What the checker calculates
Frequency = impressions ÷ reach
CTR (link) = link clicks ÷ impressions
Cost per result = spend ÷ results
It compares the first and last weeks (or the first and second halves of a longer series) and looks for the fatigue pattern: frequency up, CTR down and cost per result up together.
How the verdict is decided
- Likely fatigue: frequency has risen and CTR has fallen by 20% or more, and cost per result has risen by 20% or more.
- Early signs: two of the three are moving the wrong way.
- No clear fatigue: performance is stable or improving despite frequency.
These thresholds are practical rules of thumb, not Meta guidance. Weekly numbers on small budgets are noisy, so look at the direction over several weeks rather than one bad week.
What frequency is “too high”?
It depends on the audience and the job of the ad. Broad prospecting campaigns often start to tire somewhere around a weekly frequency of 2–4. Retargeting a small, warm audience can tolerate more, because those people are already interested, but it also fatigues faster because the pool is small. Rather than a fixed number, watch for the point where more frequency stops producing results.
Fixing fatigue
- Introduce new creative concepts, not just new colours. Different hooks, formats and angles reset attention.
- Keep a pipeline: plan new ads before the current ones tire. The Creative Testing Budget Planner helps size tests.
- Broaden the audience, or let Advantage+ audience find new people.
- For retargeting, shorten the frequency or exclude people who already converted. The Retargeting Audience Size Estimator shows how small a warm pool can be.
Read more in Meta ad fatigue: how to spot it and when to refresh creative.