u/GrowthHackerPath

Before it felt like a strong creative could run for quite a while before performance started dropping. Now it seems like even good creatives lose their effectiveness much faster.

Do you think audiences have simply gotten better at recognizing marketing patterns? Or are brands converging on the same styles, formats, and creative approaches, making ads easier to tune out?

Would love to hear what marketers, media buyers, and creative teams are seeing.

A few years ago it felt like you could find a winning creative and get decent mileage out of it.

Now it feels like even good ads start dropping off way sooner than expected.

Not talking about frequency being through the roof either. I've seen creatives get strong engagement early on, then lose momentum surprisingly fast.

Do you think people are just better at recognizing ad patterns now?

Or are we all accidentally making our creatives too similar?

A few years ago it felt like you could find a winning creative and ride it for a while. Now it feels like even good ads get stale ridiculously fast.

I'm not talking about frequency issues either. I mean creatives that get strong engagement early on, then seem to lose their punch much quicker than expected.

Do you think audiences have just gotten better at recognizing ad patterns? or are brands accidentally making everything look too similar these days?

Genuine question.

I've sat in rooms where people spent hours debating a headline, a transition, a color treatment, or a single line of VO. Then when the edit is basically finished, someone opens a stock music library and says, "just find something that fits. It feels backwards.

Some of the most memorable campaigns I can think of had music baked into the idea from the beginning. The track wasn't decoration. It shaped the pacing, tone, and emotional identity of the work.

Has the shift toward faster timelines and constant content production made this inevitable, or are there still agencies/creative teams treating music as a core creative decision?

I was looking back at some classic agency reels from the 90s and 2000s, and the music supervision was practically a main character in the campaign. It established the entire emotional identity of the brand before a single line of copy was even spoken.

Lately, it feels like music has been relegated to a final-hour afterthought. We spend weeks arguing over a single line of copy or a specific color grade in the edit, only to slap a soul-less, temp-track-sounding stock loop underneath it right before shipping the final cut to the client.

Even with quick-turn social, UGC, and digital video, the right track from a real, emerging indie artist changes how the visual pacing feels entirely.

Are your creative teams still actively fighting for real music partnerships and proper curation during ideation, or has the timeline crunch forced everyone to just accept whatever generic filler track is sitting on the stock libraries?

Currently mapping out our Q3 creative testing sprint for a lifestyle brand and wanted to see if anyone else has run into this lately on Meta/TikTok.

Usually, when an ad fatigues or CPA spikes, the default move is to chop up the first 3 seconds, swap the hook, or change the text overlays. But over the last month, we’ve been testing keeping the exact same visual asset and just swapping the background track from standard corporate stock loops to high-energy, trending-style indie music tracks.

Surprisingly, the CTR bounced right back on a couple of concepts without changing a single frame of video.

Are you guys treating audio as a primary variable in your creative testing matrix right now, or are you still putting 90% of your focus on the visual hook? Curious to hear how much weight people are actually giving to audio track variations in their ad accounts right now.

Working on a project that sources real music from independent artists for paid social ads, specifically to help brands stop using those terrible, robotic corporate stock music loops.

We are trying to put together a quick case study this month to track the performance lift (CTR and CPA) when a brand swaps out fatigued background music on an existing video asset.

Because we just need the data, I want to give away a few $150 library credits to 20 active e-commerce or DTC brands to use completely free for your next creative testing sprint. No catch, no pitch, we just want to look at the before/after data with you.

If you are actively spending on Meta/TikTok and run a lot of video creative (UGC, product demos, styling videos), drop a comment with what your niche is and I'll send over a code until they're gone.

We talk a lot about testing new hooks, rewriting copy, and changing the first 3 seconds of a video when CTR drops and CPMs spike. But lately, I’ve been looking into audio fatigue, and it feels like a massive, overlooked lever.

On a couple of accounts managing e-comm/DTC video ads, we had some heavy-winning creatives hit a wall last month. Instead of scrapping them or ordering completely new video shoots, we decided to run an isolated test:

• Kept the exact same footage and visual hooks.
• Completely swapped out the background music.

We ditched the typical robotic, corporate electronic loops we’d been using and tested some real, authentic-sounding indie tracks.

The result? The exact same visual assets saw a 15-20% bump in CTR, and the CPAs dropped back into profitable territory. It felt like the audio swap completely shifted the pacing and somehow served the ad to a completely fresh pocket of the audience that had tuned out the old version.

Are you guys systematically treating audio as a variable in your creative testing matrices, or is it usually just an afterthought when the video is edited? Curious to hear how others manage sound design at scale.

I’m doing some quick research on creative bottlenecks for small businesses and lean marketing teams running video ads (Meta, TikTok, etc.).

When you or your video editors are putting together video content, what’s your biggest headache with the music?

• Is it the time it takes to find something that doesn't sound like generic corporate elevator music?
• Is it dealing with copyright claims and licensing restrictions on paid ads?
• Or do you just use the platform's trending audio and hope for the best?

Just curious how other teams are navigating this right now. Thanks!