"We can feel our creatives are losing steam, but we're not sure what to change anymore."

The reality

Cost per view on YouTube is climbing for no obvious reason. Your Shorts have stopped generating engagement. Across the wider network — Discovery, Gmail — click-through rates are quietly eroding. The budgets are there. Performance Max is running. But something is wrong. You're seeing the same images, the same videos, cycling on repeat. Your team patches things up — a new headline here, a colour tweak there, last year's best performers recycled. Nothing moves. The algorithm has exhausted your audience and can no longer expand beyond it.

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Why it's happening

Unlike Search campaigns, YouTube and Performance Max are visual machines. They don't hunt for keywords. They hunt for attention.

— Creative fatigue hits fast on video: on a YouTube or Shorts feed, attention is measured in milliseconds. Once a user has seen your video two or three times, it becomes invisible to them. The algorithm detects the drop in engagement and stops serving it — to protect the user experience, not yours.

— Format diversity is not optional: these campaigns need every format — square, landscape, vertical — to occupy every available placement. If you only supply static images, you're cutting yourself off from video inventory — In-Stream, Shorts — which is typically the cheapest and most impactful for brand awareness.

— The creative is the targeting: today, the video selects the audience, not the other way round. If you don't change the creative angle, you don't reach a new audience. You stay trapped in the same pool.

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What to do about it

The goal isn't to produce more for the sake of it. It's to structure creative renewal in a way that unlocks new audience pools.

1. Cut what isn't working: go to the Asset Group Detail report. Look at the Performance column. Anything rated "Low" for more than two weeks needs replacing. Dead weight costs money.
2. Test angles, not variations: changing a button colour is no longer enough. Test radically different concepts in separate asset groups.Group A — Inspiration angle: emotional video, drone footage, landscapes.Group B — Reassurance and offer angle: client testimonial, pricing, urgency.Let the algorithm decide which one wins.
3. Prioritise video — Shorts and In-Stream: this is where the attention battle is fought. If you have no video, Google will generate one automatically. It will be mediocre. Take back control. The hook — the first three seconds — is the only thing that truly matters. Test three different openings for the same video.
4. Cover every format: make sure every ratio is covered — square, horizontal, vertical. A missing format is a lost placement.

On these campaigns, creative is no longer about aesthetics. It's the number one performance lever. Stop feeding the machine, and your costs will tell you about it.

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