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Bonus Episode 4

How to Avoid Ad Fatigue

Illustration of Allie Hobbs, Senior Manager, Creative Studio at StackAdapt

About This Episode

July 29, 2022

We sit down with a creative expert to get advice on ad fatigue, how to avoid it, and what creative techniques work best for digital campaigns.

Allie Hobbs | Senior Manager, Creative Studio, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

There are some really simple and effective techniques that can be employed to avoid ad fatigue. One of the best is really A/B testing. So you know, having two ads with just subtle variations between them, and AB testing them to see which one actually performs better. So this could include changes to copy, you know, maybe the call to action is slightly different, or a different colour, you know, you could potentially, depending on what the vertical of the brand is, use lifestyle images versus still live images and seeing if, if any of those sorts of creative approaches are making the difference in terms of engagement with the audience. So, this is such a powerful tool in extracting data-driven decisions on what creative is performing the best, and how to, you know, sort of iterate on those successes on future campaigns as well.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:49)

But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data are hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints that long-term loyalty and then dive into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.

Matt (00:01:15)

Hey, everyone, my name is Matt. I’m the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. And welcome to this bonus episode of The How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Today, the topic of choice is how to avoid ad fatigue. In this episode, we have Allie Hobbs from the StackAdapt creative studio to share her expertise on this topic. As always, this bonus episode will be made up of short, rapid-fire questions. But to kick things off, I’ll pass the torch over to our guests to tell us a little bit about herself and her experience in the industry. Over to you, Allie.

Allie (00:01:45)

Hi, Matt. Thanks for having me. My name is Allie Hobbs. As you mentioned, I’m a Senior Manager with the Creative Studio team at StackAdapt. Our objective within the company is to really elevate creative and drive performance through design and creative tactics. Our very talented team of strategists and production designers are experts in the programmatic field, and are always pushing the boundaries and trying to be at the forefront of innovation. Prior to that, my experience for about 10 years was in photo, video, audio production. So all elements that definitely factor into creating high-quality creative with exceptional production value.

Matt (00:02:24)

Perfect. Thanks so much. So let’s get started with these questions. Number one off the top. We want to know, you know, as somebody who works on the creative side of programmatic advertising, how would you define the term ad fatigue? And why is this something that, you know, poses a potential problem for marketers during their campaigns.

Allie (00:02:45)

Ad fatigue, in my opinion, is something that occurs when there’s an oversaturation of a particular ad. And really, it just becomes white noise to its audience. They see it so frequently that they stopped seeing it at all. You know, you can track this through performance monitoring your campaign, and you’ll really see it as you know, dropping click-through rates and lower performance. And generally, if an ad, you know, is just being used so frequently, on many landing pages, people really do just stop seeing it. So obviously, that’s a problem. In terms of engagement with your audience, you have the opposite of the intended effect, which is to have highly engaging, you know, interactive experiences with your audience. So overusing the ad design and running it too frequently really results in them, you know your audience ceasing to see it and ceasing to engage with it.

Matt (00:03:37)

And I guess there’s also something to be said about wasted media spend, right? If you’re just throwing a ton of ads out that aren’t resonating, then that’s also a big problem for marketers, if you have ads that just aren’t aren’t getting that intended effect, as he said.

Allie (00:03:52)

Yeah, 100% and banner blindness is obviously something that is top of mind for any marketer who’s in the programmatic space. Not only is there a risk of it, sort of blending in with everybody else’s, and becoming a wallpaper that nobody sees, you know, the pattern on. But yeah, truly, you know, budgets are tight, you want to maximize your investment and like I say overusing something is really detrimental to the return on your investment for your advertising dollars.

Matt (00:04:19)

Of course, and you just sparked something in this might be a little bit of a curveball, but with ad fatigue, banner blindness, all these things that can negatively affect those creatives. Do you think there’s any kind of effect on the brand? And I guess the quality of the brand if you’re just seeing the same ads all the time?

Allie (00:04:38)

Yeah, I think truly the key to success in any creative is that it’s sort of outside of the box and elevated, you know, so a brand that just starts to become sort of background noise on any landing page. You know, obviously that doesn’t tell the story of an elevated for, you know, on the forefront of creativity, you know, pushing boundaries, and consumers generally are looking for trendsetters, not trend followers. So, you know, I think that would all yeah lead to that to that brand, not necessarily being viewed as, you know, a disruptor in their industry or an innovator in their industry. And I think these days, and clearly programmatic is such a technical form of advertising, brands who are leveraging that really need to be mindful of, of sort of the overall impact of their advertising and their design choices, in terms of how it is going to sort of be on brand with them.

Matt (00:05:37)

And now that we’ve defined ad fatigue, we’ve talked a little bit about it, from your perspective, what are some of those best practices that advertisers can use to avoid ad fatigue, you know, thinking on the topic of high level, creative strategy, messaging, etc, what are some things that you can offer to our advertisers that are listening to this, that they might want to test out to avoid that, that inevitable banner blindness or ad fatigue?

Allie (00:06:07)

Yeah, there are some really simple and effective techniques that can be employed to avoid ad fatigue. One, one of the best is really AB testing. So you know, having two ads with just subtle variations between them, and AB testing them to see which one actually performs better. So this could include changes to copy, you know, maybe the call to action is slightly different, or a different colour, you know, you could potentially, depending on what the vertical of the brand is, use lifestyle images versus still life images and seeing if I any of those sorts of creative approaches are making the difference in terms of engagement with the audience. So this, this is such a powerful tool and extracting data driven decisions on what creative is performing the best, and how to, you know, sort of iterate on those successes on future campaigns as well. Another simple, simple way to avoid fatigue is to monitor your campaign closely. And if it’s underperforming, you could change the ad format. So you could explore which units perform best in your vertical, or by your campaign goal, you know, whether it’s an awareness campaign or a conversion campaign, that can also really contribute to the continuous improvement of your marketing goals. And it’s a really useful tool for agencies in particular, because they typically work with multiple clients across a variety of industries. So just changing up that ad format, you know, it’s in, it’s very quick and very tangible to see, you know, if one is a better fit for the goal of the campaign. And then a third very simple approach that could be taken is to just change a copy, change your colours, change your call to action, you know, use just really like snappy, concise phrasing, colours that pop and align with the brand being advertised just subtle changes there can really, you know, just change that sort of white noise approach. And, and you just sort of just mix it up a little bit, whether it’s the messaging or the visuals, you know, just simple changes, can really make a huge difference in audiences. Realizing it’s a different ad, it’s not the same thing that they’ve seen over and over again.

Matt (00:08:13)

And that’s a really good transition into the next question that we had. So for any listeners who have been tuned in for quite some time, in season two of our podcast, we did an episode on driving the first click with your creatives. So, Allie, I’m wondering, are there any additional tips around that notion of driving the first click whether it’s, you know, making your ads visually engaging, or having messaging that’s going to resonate with your audience? Is there any additional tips that you can offer? For advertisers that are looking to just, you know, start that process of getting potential customers into the funnel sooner and get them to at least click through and start engaging with your content and your brand?

Allie (00:09:03)

Yeah, I mean, coming from a creative background, my tip is, you know, and I feel very strongly about this is elevated creative, is the best secret weapon in driving first clicks. You know, we’ve talked about banner blindness, we’ve talked about AD fatigue, really, you know, having creative that is next level and just jumps off the screen, you know, whether it’s mobile or web, it just really, really makes your ad stand out from from the crowd. So play design approaches that stand out, you know, very clear messaging are. And I think it’s important that it be effective in all sizes, because, you know, you can have extreme pan skyscraper ads, you know, the formats can be quite extreme sort of aspect ratios. So also being very mindful that the designs work in the space that’s available, so that people can actually read and digest the information that’s being shared in a beautiful package. And then, you know, in choice of ad units, interactive ad units, there are so many of them now out, they’re such an excellent, excellent way to drive engagement, they sort of gamify the experience, you can include things like polls to sort of, you know, get insights from your audience and segmented, you know, units that have hotspots where you can sort of mouse over and have additional information about a product, sort of pop up carousels, where you’re clicking through different pains, you know, all of this really lends itself to getting good results and having your audience you know, like I say, actually engaged with that ad. And then in terms of, you know, sort of production value bells and whistles that you could put on ad design. Animation is a great tool, using video, anything with motion, sound, you know, those creative elements really make it a full sensory experience and capture the attention of your audience and really take your creative to the next level.

Matt (00:10:47)

Amazing. So this brings us to the final question that we have. And for the episode, we were chatting a little bit and you said you had a couple of things you wanted to talk about here. But let’s let’s look at some emerging trends. So what are emerging trends in creative advertising, that marketers should be paying attention to whether it’s, you know, this next quarter or this next year or long beyond that? What’s what’s happening in the industry that people need to be thinking about, as it informs their creative strategy?

Allie (00:11:19)

Sure. Well, in general terms, I think outside-of-the-box creative is absolutely essential, you know, being innovative in terms of ad units, you know, the functionality of them sort of dynamic ads, where you can actually populate information, like weather targeting, for example, it’s really become very sophisticated the capabilities that exist within programmatic. So really, the creative options are endless in terms of how to leverage that sort of technology. More generally, in terms of types of media, connected TV, continues to be a huge growth area. And I think, again, this is taking us off of devices and laptops and into, you know, big television screens where you know, 400, or sorry, 4,000k, High Definition, video is something that can be leveraged. Now, there’s a lot of live events, you know, in terms of inventory, where ads can be shown, you know, you think of the Superbowl, for example, to think that perhaps a connected TV ad could be the next award-winning spot, versus something on cable television, which historically has been, you know, all eyes are on Superbowl ads, right. So there’s opportunity within, you know, programmatic now to actually be playing in that sandbox. And, of course, you know, I think a lot of people today are using streaming services versus, like cable television. So that opens up just a whole other world of audiences, you know, families watching TV together, you know, every demographic imaginable are, are really, you know, streaming has sort of taken over as the go-to way to digest, you know, entertainment, so a huge opportunity there on a creative level. And something that is newer, and I imagine it’s going to be growing exponentially is mobile gaming advertising. So, again, I think best practices are currently being developed in that segment, and I think we’re going to see a lot of really innovative, you know, sort of animations, you know, CGI, 3D, all of these things, I think, are just going to continue to grow and mobile gaming to me is such a place for technical innovation in terms of, you know, visuals. I think it’s gonna be really interesting to watch where that goes.

Matt (00:13:42)

Absolutely. Well, Allie, thank you so much for joining us on this bonus episode. And to our listeners, we hope you took a lot away, and we look forward to sharing more helpful tips and tricks in future episodes of The How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.

Episode Outro (00:13:59)

Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you’re listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback, we’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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