Facebook advertising is tricky. The moment you believe you have understood what kind of ads really work for you, something changes and your ads suddenly begins to underperform again.
This is often due to ad fatigue, and it means your ads have become tired. Essentially there are two reasons to why this is happening.
1. People usually don’t click on the same ad twice
People who are interested in your message will tend to click on the ad one of the first few times they see it. And once they have clicked they are unlikely to be interested in clicking on the same ad again even if they keep seeing it many more times.
2. Facebook likes fresh ads
As an ad gets old Facebook will grant it fewer impressions, forcing you to pay more for showing that same creative over and over again. Also, your CTR will typically decline over time (see reason 1), which is a signal of your ad being less interesting. This is therefore punished by Facebook by allowing fewer impressions at your current spend level.
(Another possible reason can be that you max bid is out dated? Perhaps there are new advertisers who entered the market ready to pay more for clicks from the same targeting population you have chosen.)
In essence, Facebook advertising is no different from other forms of advertising – it comes down to relevancy. Users “vote” on ads via their clicks, and as the click-through rate drops (and the ad gets less “votes”) this is a signal to Facebook that the ad is becoming uninteresting.
Showing the same message to the same people repeatedly will make it irrelevant to them. Facebook knows this and protects users by punishing lazy advertisers. Since Facebook depends on their advertising for revenue it’s in their interest to make sure the ads are relevant to the users, and this is one way of accomplishing that.
So what can you do about it?
- Be creative – change your ads over time with new content and images
- Rotate the ads in each campaign – with Qwaya you can rotate the ads every day in each campaign to make sure Facebook gives all your ads the same chance to perform before being shut down by the Facebook optimization algorithm
- Change max bid – someone else might have entered the market ready to pay more. By increasing the max bid you can compete with them. If your CTR is high enough you might be able to lower the max bid again once you get traction and show Facebook your ads are performing great
- Create more campaigns with less ads – Use our splitting feature to create many campaigns with fewer ads in each. When you have fewer ads in each campaign, Facebook will give all your ads combined a better chance to perform. You’re thus not putting all your eggs in one basket
Do you have experiences from combating ad fatigue? We’d love to hear – tell us in the comments!