What is Ad Fatigue and why does it happen you might wonder? Many digital marketers ask themselves this question when they see performance slowing within their live campaigns.
To put it simply, just like us as humans, repetitive actions can eventually become boring and what was once exciting to you may not be anymore. Think about eating the same lunch everyday for 6 months, the level of enjoyment will be sure to diminish and you’re likely to want to switch it up. Well just like that, ad campaigns can experience the same thing. If consumers are repeatedly shown the same ad over and over again they are likely to be less engaged, which ultimately causes a fall in performance.
Signs of Ad Fatigue:
Ad Fatigue can be highlighted to us as digital marketers in many ways. Consider this. Are you spending more money on your campaigns but seeing less engagement? Have you seen a decline in your conversions lately? Are your impressions and clicks fewer than normal? Has your Click-Through-Rate (CTR) fallen? All of these could be an indication that you’re experiencing Ad Fatigue across your campaigns.
Feedback from your audience can be a helpful indicator to help highlight whether your ads are experiencing ad fatigue. Having an understanding of how your audience is responding to your campaigns will tell you a lot about whether you’re experiencing ad fatigue or not. With this comes a necessity to constantly monitor your live campaigns. Because in order to identify Ad Fatigue you must have an understanding of your typical metrics and be able to identify when something doesn’t look quite right.
Causes of Ad Fatigue:
The short answer. Repeated exposure of campaigns ultimately leads to ad fatigue, mostly as a result of a fall in overall engagement. There are a number of reasons why this may be the case. But the bottom line is, if elements of your campaign don’t resonate with your audience anymore, Ad Fatigue is more likely to happen. Ask yourself, are your creatives outdated?
Does your ad copy need a refresh? Is the message in your Ads still relevant to your audience? If the answer to any of these questions is no, it may be time to switch things up and get ahead of the game before ad fatigue catches you. A lack of variety is the pitfall of ad fatigue, so adopting daily strategies is one of the main ways to ensure your campaigns are less likely to suffer.
Combating Ad Fatigue:
There are a number of ways in which you can combat ad fatigue, which of course helps to keep consumer engagement as high as possible. Here’s one. How often do you run A/B tests on your campaigns, maybe not often enough? Effective A/B testing can help make informed choices when it comes to user behaviour and engagement, essentially giving your consumers what they’re looking for. As well as this, you can rotate your creative assets frequently to give your audience new and engaging visuals more often.
This is likely to increase engagement and ensure consumers remain interested for longer, eliminating the possible risk of Ad Fatigue. Another way to combat Ad Fatigue is through audience segmentation. Like a lot of things in life, everyone’s preferences are slightly different, and individual choices often differ from person to person. One way to overcome this is by trying different ad copy and tailored messaging. Paid Media platforms are always evolving with new dynamic content including Adv+ audiences.
Through the utilisation of these tools, your campaigns will more likely be shown to people who have a higher possibility of responding, which therefore keeps Ad Fatigue to a minimum. It’s also important to remember that continuous optimisation is essential in ensuring Ad Fatigue is recognised as early as possible.
Leveraging Data to Combat Ad Fatigue:
There are a number of performance metrics which can be monitored to help track overall performance and identify any potential metrics which are showing signs of Ad Fatigue. Just to name a few, conversions, cost per conversion, conversion rate, overall spend and return on ad spend (ROAS).
By monitoring these metrics there will be more opportunity to identify issues early and prevent Ad Fatigue from occurring more often. In addition to this, monitoring current trends within the industry that you operate in helps to understand what is currently relevant, therefore helping to inform effective decision making when it comes to combating Ad Fatigue.
Conclusion:
So, let’s summarise. Although there are strategies digital marketers can implement to combat and reduce Ad Fatigue, it’s never going to just disappear. However, as digital marketers we can most definitely minimise it as much as possible. As a result of consumer preferences changing all of the time we must actively try to understand current trends and manage strategies accordingly to maximise performance.
However, we aren’t mind readers, we’re digital marketers. And as much as we’d like to eliminate Ad fatigue completely, that would be almost impossible. Instead we understand that continuous optimisation of campaigns and the implementation of strategies to manage Ad Fatigue is the best option to keep our audience engaged and our campaigns high performing.
Words by: Amy Rowell
Amy Rowell is a Paid Media Manager here at SQUIDGY, specialising in paid search and online advertising. Amy shares insights on campaign management, audience targeting and maximising return on ad spend.
