About a year ago, the same Grammarly ad played over and over again between my YouTube videos.
Naturally, I developed a soul-consuming vendetta against the tool to the point of forswearing all things Grammarly for my remaining lifespan. (Once Ahrefs took its turn as the company whose ads I was being force-fed, my anger found a new outlet.)
Like so many people in the 21st century, I was suffering from a severe case of ad fatigue.
Ad fatigue is when your audience sees the same ad so many times that it turns them smooth-brained (and in my case, slightly unhinged.)
That is, they get bored and stop paying attention, which shoves your campaign effectiveness off a cliff—especially as the platform will categorize the ad as stagnant and stop displaying it to new viewers.
In my case, the glut of Grammarly ads meant that I not only stopped paying attention; I started actively disliking the brand that was subjecting me to all of this.
So how do you find that sweet balance between optimizing your ad budget and keeping audiences hooked?
I spoke to Vitaly Boitelet, co-founder of Stagwell’s gen-AI platform SmartAssets to uncover why marketers let ads drag on, how to spot the signs of ad fatigue, and how to combat it head-on.
We’ve heard plenty about shortened attention spans in the Internet age, about how novelty unlocks engagement and action.
So why would marketers let stale creative stretch on for so long, to the point of causing ad fatigue?
“A lot of those repetitive ads are on tiny budgets," Boitelet notes. "It wouldn't be worth it for the brands to refresh their marketing.”
Boitelet is speaking to low-budget, high-frequency ad campaigns, often seen in digital environments like mobile games or apps with free versions, such as Duolingo.
These ads are used repeatedly to maximize exposure without incurring additional production costs.
Ad fatigue ranks low on consideration for these campaigns, as does brand image or audience retention. The high number of impressions at a low cost per impression suffices for their needs.
There’s also the question of risk, as Boitelet points out: “You have an ad that works. Why think about redesigning it if it's performing to the standards you're expecting?”
Many brands, he says, don’t even monitor for ad fatigue, even if their KPIs are decreasing over time.
That kind of approach is a recipe for failure if your brand is serious about its image, competitiveness, and audience retention.
Using the same creative assets for months or weeks on end hits audiences differently depending on the channel, according to Boitelet.
“It’s really important to understand campaign length in terms of the platform you’re advertising on,” he says. “On linear TV [where the audience consumes content at a set time on a set TV channel], you can get away with using the same asset for a longer period of time. On TikTok, your campaign has a few weeks’ shelf life, tops.”
Think about it: TikTok revolves around short, engaging videos that users scroll through quickly. Fast-paced consumption means high-frequency ad exposure, as ads flash through the content multiple times within a short period, leading to faster ad fatigue.
And TikTok’s algorithm optimizes for maximum engagement, often showing users content (including ads) that aligns with their interests multiple times a day.The algorithm may quickly exhaust its pool of fresh impressions, so the same ad is displayed on loop to the same people.
On platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, on the other hand, ads are inserted into longer-form content. The design of the platform thus slows down fatigue.
This isn’t a cut-and-dry issue. Indeed, some make bold proclamations that most ads don’t lose effectiveness after extended exposure–that, in fact, it’s only the marketers themselves who are getting fatigued of the same old creative, not the target consumers.
Brand consultant Mark Ritson is in this camp. He cites a study by Analytics Partner that claims good creative doesn’t wear out. Rather than keep creating new ads, Ritson says, marketers should spend the creative budget on media, and explore omni-channel opportunities.
Ritson makes a compelling argument. It speaks to the mere-exposure effect, a psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference for things they see more frequently. Consumers may thus like a brand or product simply because they have been repeatedly exposed to its advertisements.
That said, ad saturation across social media, streaming services, and traditional media has never been higher.
And while the Analytics Partner study focuses on quantitative metrics such as recall and recognition, it does not capture all dimensions of advertising effectiveness.
Qualitative factors—such as brand sentiment, emotional response, and long-term loyalty—are harder to measure but crucial for understanding the complete impact of ad fatigue.
Boitelet concurs. “There's some truth to it that repetition is key to advertising. Building a narrative over time around a certain campaign works. At the same time, you also have to be very, very careful about the consumer’s state of mind. No one wants to see an ad, ever.”
While familiarity with an ad can lead to affinity, it could also breed contempt.
On the other end of mere-exposure is reactance, a psychological response where people feel their ability to make decisions is being manipulated through overexposure.
If viewers find an ad overly intrusive or pushy, they might resist the message—and even do the opposite of the messaging to restore their sense of freedom.
That could have significant repercussions for brand loyalty and sentiment; negative experiences with repetitive ads might lead consumers to avoid a brand altogether, even if they previously had positive associations with it.
You can conclude whether your audience really does have ad fatigue by tracking relevant metrics.
New tech offers new ways to automate the monitoring process; indeed, SmartAssets is developing a tool specifically to keep an eye on ad fatigue.
“We want to identify that moment where your performance is starting to drop,” Boitelet explains, “not because of external factors, but just purely because of the ad running too long.”
Tamping down ad fatigue is about managing different user expectations, Boitelet stresses. The same individual uses different platforms for their content needs, and they’ll have different expectations about how they would consume media for each.
With that said, here are some ways to keep the fatigue from setting in:
With programmatic advertising on the rise, ads are automatically placed on different platforms–without oversight, this runs the risk of the same user seeing the same ad across those channels.
Strategic cross-channel advertising can mitigate that risk, allowing a brand to create connections and include callbacks between ads on different channels.
“On linear TV, you have more time to develop a narrative,” Boitelet explains. “But you can’t get away with that on YouTube, for instance. With cross-channel advertising though, you can leverage a narrative you've built on TV and make callbacks to it on YouTube or TikTok.”
Boitelet references Uber Eats’ award-winning French campaign that leverages this tactic. The television ad introduces a character called Fred Livraison (that surname is the same word for ‘delivery fees’); the spot performed quite well in France, especially as it was aired during football matches.
Ads on other channels could then refer to the Fred character without having to do the longer-form work of introducing him.
Cross-channel advertising keeps you from addressing one specific audience constantly. Recognize that one consumer could belong to multiple audiences simultaneously. Hit them through different channels and build a story that way.
Gauge your audience’s emotional response to ads through testing before your campaign goes into production, says Boitelet.
Even as you repeat the brand’s message, make sure the narrative has emotional highs and lows.
And avoid sameness. Don’t repeat tropes used by competing brands, but also make sure your ad stands out from your past library.
Set a cap on impressions to limit the number of times an individual sees the same ad within a specific timeframe. Developing multiple versions of each ad can help you segue into smoother rotations.
You can also adjust retargeting strategies based on engagement signals, such as clicks or likes. Use different ad creatives for different retargeting segments based on their past interactions with your brand.
Creating new campaigns from scratch can eat away at budget.
Boitelet recommends identifying where creative optimizations might be needed and where media optimizations make more sense.
Tools like SmartAssets use AI-powered creative optimization to predict success and make changes according to likely customer preferences on each channel or platform.
If you’re curious how SmartAssets works—we’d love to show you.
