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The Facebook Ad Fatigue “Formula” (11)

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This formula can help you in deciding whether you should keep running a certain ad on Facebook, or if you should replace it.

Ad fatigue is simply when your targeted audience see your ad so much that they get tired of it. It’s a general problem on Facebook and with small audiences in particular.

Let’s look at an example:

In the Facebook ad shown below, we have an audience of 210,000 with a reach of 39,099 and a frequency of 2.06.

This means that 39,099 people saw our ad on average 2.06 times.



To calculate Facebook Ad Fatigue, it’s simply:

(Reach x Frequency) / Audience Size = Facebook Ad Fatigue (FAF)

(39,099 x 2.06) / 210,000 = 0.38

Rule of thumb:

If FAF is 0.5< = ad fatigue might kick in

But, even if your FAF is above 0.5 and your CTR is still healthy, your audience probably hasn’t grown weary of your ads yet. So keep running it …

In my case, I do have a FAF at 0.38 and a good CTR (for this offer). So I keep running it.

CONCLUSION:

Don’t change your ads because of fear of ad fatigue or a high FAF. Change your ads only if you see your conversions / CTR dropping and your ad costs increasing. If your CTR starts going south, your conversions will likely do the same, so FAF should help you nailing the timing better.

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Very interesting. Is this your own formula you came up with through empirical experience or is this official FB material?

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Perry Marshall used a similar formula which we modified completely.
He's original formula is: audience size / reach x frequency
It doesn't make sense to me. neither intellectually nor intuitively.

I believe this modified formula above makes "sense" + helps to timing better

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Reach x frequency == impressions, so really this is just (impressions / audience size).

If this >0.5 that means you've had 50% as many impressions as you have people to deliver impressions to.

I guess the observational 'rule of thumb' here is that around this mark you will often start hitting 3rd, 4th, 5th exposure to many users, but this really depends on the demo. In some demos 20% of the users will make up 80% of the impressions, especially where repetitive daily logins are less common. If you are targeting 13-17 F who like Bieber then chances are you can hit 90% exposure before you even see frequency get above 1.01.

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why not just calculating ROI
My goal is money only.

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Hmm, this is about when to switch new ads
So it's tactical rather than strategic (ROI)

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I suspect you mean the opposite :

FAF > 0.5 and ad fatigue might kick in

Isn't it ?

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By switching ads do you mean duplicating it or remaking the add with a different target (ex from PPE to Converions or CW) or just going with a different interest?

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In your thinking YES

Arithmetically, the sign > should be on the left, but it should be still 100% clear

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switching copy/ad creatives

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I don't think this formula is accurate.

The FAF should be a relation between Frequency and your CTR. Naturally, if Frequency goes up, CTR should goes down by a factor of N. N should be different for every vertical vs audience combination.

So first think you'll need to do is figure out N and then figure out what's an acceptable CTR.

The easiest way is to just let FB figure this out for you.

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