Ad fatigue is a well-known issue in the digital marketing space. No ad is immune to it.
In fact, we’re not the first publisher to help its advertisers navigate this problem. Facebook encourages advertisers to refresh ad creative every two weeks, and even throttles distribution of stale creative (3Q Digital).
While an advertisement may start out strong, an “audience will only pay attention to a new ad for so long. As soon as that window has passed, ad performance drops” (Consumer Acquisition). In other words, even the strongest-performing ads have a saturation point, marked by a decline in audience response.
Before we continue, a noteworthy caveat: Click-through rate (CTR) is not an accurate indicator of ad effectiveness (Journal of Advertising Research). It’s important to remember that return on investment (ROI) cannot be attributed to a single campaign variable.
Upon analyzing thousands of ad placements, we found signs of fatigue in the form of declining CTR as early as the second ad placement. Although ad fatigue is a certainty, there are two simple ways to stay a step ahead of this downward trend line: introduce an existing audience to new ad creative or target a new audience with existing ad creative (DigitalMarketer). BulletinHealthcare helps its advertising partners execute both strategies.
So, how do we help our advertisers outsmart ad fatigue? First off, we randomly rotate all ad creative by default to prevent our readers from seeing the same ad in the same place, thereby increasing an ad’s longevity and reducing the rate at which an audience becomes desensitized to a singular message.
Sequential marketing is another way to automate creative rotation based on engagement outcomes. For example, automatically rotating a piece of creative once the user is exposed ten times, or after the user clicks. This is an evolving capability at BulletinHealthcare, and we expect it will drive higher engagement outcomes for our clients in the future.
Secondly, we offer professional creative development services on a complimentary basis. This not only ensures that our advertisers are nimble to optimize their campaign based on measurable results, it gives our advertisers the opportunity to rotate a variety of ads and stave off fatigue for longer.
Last, but not least, we offer numerous tactics for targeting additional audiences that are brand relevant. One of our most popular solutions, “Competitor Bytes,” creates a lookalike audience by way of identifying prescribers of competitor brands or drug classes. Although the audience’s attributes are strikingly similar, engagement will rebound anew due to a lack of prior ad exposure. Advertisers may also segment our audiences via geography, specialty, or list match.
Creative fatigue may be a fact of life in advertising, but with a little help from the right partner, it’s possible to get out in front of it. Whether it’s strategically introducing fresh ad content or unlocking new audiences, advertisers can rest assured that BulletinHealthcare will do its part to preserve the strong audience engagement that our platform is known for.
Ready to plan your next campaign? Email advertise@bulletinhealthcare.com.
Data Insights Manager
