In short
Marketing School Episode Notes: How to Deal with Ad Fatigue
Podcast Overview
- Podcast Title: Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips
- Hosts: Neil Patel and Eric Siu
- Episode: #2629
- Description: The episode discusses strategies for dealing with ad fatigue, a phenomenon that affects the performance of online advertisements due to repetitive exposure.
Key Concepts
- Ad Fatigue Defined:
- The decline in ad performance caused by audiences seeing the same ads repeatedly.
- Indicators include:
- Increasing ad frequency.
- Decreasing impressions-to-clicks ratio.
- Reduction in conversion rates.
Signs of Ad Fatigue
- Increasing Frequency: Higher frequency indicates repeated exposure.
- Decreasing Impressions-to-Clicks Ratio: A worsening ratio shows less engagement.
- Dropping Conversion Rates: Fewer conversions from the same ad suggest fatigue.
Strategies to Combat Ad Fatigue
- Change Up Creatives
- Regularly update ad creatives to keep the content fresh and engaging.
- Utilize multiple hooks and call-to-actions within the same campaign.
- Example: Generate different variations of an ad (e.g., different hooks and bodies).
- Expand Targeting
- Broaden audience targeting to include different demographics or interests.
- Exclude past viewers to avoid showing ads to the same people.
- Utilize Different Ad Formats
- Experiment with various ad formats available on platforms like Google and Meta.
- New ad formats may offer lower costs and better engagement.
- Test New Creatives and Audiences
- Continuously test different creatives, landing pages, and audience segments.
- Adapt based on performance metrics.
- Remarketing Strategies
- Target users who viewed the ad but didn’t convert.
- Consider using different types of ads to address varying motivations (emotional vs. logical).
- Frequency Capping
- Limit how often the same ad is shown to the same audience to reduce fatigue.
Additional Tips
- Be Intentional: Approach ad campaigns with clear goals and strategies.
- Storytelling: Incorporate different narratives or customer stories to enhance engagement.
- Regular Review: Assess the effectiveness of ads and make necessary adjustments based on performance.
Conclusion
- Ad fatigue is a common challenge in digital marketing.
- Regularly refreshing creatives, targeting new audiences, and testing various strategies are essential for maintaining ad performance.
Call to Action
- Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast.
- Connect with the hosts on their respective platforms:
- [Single Grain](https://www.singlegrain.com) (Eric’s ad agency)
- [NP Digital](https://www.npdigital.com) (Neil’s ad agency)
- Twitter: [@neilpatel](https://twitter.com/neilpatel), [@ericosiu](https://twitter.com/ericosiu)
For more insights, visit [Marketing School](https://www.marketingschool.io).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00All right. So we are going to talk about how to deal with ad fatigue. We are basically into 2024 now as of this recording. And ad fatigue is a big thing even today's day and age. Well, here's the thing. Creative is the X factor as ads get a little more difficult and marketing gets more difficult. So we want to help you combat that. So first, Neil, do you want to hear? I'll just define what ad fatigue is. So ad fatigue is when people keep seeing the same ads over and over and your performance starts to suffer because you aren't switching up your creatives. So let's talk about how you can deal with it.
0:33So typically, depending on the platform that you're using to show your ads, you'll see the frequency. So when someone sees your ad multiple times, your frequency will start going up, goes above one, starts getting to two, etc. That's an early indicator of ad fatigue. Another early indicator is look at when your ad first came out, the number of impressions it received, and then the number of clicks it received, and compare that with what's happening right now. And if you see that ratio getting worse and worse, again, that's another sign of ad fatigue. and the last sign of ad fatigue that we really see is uh people clicking on the ad but the conversion rates dropping from that same ad yep the other thing too is in terms of how you want to actually deal with it one is look if your frequency is getting too crazy and your performance starting to suffer your cpas are starting to get higher it's probably a sign that you're dealing with ad fatigue but you should be changing up your ad so this is most people think it's okay to have just one creative running or maybe two, three creatives or whatever.
1:31But when you look at your competitors, as an example, you can use LinkedIn's Ad Transparency Center. You can use Google's, you can use Meta's as well, or Facebook's. You can see how many ads your competitors are actually running or how many active ads they have. And that's a nice comparison to tell you, hey, do you need to up your game? And usually for most people, the answer is yes. You usually do need to up your game when it comes to the number of creatives. And so the way you might do this is, let's say this video itself is a creative, right? So that the meat of this podcast, but we might come up with in the beginning, we might come up with four or five different hooks.
2:03And then we might have a different body and we might have five different call to actions, right? And so at that point, you're actually able to multiply these and you're able to create these different permutations, right? So it might be five times five as an example. And so that's how you can create different ones. They don't have to be completely different, but you should try to continually test different call to actions and different hooks. Yeah. The other thing that people get mistaken with ad fatigue is like, wow, our ads are converting lower and lower and lower. But your targeting may be off in which you're not targeting enough people, or you're targeting the wrong people.
2:37But a lot of times, if you tweak your targeting, and you say, Oh, why? You know, people who are interested in SEO services, aren't just people who work in the SEO department of companies, they may also work as a VP of marketing or in the paid advertising department, or heck, even some people who are in charge of product may need SEO help because they're releasing, creating new products and they need someone to help them with their SEO for that product. So expanding your targeting and you have to be careful about your conversion rates and make sure that they're staying the same, if not increasing, but expanding your targeting really can help with fighting, quote unquote, ad fatigue as well.
3:16You can also exclude your past viewers. So people that have seen your ad already, or maybe even the converters, you can exclude them, right? That will help you a little bit as well, because you don't want to keep running the same ads to the same people. You can run some form of frequency capping as well to people. And the other thing you can do is you can utilize different ad formats too, right? So especially with the Advantage Plus stuff that's coming out from Meta side, the Performance Max stuff, they're constantly, they're helping, they're trying to help their customers more so the advertisers rotate more creatives.
3:46And so there's a lot of different ad formats on Google, for example. There's a lot of different ad formats on Instagram or Facebook. Think about using those ad formats, especially when they're new, because when they're newer ad formats, you tend to get lower costs because they're trying to push it harder. Yep. So look, you're going to deal with ad fatigue. This is common. This is normal. We all experience it. The goal that you should have is continually test new creatives, test new landing pages. You're not just going to have fatigue on your own, your ads. You're also going to have fatigue on your offers on your website, your landing pages.
4:20And the other thing you need to really do is test new audiences as well. And as Eric mentioned, exclude showing the same people over and over again, the ads. Also consider doing some stuff that's remarketing related in which you remarket the people who saw the ad, went to the website, but didn't convert, and you show them a new ad, new landing page. And the way this works really well is, let's say if your ad is really emotional, and you're trying to hit hard on emotions to try to convert someone, then consider running an ad to those same people who didn't convert a logical ad using stats and data, you're pretty much using the opposite pitch to see if you get them to a landing page that is more logical and if you can get them to convert.
5:06Yep. Look, we can, we can go on and on. I'll just give a couple more things that we can get out of here. So, I mean, obviously with your ads, consider storytelling different, there's a lot, there's different stories you can tell. There's different customer stories you can tell as well. And again, just switch with the variations, but also rotate ads as well. I think we talked about that as well. And you should be doing well. The key thing here is, again, we mentioned the last episode in terms of being intentional. If you're going to run ads, you want to make sure, especially in today's environment, that you're being intentional with how you're doing it.
5:33So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we will see you tomorrow. And check out this video over here.

