Advanced Ch. 6: Audience Fatigue & Scaling Bottlenecks — Breaking the Loop

1. The Law of Diminishing Returns

There is no “infinite traffic.” In any specific moment, the number of people ready to buy your product is finite.

• Early Phase: System finds the “Low Hanging Fruit.”
• Scaling Phase: System reaches those who are hesitant or busy.
• Saturation Phase: You are annoying the same people over and over.

2. Spotting the Signals

1. Frequency Spike: Seeing the same ad 3+ times in 7 days.
2. CTR Drop: “Banner Blindness.” Users subconsciously filter you out.
3. CPM Rise: As engagement drops, your Relevance Score falls. To win the auction, you must pay a premium.

3. Brand in Action: Casper’s “Scaling Wall”

Background: Mattress brand Casper grew fast via social ads. The Wall: They hit a ceiling where they had exhausted the “early adopters.” To reach more people, they had to pay a premium to convince traditional buyers who preferred physical stores. Result: Their digital ROI collapsed. The Break: They realized digital ads alone couldn’t scale the business further—they had to open hundreds of physical stores.

Lesson: Digital channels have natural ceilings. When CAC exceeds LTV, the bottleneck isn’t your ad bid—it’s your business model.

Next Chapter: Advanced Ch. 7: Creative as Engineering. Building a creative factory.