diffusr Creative fatigue is getting worse. Here’s what the brands beating it do.
Your best ad is dying faster than it used to. The brands that keep their costs down have stopped trying to make one great ad.
Every brand we talk to has the same complaint. The ad that worked last month stopped working, and the replacement took three weeks to make.
That’s creative fatigue. The same people see the same ad until they stop reacting to it, and your costs creep up.
Why it’s getting worse
The ad platforms now do most of the targeting for you. Which means the creative is the targeting. The platform needs a lot of different ads to find a lot of different people, and one hero video a month doesn’t give it enough to work with.
Production hasn’t kept up. A shoot, an editor, a round of feedback. By the time the new ad is live, it’s already late.
What the brands beating it do
- They ship volume. LifeMD launched 250 creatives in 30 days. Shopee launched 1,500.
- They pick formats that last. In our ad library, podcast clips keep running a median of about 46 days. UGC to camera, about 24. Start from the ones with long legs.
- They refresh the surface, not the structure. New person, new place, new hook. Same format underneath.
That last one is the important one. Fatigue hits what people see. It doesn’t hit the structure that made the ad work. So keep the structure and change everything around it.
The results show it. LifeMD -> 12x cheaper winning ads. Shopee -> nearly 5x cheaper.
Stop making one great ad. Make a hundred good versions of one that already works.
Sharan MansukhaniCo-founder, diffusrStart from an ad that already works
Find what’s selling in your category, then make your version in one shot.
Keep reading
Remix ads that already work, and watch your CPA drop
The cheapest way to a lower CPA isn’t a new idea. It’s a winning ad with the parts swapped out.
How we got Shopee’s cost per winner from $470 to $97
1,500 creatives in 30 days, two formats nobody on the account had tried, and the way we find formats like them.