Your ads may be tired. Here’s how to wake them up
Over time, advertising effectiveness declines as the target audience becomes more familiar with it. This phenomenon is called “creative fatigue.” Simply put, the more your audience repeatedly sees the same ad creative, the less they engage with it. This leads to the creative losing its ability to perform well. Resulting in reduced attention, declining engagement, and, in some cases, no influence on behaviour at all. Overall, creative fatigue causes key performance metrics to drop.
What causes creative fatigue? And how do we spot it?
Creative fatigue occurs when users repeatedly see the same ad creative, losing interest and engagement with each exposure. Signs of creative fatigue can often be identified in metrics such as conversion rates or click-through rates (CTR). A decline in these KPIs is a strong indicator that creative fatigue is affecting your campaigns.
How can we solve creative fatigue?
The best way to combat audiences losing interest in the same creative is by introducing new and refreshed designs of equal or greater quality. Keeping creatives fresh and updated is especially important if campaign performance is dropping. Even small changes, such as adjustments to colours, imagery, or messaging, can significantly extend a creative’s lifespan.
How can we use DCO to help combat creative fatigue?
Traditionally, preventing creative fatigue involves frequently designing, creating, and serving new advertising. However, constantly designing from scratch can strain project timelines and resources.
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) offers a solution. By leveraging content plans, templated creatives, and varied ad structures, DCO helps tell the campaign story effectively while avoiding performance plateaus. Saved resources can be redirected toward testing different creatives, imagery, or messaging to determine what resonates best with your audience.
Applied thoughtfully, solutions like additive + DCO allow teams to monitor creative performance in real time and identify precisely when creative fatigue sets in. This approach enables timely optimisations, with swappable creative elements keeping ads fresh, relevant, and engaging for all audience segments. By combining creative flexibility with data-driven insights, campaigns maintain effectiveness while using resources efficiently, allowing marketing teams to focus on strategy, testing, and storytelling rather than constantly redesigning from scratch.
