10/28/2025
At FanIQ, we know firsthand that scaling ad spend doesn’t always scale performance. The latest Taboola + Qualtrics survey confirms what many of us in the performance space have been feeling: paid social is hitting a wall.
A staggering 75% of marketers reported diminishing returns on their social ad budgets. That means every additional dollar is buying less engagement, fewer conversions, and weaker ROAS. It’s not just end-of-budget fatigue — nearly 80% say performance drops well before their spend caps out, sometimes halfway through their campaigns.
For FanIQ’s performance-driven clients, this reinforces a critical truth: scaling ad spend ≠ scaling results. The first $10K might deliver stellar conversion numbers, but each subsequent $10K yields less — a clear sign that efficiency is eroding as audiences get oversaturated.
The Taboola survey, conducted with Qualtrics, included 307 U.S.-based performance marketers spanning brands and agencies of all sizes. Every respondent actively runs paid campaigns on social platforms, making this one of the most relevant snapshots of current performance marketing realities.
According to the data, audience saturation (66%) and user fatigue (59%) are the biggest culprits. People are simply tired of seeing the same creatives and messaging. Layer in ad fatigue (49%), rising CPMs, and the ripple effects of privacy changes (36%), and even the most optimized social campaigns struggle to keep momentum.
This aligns with what we often see in live events and ticketing: the more we target the same fans with similar offers, the faster the excitement — and performance — drops off.
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The best marketers aren’t retreating from social — they’re expanding strategically. Over 50% of respondents are already branching out into additional digital channels beyond traditional social platforms.
They’re testing:
New social platforms (55%) like TikTok and Threads.
New ad formats (70%) to break creative fatigue.
Budget shifts (47%) between campaigns to maintain performance balance.
Refined audience strategies (67%) that prioritize relevance over reach.
For FanIQ, this diversification mindset is key. It’s not about abandoning social; it’s about creating a performance mix that evolves with the fan journey — blending discovery, engagement, and conversion across multiple touchpoints.
Performance marketers are at a turning point. Social platforms still matter — they’re essential for reach and storytelling — but the efficiency curve is flattening. The next era of performance growth will be led by brands that:
– Treat social as one piece of a broader growth ecosystem.
– Use data to detect early-stage diminishing returns.
– Move fluidly between channels to sustain ROI.
– Continuously test, learn, and adapt creative strategy.
In a landscape where attention is fleeting, agility is the new scale.
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