We pulled together the frequency, CTR, and hook-rate thresholds now scattered across a dozen platform reports and agency studies, and lined them up against one timeline. The pattern is consistent even when the source isn't: most creative is dead within three weeks.
None of these are new data — they're published across a fragmented set of platform docs and agency blogs. What's new is seeing them on one page.
Meta's Andromeda ranking generation weighs creative-level signals more heavily than its predecessor, which compresses the fatigue window on Reels specifically. TikTok and YouTube tolerate slightly different frequency ceilings, but the direction is identical everywhere: novelty decays fast, and short-form vertical video decays fastest.
| Platform | Median video CTR | Median hook rate | Frequency ceiling (prospecting) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Reels | 1.78% | 28% | 2.5 |
| Meta (feed avg.) | 1.62% | 28% | 2.5 |
| TikTok | 0.84% | 33% | ~3.0 |
| YouTube in-stream | 0.42% | 22% | 3–7 / wk (recall floor–ceiling) |
Composite of platform benchmark studies covering 12,000+ ads; see sources.
Food & beverage and fashion sit at the fast end — high purchase frequency and high visual saturation compress the decay window. Considered-purchase categories (finance, B2B SaaS) tend to tolerate longer runs, mostly because their audiences see the ad less often per capita.
Days to a 40% CTR decline from peak. Ranges synthesized from vertical benchmark reporting; see sources.
Every study above points at the same operational conclusion: the number of unique creative concepts a team can ship per month predicts campaign longevity better than the quality of any single ad.
Brands producing 15–50 new variants monthly extend campaign life three to five times longer than brands refreshing on a quarterly cycle. That gap isn't a creative-talent gap — it's a production-capacity gap. Each additional variation has traditionally required a new script, a new edit, a new voiceover, and a new export per platform, which is why most teams under-produce relative to what the decay curve actually demands.
This is a synthesis, not a primary study: Genyad Labs aggregated publicly reported benchmarks, platform documentation, and agency research on ad fatigue and creative decay published between January and August 2026, normalized to a common day-since-launch timeline, and cross-checked figures that appeared across multiple independent sources. Where sources disagreed, we report the range rather than picking a single number.
Have a dataset that confirms, refines, or contradicts these ranges? We'll update this report and credit the source — reach us via the contact link in the footer.
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