Decay Force #1: Novelty Wears Off

The first driver of decay is inside your users' heads. Customers respond to novelty, and novelty inevitably fades. The first banner ad was fascinating. The ten-thousandth was invisible.

Users don't just get bored, they train themselves to filter. Banner blindness is the documented pattern of users learning to ignore the screen regions where ads live, without conscious effort. The same adaptation hits every format: popups, interstitials, promoted posts, cold email subject lines.

Rotating creative buys back a slice of performance, which is why ad teams constantly refresh assets. But each refresh recovers less, because users are habituating to the format, not just the specific ad. You can fight the slope with novelty, but you can't repeal it.