What’s the ad fatigue definition? According to Marketing Land, it’s “when your audience has seen your ads multiple times and starts to ignore them”. Your ads lose their effect, people get bored but you continue paying for reach. Not what you have been planning, right?
Below we will discuss 10 techniques that will help you struggle with ad blindness and invest your ad budget effectively.
#1 Advertise with different creatives
How many creatives you need depends on how long your ads will run and how big is your audience. If you are advertising to a large audience for a short period (2-4 weeks), even 1-2 creatives might be enough. Each of your audience members will see your ads reasonable times and don’t feel the need to hide them.
But if your audience is small and you are planning a long-term campaign, you should equip yourself with multiple variations of the same ad. Changes may be applied to anything from background color to headline and ad copy.
#2 Define the ad frequency cap
Frequency cap means what’s the maximum number of times users will see the same ad. On Facebook, it’s recommended to keep the cap between 3-5 times depending on how familiar the audience is with your brand.
When we see the ad only once, it may not impact us and we will forget it easily. That’s because we are seeing hundreds of ads every day, right?
But when we see that same for 2-3 times, we start noticing new details and get interested. That’s why delivering the same ad to the same users up to 5 times is totally fine.
Anything above it means users will start clicking the three dots on the Facebook ad and hide your ad. To prevent this from happening, you should learn how to edit frequency cap Facebook ads have. You can choose the frequency right from your Ads Manager by mentioning how many times you want the user to see the ad throughout X days.
#3 Exclude converted users
You will agree that it doesn’t make sense to show the same offer to users who have already purchased the advertised product.
It leaves a negative feeling on the users because doesn’t promise any additional value.
Besides, you end up spending money even though you have already invested to acquire that conversion. In short, you get double charged.
You can exclude converted users by selecting the ad group, clicking Action => Edit and excluding the ones who shouldn’t be in your target audience.
#4 Move your ad to another platform
You might be targeting a very specific group of users that don’t make up a big number on a specific platform. Or maybe you have been running your ads for such a long time that Facebook has shown them to all the possible users.
In this case, learning how to edit frequency cap Facebook ads have won’t make much difference. No matter the reason, you need to consider another platform where you can find new, relevant, and potentially interested audience members.
While Facebook works both for B2B and B2C companies, LinkedIn is more suitable for B2B and Instagram for B2C. Depending on who your ideal customers are and where they spend time online, switch to that exact medium.
#5 Apply changes to your audience demographics
One of the best ways to avoid ad blindness is expanding the scope of your audience. It can be done through updating their age, interests, job titles (for B2B), location.
Note that you should go for this approach only if that audience members fit into your buyer profile. If your tool is for users who are interested in product management, you may also target ones who are interested in product development, product quality control and other related keywords.
#6 Check for the audience overlap and review the scope
As an eCommerce or SaaS company, you might have different ad groups to deliver different ads to your audience. But are you sure you haven’t included the same group of users in 2 or more ad groups?
For example, if you are an online store, you’d like to advertise your discounted winter and newly arrived spring collection. Usually, at the same time and to the same target audience.
Though users will be seeing two different ads, it’s still from the same brand. Even if you learn how to edit frequency cap Facebook ads have and set each ad to display to users once, they’ll still see two ads with different creatives and messages. Let the users focus on one offer, on ad at a time and remove ad bombardment from your strategy.
To check for possible overlaps, follow the simple steps below:
- Go to the Audience tab in your Facebook Ads Manager,
- Select the audience groups you want to compare,
- Click Actions => Show Audience Overlap.
If there’s an overlap, select the audience group, click Actions => Edit => Exclude and remove users based on demographics, interests or behaviors.
#7 Keep your retargeting budget small
No one argues that retargeting is a working tactic and helps you reach warmer audiences. Though allowing big budgets even for this tried and proven tactic is not a great idea. Here’s why.
First, not all your website visitors are actually qualified for purchase. Most of them are just browsing. Second, keeping your budget small prevents Facebook from showing the same retargeting ad to the same user multiple times. So, even if you know how to edit frequency cap Facebook ads have you don’t really need to apply it.
Thus, a small budget actually helps you kill two birds with one stone. Retarget only visitors who have taken significant actions on your website. And once you notice that your ad frequency is anyway high, means it’s time to reduce your budget.
#8 Choose the campaign objective wisely
When you choose “Conversions” as your campaign objective, Facebook shows your ad to members who are most likely to convert. Thus, it delivers the same ad to the same users, hoping to meet your goals.
But when you choose “Reach” as your objective, Facebook aims at showing to as many users as possible, without focusing on bringing conversion/traffic.
#9 Recreate your offer
Even if you offer only one service or product, there’s still a way to come up with multiple offer variations. Your software probably has a series of valuable benefits and you won’t know which one appeals to users until you try.
#10 Review the ad format
Are you still using static images for your Facebook ads? Start considering carousel and video ads. You can introduce the same offer with a different ad format and it will influence your audience in an entirely different way.
Final thoughts: Helping you in your anti-ad fatigue efforts
Knowing how to struggle with ad fatigue and banner blindness is only a small part of running successful social media and search engine ads.
If you haven’t launched ad campaigns before or have failed in your previous efforts, it’s time to take counsel from specialists with hands-on experience. Contact the Andava Digital team and let’s chat.
