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How often should a mobile game studio refresh its ad creatives to avoid creative fatigue?
Add new creative weekly and replace an ad only when two fatigue signals move together. What AppLovin, Unity, Meta, TikTok and Google publish on refresh.
TL;DR. Refresh on two clocks: add new creative every week, and replace a specific ad only when two or more fatigue signals show up together (installs falling while impressions hold, cost per install or cost per result rising with no targeting change, frequency climbing on a stable audience). The weekly floor is our rule of thumb, in line with GameAnalytics, which describes one or two new variants a week as a cadence most mobile UA teams find sustainable. None of the networks we checked publishes a "retire every N days" rule; what they publish is guidance to keep adding new creative, and on AppLovin, not to pause the old ones.
A note on who is writing: Flixr is a performance marketing agency that makes creative for apps, games and commercial brands, so we have a view. Every network claim below is quoted from the network's own documentation or a named practitioner, and listed in the sources.
What the networks actually publish
Read the help centres side by side and a pattern appears. The networks tell you to add creative continuously. They do not tell you to kill creative on a timer.
| Network | What it publishes on refresh | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| AppLovin | "Upload and test new creative assets frequently." Its video guidance for web advertisers adds: "You do not need to pause creatives." | Spend share per creative; cost per conversion at steady spend |
| Unity | For existing games, while ramping a campaign: "Add new creatives every 3 days to gradually reach 30-creatives." Keep top performers and modify them | "As ads repeatedly appear before users, their engagement rates decline." |
| Meta | Ads Manager can show "Creative Fatigue" or "Creative Limited" in the Delivery column (as described by Jon Loomer) | Cost per result against your own past ads |
| TikTok | Smart Creative pauses "initial videos that show signs of fatigue within the first 3-5 days" and rotates in new ones | Whether automated refresh is on, and what it has paused |
| Google (App campaigns) | Replace assets ranked "Low", gradually | The Low, Good and Best asset rankings, which are relative to other assets of the same type in the same campaign |
Two details matter. On Meta, Jon Loomer describes "Creative Fatigue" as cost per result "at least twice as high as it's been in the past" and "Creative Limited" as higher but "less than double". By the time either label shows, you have already paid for the decline, so treat it as a confirmation, not an early warning. On AppLovin, the support centre says that "AppLovin's optimizer automatically reduces spend on creatives that don't perform" and that manually pausing "may affect the creative's opportunity to select the best ad for each impression." The refresh there is additive.
How long a mobile game creative lasts
GameAnalytics gives "a rough working baseline in 2026": hyper-casual creatives 2 to 6 weeks, hybrid-casual 4 to 10 weeks, midcore and casual titles 6 to 12 weeks, with playables "often longer than video". It adds straight away: "These are averages. Some creatives run productively for six months. Some burn out in two weeks."
Loomer goes further on Meta: "A common myth is that all ads fatigue, and that they need to be 'refreshed' on a regular cadence." He argues that with open targeting, all placements and enough variations, "you could reasonably run the same set of ads for months or more at a time without it becoming an issue."
Our read: those two positions fit together. Lifespan depends on how many people the ad can still reach and how many versions of it exist. That is why the answer is a supply rhythm plus tripwires, not a kill date.
How to set a creative refresh cadence for a mobile game
- Set a weekly supply floor. Ship new variants into the campaigns that are spending every week, whether or not anything has fatigued. GameAnalytics suggests "one or two new creative variants shipped to your top campaigns" weekly; AppLovin's video guidance for web advertisers asks for "as many 9×16 portrait videos as possible, on a regular basis", and our piece on how many creatives AppLovin needs covers what that means in practice.
- Write your tripwires down per network. Use the GameAnalytics list: "Impressions are steady, but installs are falling", "CPI is climbing without a targeting change", "Frequency is rising for a stable audience", engagement dropping, one network's ROAS diverging, and post-install behaviour drifting. Add Meta's Delivery labels and Google's "Low" rankings.
- Require two signals, not one. GameAnalytics: "Any one of these signals on its own can be noise. Two or more happening at once usually mean it's time to refresh." A single bad day is not fatigue.
- Rule out causes that are not the creative. RocketShip HQ's advice for AppLovin is to "investigate a winner when cost per conversion drifts up at steady spend" and to "refresh when the creative is the cause; also check changes in traffic, auction conditions and the conversion funnel." A new competitor, a store page change or a seasonal shift can look exactly like fatigue.
- Add, do not prune, on AppLovin and Unity. Let the optimiser move spend away from tired ads. Unity's guidance is explicit that refreshing "doesn't mean removing top performing creatives to make space for new ones."
- Iterate the winner before you replace the concept. Unity suggests "incremental adjustments like the duration, color scheme, theme, or even swapping in new characters or scenarios." New hooks and alternate CTAs on a proven concept are cheap, and most of that work happens in the edit.
- Schedule a bigger concept push monthly, and time it to the calendar. GameAnalytics recommends a monthly push of "new concepts, new formats, new angles" and says seasonal creative should be live "at least two weeks before the moment, not after it."
- On Google, swap gradually. Google's App campaign guidance: once you reach the asset limit, "replace assets ranked as 'Low'. Do so gradually to minimize performance fluctuations."
Where the cadence breaks
Our read: the cadence fails in production, not in analysis. A team that can only ship a new batch every six weeks will always be refreshing late, whatever its dashboards say. GameAnalytics makes the same point for smaller studios: if a weekly rhythm is out of reach, the monthly and quarterly ones "still work", and "the important thing is that refresh is scheduled, not accidental." Running the brief, make, launch, read and log loop every week is what we do at Flixr; the stages behind it are in creative operations, defined.
Questions people ask
How often should I refresh ad creatives on TikTok? TikTok's own help centre does not publish a fixed interval that we could verify. Its Smart Creative feature observes initial videos for 3 to 5 days and pauses those that show signs of fatigue in that window, replacing them from a waiting list. Our view: keep the weekly supply floor there too, so the waiting list is never empty.
Should I pause fatigued creatives on AppLovin? AppLovin's video guidance (written for web advertisers) says no: "You do not need to pause creatives," because the optimiser reduces spend on weak ones by itself. Add new creative sets instead and let spend move.
What frequency means creative fatigue on Meta? The labels are not defined by a frequency number. As Jon Loomer describes them, they are tied to cost per result against your past ads, and he notes Meta does not clarify how that drop is tied to seeing the ad too many times. Watch cost per result first and use frequency as supporting evidence.
How long does a mobile game ad creative last? GameAnalytics' 2026 baseline is 2 to 6 weeks for hyper-casual, 4 to 10 weeks for hybrid-casual and 6 to 12 weeks for midcore and casual, with playables often lasting longer. It stresses these are averages, and some creatives run for six months.
Is it creative fatigue or something else? Check whether two or more fatigue signals moved together with no change to targeting, budget, store page or season. If something else changed, fix or rule that out before you replace the ad.
Sources: AppLovin Support, "Video best practices"; AppLovin Support, "Scale your campaign"; Unity, "How to prevent creative fatigue in your ad campaigns", 4 Mar 2025; TikTok Business Help Center, "About Smart Creative"; Google Ads Help, "Make better creative assets for App campaigns"; Google Ads Help, "About asset reporting for App campaigns"; Jon Loomer, "Creative Fatigue: What It Is and How to Prevent It", 15 Sep 2025; GameAnalytics, "Keep your ads seasonal: how to time creative refresh cycles", updated 4 Sep 2026; RocketShip HQ, "How to test ad creatives on AppLovin".