Combatting Ad Fatigue: The Pitfall of Oversaturation
Every DTC brand has a common enemy that costs a massive amount of wasted spend: ad fatigue. When ad fatigue strikes, it’s deadly: it negatively impacts ROI and hurts your brand. But don’t worry — in this article we’ll discuss a powerful way to mitigate ad fatigue and drive better performance (and it’s not cutting a UGC video a bunch of different ways).
First, let’s look at why ad fatigue happens. Ad fatigue occurs when your audience has viewed the same ad repeatedly, leading to disengagement and desensitization. The tell-tale signs of fatigue on Meta are high frequency rates, rising CPMs, and a decrease in relevance score (a Facebook metric that evaluates ad quality and engagement).
Ad fatigue can have negative business implications on every channel:
The Mere Exposure Effect
How often do you stop to consider why your once-successful ad campaigns suddenly lose steam? Familiarize yourself with Mere Exposure Effect.
A simulmedia study found that people who saw the same ad 6–10 times were 4.1% less likely to buy a product than those who saw the ad 2–5 times. Increased ad exposure resulted in a decrease in purchase motivation.
Mere Exposure Effect suggests that repeated exposure to a stimulus, such as an ad, increases its likability. However, there will come a cognitive saturation point, beyond which further exposure leads to ad fatigue. Ignoring this saturation point can result in not only diminishing returns but also damage to brand perception. The solution is not just to increase ad frequency but to strategically innovate before reaching the saturation point.
Signs of Fatigue
The first sign of ad fatigue is an increase in CPM and a decline in Click Through Rate, a good indicator of ad quality and engagement. Essentially, the algorithm is picking up that your ads are now boring your audience, who has seen them too many times.
“Hold up,” You might be thinking. “I’m targeting an audience size with over 50 million people, and I haven’t nearly achieved that reach!”
Although your ad sets may appear to target a robust audience pool during setup, Meta might deliver ads repeatedly to the same individuals, leading to increased frequency rates for those users. As a result of this, people have stopped taking the actions that you want them to take: clicking and purchasing.
If you run ads long enough, you’re going to run into ad fatigue.
So, how do we solve this invisible performance killer?
The Strategic Solution: Enter Creative Diversification
Creative diversification is a strategic remedy for ad fatigue. Technically, this is because Facebook Ad Auctions reward ‘highest total value’ — outside of bid, this is calculated by optimal Action Rates (the probability that an ad will lead to a desired outcome) and Ad Quality (user sentiment feedback).
By increasing both the output of your creative as well as differentiating between ads (in style, format, content and messaging), you can quickly drive better performance outcomes by optimizing your ads.
What does this mean?
Advertisers should increase the variety of ads within their accounts. ‘Different ads’ means bigger swings and greater variety. Let’s paint an example of what that looks like — let’s say we’re selling a high-tech water bottle, and we’ve hired a UGC creator, Arjun, to do a produc unboxing, and we want to highlight the theme of gifting.
Here’s the conventional way to test creative and deploy an ad set:
The Old Way
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad — Hook 1
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad — Hook 2
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad — Hook 3
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad — CTA 1
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad — CTA 2
The problem here is we’re limiting ourselves to the same video formats, with very small adjustments. Each video is primarily the same, with minor hook or CTA tweaks. Though one might perform better than another, it doesn’t allow us the ability to break through to a larger audience or appeal to a wider demographic.
The New Way (Creative Diversification)
UGC — Arjun Gifting Unbox Ad
STATIC — Gifting Ad
UGC — Arjun Gifting Non Unbox Ad
CAROUSEL — Gifting Ad
MOTION DESIGN — Gifting Ad
By deploying a wider variety of creative styles that each reflect a unified ‘gifting’ theme, we give our ads and ad set a better shot of driving strong performance. For the same amount of ad spend, we gain additional insight into what execution pairs best with a certain message. Once we determine which of these ads works well, then we can finetune with more subtle changes.
Though it may seem like more of a lift, the investment in diversified creative pays dividends: A 2021 Meta study found that advertisers that deployed diversified creative saw 32% more efficient DR outcomes and a 9% greater reach.
Creative diversification expands your arsenal of compelling ads, making your media costs more efficient. With a wider variety of ads you ensure that your brand and products have the greatest opportunity to break through the clutter: presented in a variety of captivating formats, with fine-tuned relevance and messaging styles.
Unlocking the Potential of a Larger Audience
Now, here’s where the added magic unfolds. Pairing broad targeting with creative diversification allows you to open new doors and convert a larger potential audience.
Think of this as widening your horizons and inviting new prospects into the fold. When your ad sets showcase a diverse range of content, it attracts the attention of different segments within your TAM, enticing them to engage and explore what your brand has to offer.
You will likely access and convert audiences that haven’t previously engaged with your brand, scaling your customer base.
By going above and beyond the confines of a single creative format or message, creative diversification allows your brand to resonate with a broader array of tastes, styles, and preferences. This not only fosters stronger connections with customers familiar with your brand but also engages fresh faces into your marketing funnel.
This plays into Meta’s algorithms by design: delivering value to both the users and to the brands, and ironically the cause of the ad fatigue your brand previously experienced was Meta’s algorithm trying to make your more-limited ads work.
Harmony in Action: The Symphony of Diverse Creatives
Here are three ways that you can easily implement diversified creative today:
- Push for more varied content from your UGC creators.
When hiring talent for UGC, have them shoot at least 2 completely different videos. Also have them capture additional hooks and CTAs so you can determine which combination works best for performance.
2. Run more static ads.
This is an easy and effective way to determine successful messaging and layouts. When paired with AI creative tools, this offers little barrier to entry.
3. Bring in Hungry Robot to produce your ad creative.
Our methodology starts and ends with overperformance on your creatives. We prioritize both quality and quantity: ensuring that your account is well-equipped with the right diversified ads that have the best shot to drive performance.
The ads stay resonant because each has a recipe that’s ingrained in marketing science, using broad motivators that can be fine-tuned to any situation, context or customer persona, utilizing performance-driven, tested variations.
Diverse creatives within a unified theme trigger curiosity. Novelty sparks interest, especially when it’s relevant and rewarding. Novelty will encourage your audience to engage with the transportive storytelling dynamics in the ad, and explore what your brand has to offer.
In a broad targeting landscape, creative diversification helps your ad set weave a tapestry of personalized experiences. This personalization at scale fosters stronger connections with your audience, making them feel seen and valued. By tapping into innate human desires for fresh experiences and belonging, creative diversification keeps our audience intrigued and coming back for more. Using the auction algorithm, we can strike even deeper chords of resonance by identifying each segment’s preferences and behaviors, allowing us to refine our creatives for each segment according to their preferences.
The Path to Unprecedented Success
Embracing creative diversification is the easiest way to level up your digital marketing performance. This strategic approach conquers ad fatigue, prevents oversaturation, and unlocks the potential to connect with a larger and more diverse audience, all of which drive down Customer Acquisition Costs.
By orchestrating diverse creatives, your brand has the opportunity to resonate with different segments in your TAM, fostering lasting connections and driving sustainable growth. As you venture into the new world of creative diversification, the impact will be felt through new synergies across all of your efforts that will energize your brand and propel business outcomes to new heights.
