Creative Fatigue
Declining ad performance as audiences become overexposed to the same creative.
Definition
Creative fatigue occurs when advertising performance declines because target audiences have seen the same creative assets too many times. Symptoms include declining click-through rates, increasing costs per action, and rising negative feedback.
Managing creative fatigue requires monitoring frequency metrics, developing creative refresh calendars, and maintaining libraries of variations. AI tools increasingly automate creative generation to enable higher refresh rates.
Why It Matters
Creative fatigue silently erodes campaign performance over time. Recognizing and addressing it proactively maintains campaign effectiveness without waiting for serious degradation.
For marketing teams, creative fatigue management is essential for sustaining performance across always-on campaigns.
Examples in Practice
Frequency analysis reveals ads performing poorly have been shown 15+ times to the average user, triggering a creative refresh.
A rotating creative strategy introduces new variations weekly, maintaining freshness and preventing fatigue-driven decline.
Dynamic creative optimization automatically surfaces newer variations when engagement metrics indicate fatigue.