5 Brainy Ways to Overcome Ad Fatigue on Facebook

There’s no doubting the fact that Facebook ad campaigns can be a very effective way of achieving conversions for your product or service. Their targeting capabilities are really second to none when it comes to ad networks. No wonder your Facebook feed is always inundated with ads for interesting gadgets and events.

However, this doesn’t mean that everything is all fine and rosy. After you have been running a Facebook ad campaign for a while, you will often start to experience ad fatigue. They simply stop working.

This is when your customers will have seen your ads so many times by now that they are sick of them. Have you ever seen an ad on television or the internet so many times that you become oblivious to it or wonder why it has been shown so many times?

This epidemic will be seen in the form of your ads’ frequency rate blowing up, your cost-per-click rising and your CTR dropping.

Thankfully, there are some ways in which you can overcome ad fatigue on Facebook. All you need is to do is think outside the box.

So here they are, our 5 Brainy Ways to Overcome Ad Fatigue on Facebook:

1. Monitor your Ad Frequency and Keep it Low

Usually when you are running an ad campaign on Facebook, you will be targeting a specific target audience and not just the entire population on the social network. Not many middle aged women will be interested in a revolutionary new grooming service for men! This is why targeting is so important; you need to get your ads in front of people who are likely to convert.

However, narrow targeting means that eventually your ads will start re-appearing for the same users time and time again. When this frequency starts to build up, the user can start to get annoyed at being bombarded with the same ads. You will probably have experienced this yourself, with the ads of some so called self-help gurus or financial services always popping up when you are browsing Facebook.

Statistics have shown that with each additional time a user sees the same ad, the click through rate decreases. While this trend is to be somewhat expected, after the user has seen the ads a handful of times, the CTR greatly will drop off the chart.

The golden number when it comes to ads frequency is 3. Whenever you check your Facebook Ads Manager and see that your ad frequency is close to this number, you should stop the campaign, alternate or change the ad. Alternatively, you can take some of the steps outlined in this article.

The last thing you want to happen is having your user yawn at the sight of your ads because the same one is popping up all the time.

2. Optimise your Ad Placement

It is important that your ad campaign caters for those using different devices and platforms. Nowadays, many people use their tablets or mobile devices to browse through their friend’s cat videos and edgy posts on Facebook.

While you can use the Facebook Ads Desktop, Mobile and Audience network to show the same ad on all of the different platforms, most of your budget will be automatically allocated towards the platform with the lowest cost per engagement.

This means that your campaign will excessively favour one platform, leading to a high frequency for it even if the accumulated frequency is quite low.
This is another reason why you should specifically tailor your ads depending on what platform they are going to appear on. Mobile users are going to react to certain types of ads differently than desktop users, so adjust accordingly. Therefore, to avoid ad fatigue on a certain platform, make sure that you have a separate ad group for each one.

3. Constantly Rotate your Ads

One of the best ways to combat ad fatigue is to ensure that you are constantly rotating your ads. This means that the user will not be faced with the same visual each and every day before eventually getting sick of it.

By having a number of different visuals for the same offer, you will be creating a fresh approach each and every time a user sees your ad. Your users will flock to the latest shiny images and words that you use. Whenever an ad frequency gets near to 2.5 it is a good idea to rotate to the next variation.

In addition, changing the ads every couple of days will keep things fresh and you can also start to pick up on trends as to which type of visuals tend to perform better. This is almost like a mini form of A/B testing. Track the results that different types of ads generate and note what types performed well for future reference.

A great way of rotating your ads to keep things fresh is by using an ad schedule where different ads will automatically be shown on different ways. This is an efficient method in which to automate the process so you don’t have to be constantly monitoring the metrics and adjusting manually.

4. Alter the Background Colour of the Ads

Modern psychology has shown us evidence as to how people react to different colours. For example, green is a soothing colour that helps to alleviate stress and anxiety. Red on the other hand stimulates energy and can get your pulse going faster as your enthusiasm increases. As well as combatting ad fatigue, this also is a cool way to see how different people react to certain stimuli.
By trying different background colours in your ads, you can test these theories out for yourself. It will also break up the monotony of your ads having the same colour scheme all of the time and you will eventually be more likely to hit your target user’s current mood when testing different colours.

If your brand is associated with one specific colour (like Facebook is associated with the colour blue) then you can play around with hues that are darker and lighter than before.
As usual, when your ad frequency starts to creep upwards, it is time to change to a different background colour.

5. Exclude Those who have Already Engaged

If someone has already engaged with your ad, they may not want to see it again. They could have been curious, clicked on it and seen that it is not their cup of tea. Alternatively, they may have been interested and taken your desired action or bookmarked it for later viewing. Either way, people don’t want to see the same ad again and again after they have already clicked on it.
This is why it can be a good idea to exclude these people from the rest of your campaign.

You can do this very easily be creating a custom audience of those people who have clicked on your ad and visited your site in the previous 60 days. You can go a step further and differentiate those who have signed up already or taken some other action.

By having these custom audiences, you will also be able to target them in the future with ads promoting a new product or service, as you know that they were interested in your previous ads and are more likely to engage with the new ads than people seeing them for the first time.