Meta Ads Creative Fatigue: Spotting Decay Before it Hurts

You launch an ad. Day 1: ROAS 4.0. Day 7: ROAS 3.5. Day 30: ROAS 1.2. What happened? The audience didn't change. The product didn't change. The Creative Fatigued. Everyone in your target audience has seen it, and they are sick of it. If you don't spot it early, you burn budget on a zombie ad.

The 3 Stages of Decay

1. The CTR Slide

This is the first warning sign.

• Metric: Click-Through Rate (Link Click).
• Signal: CTR drops by 20% week-over-week.
• Meaning: People are still seeing the ad, but they stop caring.

2. The CPM Spike

This is the penalty.

• Metric: CPM (Cost Per Mille).
• Signal: CPM rises by 30%.
• Meaning: Facebook's algorithm notices the low CTR. It marks your ad as "Low Quality" (Relevance Diagnostics) and charges you more to show it.

3. The CPA Death

This is the result.

• Metric: Cost Per Acquisition.
• Signal: CPA exceeds your target.
• Meaning: The ad is now unprofitable.

The Vanity Metric: Frequency

"My Frequency is 2.0. Is that bad?" Maybe.

• Retargeting Frequency: Can be high (5-10) because people need reminders.
• Prospecting Frequency: Should be low (1-2). If your Prospecting Frequency hits 2.5, you have likely saturated that audience.

The Advanced Metric: First Time Impression Ratio (FTIR)

This is a hidden metric you must calculate (or find in custom reports). FTIR = (Impressions from New People) / (Total Impressions) If your FTIR is under 50% in a Prospecting campaign, you are just showing ads to the same people over and over. Action: Launch new creative to "refresh" the audience pool.

How to Fight Fatigue

1. Iterate, Don't Reinvent: If a "User Generated Content" video worked, don't switch to a Static Image. Make a new UGC video with a different hook.
2. Dynamic Creative (DCO): Give Facebook 5 headlines and 5 images. It will mix and match them to keep the ad feeling fresh.
3. The "Pause and Pulse" Method: Pause the winning ad for 7 days. Let the audience "forget" it. Turn it back on. Ideally, you have a rotation of 3 winners.

Summary

Ad Fatigue is the silent killer of scale. Do not fall in love with your creative. Treat it like a carton of milk. It has an expiration date. Monitor your CTR. When it dips, pour the milk down the sink and buy a new carton.