Your ads are dying: How to spot and stop creative fatigue before it tanks performance
The death of an ad, like the end of the world, doesn’t happen with a bang but with a whimper.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the warning signs: click-through rate (CTR) slips, engagement falls, and cost-per-click (CPC) creeps up.
If you’re not, one day your former top performer is suddenly costing you money.
Creative fatigue – the decline in ad performance caused by overexposure or audience saturation – is often the culprit.
It’s been around as long as advertising itself, but in an era where platforms control targeting, bidding, and even creative testing, it’s become one of the few variables marketers can still influence.
This article explains how to spot early signs of fatigue across PPC platforms before your ROI turns sour, and how to manually refresh your creative in the age of AI-driven optimization.
We’ll look at four key factors:
- Ad quality.
- Creative lifecycle.
- Audience saturation.
- Platform dynamics.