab has the agility to quickly detect and rectify your ads when they have saturated the user.