Creative
Frequency and creative fatigue
Every ad wears out. The skill is spotting it from the numbers before the cost shows up in your results.
An ad that worked last month can quietly stop working this month with nothing changed. Usually the audience has simply seen it enough. That is creative fatigue.
Frequency
Always check the date range. A frequency of 3 over a week and a frequency of 3 over three months describe very different situations.
The three signs, together
- Frequency is rising. The same people are seeing the ad more often.
- Click-through rate is falling. Fewer of them respond each time.
- Cost per result is rising. You are paying more for less.
One sign alone proves little. Frequency can rise in a healthy campaign, and cost can rise because of competition or season. All three moving together, for the same ad, is the pattern to act on.
There is no magic number
You will see rules such as "refresh at a frequency of 3". Treat them with caution. A retargeting audience of past visitors tolerates far more repetition than a cold audience. An ad for an urgent appeal wears differently from one for a considered purchase. Watch the trend in your own results, not a threshold from someone else's account.
What to do
- Add new creative before you need it. Have the next ad ready while the current one still works.
- Change the angle, not the colour. A new message refreshes an audience. A small edit to the same ad rarely does.
- Widen the audience. If the audience is small, the same people will see everything quickly whatever you do.
- Rest good ads. A strong ad taken out for a few weeks often works again when it returns.
Small local audiences wear out fastest. A contractor advertising to a few neighbourhoods has a limited pool of people. Plan a steady supply of fresh job photos and short videos from the start.
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