When Should You Refresh Your Display Ad Content?

| 2060 Digital

You’ve invested a lot of time into your display ad campaigns, but how much time and money have you spent refreshing your ad copy? With ever-evolving technology, online advertising is aggressively growing, yet consumers are oftentimes overwhelmed by the abundance and repetition of the ads they see. And when the same old ad runs too often (especially if you’re running a retargeting campaign) consumers simply stop responding. This is called ad fatigue. Ad fatigue takes place when an ad that historically performed well stops delivering its value. There’s a significant decrease in clicks and you start to wonder if the money you’ve invested was wasted. Why does this occur?

There are two reasons ad fatigue occurs with your display ad content:

  1. We’re a desensitized culture, and if you have the same ads running for months now, chances are consumers have grown accustomed to seeing the same ol’ language and are ignoring your message.

  2. Your competitors start to pile on and recycle your messaging, leaving little uniqueness.

When ad fatigue sets in, the click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score drop — increasingly making ad fatigue a problem online marketers need to address.

So, when should you refresh your display ad content?

Here are six times to change your display ad content, especially if you’re seeing ad fatigue:

  1. Seasonal Changes – Summer just arrived, but you may be seeing old ads talking about Spring events or promotions. If someone were to look at this ad today, they’d quickly dismiss your message because in their mind, they’ve already missed the promotion. Always make sure you’re staying on top of swapping out seasonally-geared ads to avoid a drop in your numbers.

  2. Product Changes – Do talk about your new product, but don’t talk about it as a new product long after it’s actually new. Even if consumers aren’t intentionally reading your ads, they’ll remember that they saw something before, and you’re going to look pretty dated if you keep calling an older product new.

  3. Evolving Consumer Needs – Our world is changing at a very rapid pace, which means the needs of consumers are ever-evolving. Your product is a timeless need, but are you marketing it in a way that shows you’re delivering said need when AND how the customer needs it currently?

  4. Upcoming Event – Campaigns with businesses that run several events can be tricky. Oftentimes, all the details for a display campaign for an event aren’t concrete until the very last minute. You throw together creative, get your campaign launched, and then forget about it while you’re preparing offline for the event. You get great traffic building up to the event date, the event comes and goes, but your June display ad is still targeting consumers for a May date. OOPS. Either set a reminder to change out creative with a later event, pause the campaign until you have a new event, or change the direction of the campaign.

  5. Data Triggers – Ever seen an ad for ice cream on a very cold day? Not very appealing, right? If you have a business whose success can rely heavily on weather conditions, data triggering may be right for you. Data triggers send ads you’ve designed to go out when there’s been a change in the weather. For example, a Tumi store in an airport may decide to switch up their display ads on a rainy day to target people who are traveling that may not have an umbrella.

  6. A New Month – This one is really simple. If your ad has been running for 30 days, more than likely, you’re going to start seeing a slight dip in traffic. Even switching up something as simple as your copy, a product image, or even a background color can have a major impact on next month’s numbers.

So, if you’re going to be successful in the digital ad display marketplace, you’re going to have to be very strategic and vigilant of changing creative when it’s needed.

Do you have what it takes to run a successful display campaign? We do! Contact us today to learn more about how we can turn your display ad content into an on-going, lucrative marketing channel.