What is Ad Fatigue?
When an audience sees the same ad too often, causing declining performance.
Definition
Ad fatigue occurs when your target audience has been exposed to the same creative so many times that engagement drops — CTR decreases, CPA rises, and frequency climbs above 3-4x. The solution is a library of creative variations that you can rotate in before fatigue sets in. Monitoring frequency metrics and refreshing creative every 2-4 weeks (depending on audience size) keeps campaigns performing.
Example
After 3 weeks, a DTC brand notices their top-performing ad's CTR has dropped 40% while frequency hit 5.2. They swap in 3 new creative variations from their template library, and CTR recovers within days.
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