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Still ads are outperforming video in my retargeting campaigns—anyone else seeing this?
Posted by on October 9, 2025 at 11:00 amGenuine question for the community:
I've been running A/B tests across multiple retargeting campaigns (e-commerce and B2B SaaS), and static creatives are consistently outperforming video ads.
Video CTR decays after 3-4 impressions. Still ads maintain CTR through 10+ impressions. CPMs are 30-40% lower for static. Ad recall is higher with still ads
Why I think this is happening: Video requires cognitive processing. Static ads are easier to process quickly, so they don't trigger the same fatigue response.
Also, video production costs are 3-5x higher, so the ROI math favors static even when performance is equal.
Question: Is anyone else experiencing this? Or am I just hitting a weird anomaly in my verticals?
Would love to hear what's working for others.
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1 Reply
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I think the stills for me is that you can generate so many with little effort. Even with all the AI tools, making video ads that are brand relevant takes time!
And then there is always that hit rate for ads.
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Tried this for my own personal lead gen and static has gotten me leads many times. Video not so well even when testing many hooks
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Static holds frequency better because Meta recycles thumbnails and refreshes faster keep video only for top of funnel awareness and rely on stills for retargeting to preserve CTR and lower CPM.
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advertisers are seeing static ads outperform video in retargeting. Stills are easier to process, cheaper to serve, and maintain CTR over higher frequencies. Video works better top-of-funnel, but in remarketing, static usually wins on ROI and fatigue resistance.
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