Ad fatigue is a common issue that businesses and marketers need to be aware of, and steer clear of as often as possible. Ad fatigue happens when a viewer becomes desensitized to a certain type of advertisement, making it less effective over time. Essentially, viewers can become bored, making your ads easier to ignore and lowering the effectiveness of your messaging. This can be caused by overexposure to the same messaging, or by the ad being too repetitive. While ad fatigue can cause a serious hit to your ROI, updating your ads or even placements every so often is a fairly simple way to keep things fresh and engaging.
One way to avoid ad fatigue is to vary the type of media used to spread your message. Try utilizing different formats, like print, video, audio or interactive ads, i.e “spin to win” games. Changing up the format in which you circulate your messaging will keep capturing your audience’s attention and prevent the effect of your ads being diminished. You can ensure you’re employing the best formats for the business type by testing different versions of an ad. Over time, this will help to determine which placements are most effective for you.
A more complex option to avoiding ad fatigue would be to start using or update your targeted advertising. If you’re selling a niche product, but advertising it to a broad audience, you’re basically hitting a digital brick wall. Those wasted impressions/views are going to drive down your CTR. By using targeted advertising, you’re more likely to hit your relevant audience, which in turn should have a positive impact on your engagement. Keep in mind that your target audience can become desensitized, too, so it’s best to not rely on this tactic alone.
If you’re a small business, you don’t need to feel like any particular marketing plan will fail if you don’t have the ability to run multiple campaigns on an assortment of platforms. While running different placements certainly will help your business, there are much simpler ways to avoid viewers becoming bored. A favorite way to update your ads is by making small changes that have big visual impacts. For example, doing something as basic as changing the background images on a display campaign, or even adding slides to make a static ad into a gif, can have a huge impact. Simple updates like rewording the same information, changing the main colors used in an ad or changing the call to action verbiage can bring a new luster back to your campaign.
While ad fatigue is a real issue for businesses big and small, there are quite a few ways to counteract the problem. Sometimes this is a trial and error process, so don’t make all the changes all at once. Try updating one or two things at a time, and make sure to monitor your campaigns regularly. Making small updates can keep things fresh for your audience, which can only improve the success of your business.