What If Your Audience Hates Your Ad—And You Don’t Even Know It?

4 Min Read

Today’s advertiser faces more challenges than ever before to engage and convert audiences. With so many advertising channels, competing brands, and must-see content, the last thing you want to do is spend time, money, and resources on an ad that is either ineffective—or even turns your audience against you.

What if that’s your ad? What if your target audience has seen it so many times that they can’t stand it anymore, even going to such lengths as backing out of a program so they don’t have to watch another thirty seconds of it? Would you know before it’s too late?

MNTN’s Brittany Haskins, Director of Customer Success, and QuickFrame by MNTN’s Alex Villa, Associate VP of Customer Success, recently joined Digiday to discuss why creative fatigue is a threat for brands, how to spot the warning signs, and what you can do to combat it and keep your audience hooked. If you missed it, a recording of the webinar can be found here—or you can keep reading for just a few of the insights the trio shared.

Why Creative Fatigue is a Threat

“Content is going stale faster than ever so it’s important to have timelines in mind when building your strategy to deploy content,” advised QuickFrame by MNTN’s Villa. Once new creative is launched, a countdown clock starts almost immediately on its effectiveness. A QuickFrame by MNTN study found that video ad completion rates max out at only five days; by the eighth day, only 1.5% of users will complete the entire ad. What’s driving such a sharp decline? Creative fatigue.

Creative fatigue happens when a viewer watches the same ad frequently and eventually gets sick of it. More than just a nuisance, creative fatigue has real-world implications for marketing teams’ bottom lines: it can result in negative campaign performance, wasted media budget, and eventually turn a viewer against the brand. “When a brand uses the same ad year-round and a user watches it over and over again, it can result in the brand wearing out its welcome and even forming a negative connotation in the viewer’s mind,” added MNTN’s Haskins.

How to Tell If Your Ad Is Wearing Thin

When looking for signs of creative fatigue, Villa suggests letting performance measurement be your guide. While every brand has different performance marketing KPIs, keeping an eye on the ones that matter and your campaign performance can reveal when a downward trend appears—and let you know it’s time to make an adjustment before it’s too late. “It’s important to take these learnings, understand what’s working, and translate into a new set of hypotheses on what’s working well,” noted Villa. “At the same time, it’s just as important to know what’s not working so you know how to wisely allocate your budget, resources, or time.”

Common KPIs to monitor include spend, impressions, video completion rates, and conversion rates—but that’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for every brand. “Brands should always keep an eye on the KPIs that matter most to their campaign; if these start to falter, and everything else in the campaign looks good, it can be an indication that it’s time to refresh the creative and hit them with a new compelling message,” cautioned Villa.

Planning for Creative Refresh

The best way to combat creative fatigue is through a creative refresh—introducing new and exciting content that captures the audience’s attention and updates messaging based on performance measurement feedback. “Advertisers already face an uphill battle getting attention, so you want to make sure you don’t miss any key opportunities,” warned Haskins. “We recommend keeping your creative as up-to-date as possible, including incorporating current events like seasonal elements or promotional content.”

Best practices for creative refreshes include planning ahead—like taking learnings from existing creative and putting in a brief and testing plan. That plan can be used to develop a shot list to capture a library of assets during filming. “You want as many variations of a shot as you can get on shoot day because you can’t easily go back and do it again,” advised Villa. “You’ll want to shoot more content upfront to create a library of assets that you may need in the future.” By building out a robust library of assets, brands can watch performance metrics and easily iterate to quickly combat creative fatigue. “This allows you to be much more agile and have the flexibility to plug and play and create those variations,” said Villa.

Watch the Full Webinar for More

Understanding and utilizing creative refreshes is critical for advertisers. Watch the full webinar to learn even more, including a deeper dive on best practices, what tools you need, successful case studies, and more. Click here to watch the full presentation of Data-Driven Refreshes: How to Stop Video & CTV Ad Fatigue.

• Related: Learn more about CTV advertising.