Is your Facebook ad performance gradually declining? Are you no longer achieving the purchases or leads you once did? Don't despair just yet. It's possible that your Facebook Ad account is experiencing ad creative fatigue.

But hey, the silver lining is that since you're reading this article, you must already have an inkling of what the problem is, and you're halfway there to solving it.

What is Facebook Ad Fatigue?

Facebook ad creative fatigue occurs when Facebook has delivered the ad too many times (and the audience has seen it too many times, as well) it starts burning and people get tired of seeing the same ad over and over again.

So, when the frequency of your ad on Facebook goes up, that's when you're dealing with Facebook Ad Creative Fatigue.

What causes Facebook Ad Fatigue?

Facebook ad creative fatigue can be caused by different reasons, one of the main reason is for Ad Creative Fatigue is the the delivery frequency. Let's talk about it.

• Frequency

Frequency is a KPI metric calculated based on ad impressions and reach. It indicates the average number of times a user within your target audience has been exposed to your ad over a specific period.

The lower the ad frequency is better for you, but having your frequency “between 1.8 – 4 is a good target. You will notice that most of the ads that has a creative fatigue will have a higher frequency.

• Audience Fatigue

Audience fatigue can also be a major contributor to your ad-fatigue. even the good and outstanding ad can lose the momentum if you have an audience that is tired of seeing the same ad. It's not your ad, but your audience that can be an issue.

How to Identify Ad Fatigue?

When it comes to ad-fatigue there are some metrics that you need to keep an eye on. If you monitor them correctly then the ad-fatigue will go away and your ads will be fine and good.

• Decrease in Click-through Rate (CTR)

Click Through Rate or CTR is a marketing metric that measures the ratio showing how often people who saw your ad end up clicking it. The higher the click-through rate, the more successful the ad has been delivered.

Users click on your ad when they are interested in it, and if they see your ad too many times, they will stop being interested and they may stop clicking on it. Hence it decreased the clickthrough rate and that is a sign of ad creative fatigue.

• Increasing Cost Per Result

Cost per result is another metric that measures how effective your ad campaign is, the less the cost per result is, the better the ad is running.

Once you start paying attention to cost per click you if notice that the cost per result has increased then it means that the ad is losing the momentum, becoming less effective and it is also an indication of it’s of plummeting campaign performance which can be caused by ad creative fatigue.

• Drop in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS or return on ad-spend is a metric that defines how monetary effective your Facebook ad campaign is, and it is also a vital indicator of your Facebook ad strategy. Once you see a drop in ROAS you can look at ad-frequency, CTR. And ad-fatigue can be an immediate suspect if the frequency is high and there is drop in ROAS

Fix Facebook Ad Creative Fatigue

• Add More Ad Creatives

ADD. MORE. CREATIVES. Adding more creative doesn't hurt. Facebook will not charge you more more for having more ad-creatives. Your audience may be freaking out seeing the same ad again and again, why won't you just feed some more ad-creatives to those hungry monsters?

• Tweak Your Ad Copy

If you can't have more creatives, try changing your Facebook ad copy. Change the primary text, headlines, the descriptions. Try experimenting different options and maybe have the pricing if you are using dynamic product ads and try translating the ads as well if you want. Experiment and it will work. Pinky promise!

• Expand Your Audiences

Oh my! Don't say that you are still running the ad while retargeting anyone who has visited your store yesterday. That's not gonna work, honey. Unless you have couple of thousand of clicks in a single day - the audience can be too low hence it can increase your Facebook ad creative fatigue.

If you are targeting "Homeowners in Newark" than try opening your audience to "New York" as well giving it some more room to test and optimize. You can also try going all broad with just location targeting and no interest based targeting.

Make sure you widen your geographic targeting of ads, ad new locations and do nationwide targeting. If you are using custom audiences then make sure that you are targeting a good and bigger audience, if not try combining all of them and make a lookalike of them. Just expand the audience, so the reach is bigger and more people see your ads.

• Expand Your Placements

Oh wait! Are you only running your ads on Facebook channel? That too on the mobile feed? Try showing them on Instagram as well to see if it works? Have another placement to widen your reach as your audience may be on other platforms as well.

Open up your Facebook ad manager and download the placement breakdown report, sort by frequency and add more placements that can work (Messenger, Audience Network for example)

• Use Frequency Cap on Facebook Ads

Frequency cap allows you to adjust the number of times your ad will be served to your audience within a specific period of time which gives you full control on the frequency of the ads your ads will be served.

You can set your frequency cap so that you either have higher reach (lower your frequency cap to show ads less frequently to more people) or higher frequency (increase your frequency cap to show ads to fewer people more frequently

Grow your Brand with Nikhil Sharma

Nikhil Sharma, a freelance specialist in Meta and Google Ads, is ready to assist you in boosting your brand's business. Schedule a call with him to explore how he can support your brand further.