64% feel overwhelmed by advertising
Ad saturation has become a real brake on marketing performance. The Creative Impact Report 2025 by Shutterstock sums it up with a figure that should alarm any CMO: 64% of adults in the United States say they feel overwhelmed by the amount of advertising they’re exposed to.
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The reality is that brands invest more, produce more content, and compete for every second of attention—without that necessarily translating into higher ROI. The report suggests that the industry has entered a stage of diminishing returns. Not because consumers have stopped buying, but because they’ve developed immunity to an excess of stimuli.
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Overwhelmed consumers: Why is ad saturation increasing?
In practical terms, it means that consumers aren’t just exposed to ads—they’re overexposed. And when exposure turns into overload, three effects emerge that undermine marketing performance:
- Disconnection: consumers ignore the ad before processing it.
- Suspicion: skepticism increases toward what the brand is promising.
- Fatigue: even strong campaigns lose power through repetition.
The report suggests saturation is growing due to a combination of factors that have accelerated over the past two years:
- * A content explosion across platforms
- * Increased ad spend (to compensate for declining performance)
- * More ads in more formats (short-form video, social, retail media, display, CTV)
- * A massive rise in generic creativity, partly driven by generative AI
In other words, the system has become “noisier” and, at the same time, more homogeneous. When many brands publish in similar ways, consumers can’t tell them apart. And when they can’t tell the difference, they stop paying attention.
What is the “myth of more” and why is it hurting brands’ ROI?
One of the report’s central concepts is the “myth of more”: the belief that the solution to weak performance is simply to produce and distribute more content.
The industry has been doing this for years: when ROAS drops, budgets increase; when conversion falls, another campaign is launched; when attention slips, frequency goes up. But Shutterstock warns that this approach has become counterproductive and creates a vicious cycle:
- ⇓ clutter increases
- ⇓ differentiation decreases
- ⇓ fatigue accelerates
- ⇔ and credibility weakens
Instead of regaining impact, volume dilutes it.
How does ad saturation affect credibility and purchase intent?
Saturation impacts two core variables:
1) Credibility (Believability)
The report evaluates creativity using a believability metric, which measures how credible a message feels to consumers.
And this is where a finding appears that should reshape any media strategy: believability drops after just three campaign messages.
This suggests that, in a saturated environment, too many messages aren’t just ignored—they can actually reduce credibility.
2) Purchase intent
The Creative Impact Report 2025 also highlights a worrying gap: since 2023, global marketing spend has risen 33%, while purchase intent has grown only 17%, revealing a loss of efficiency.
When consumers are saturated, campaigns need more pressure to achieve the same effect, which translates into a higher incremental cost for each point of purchase intent.
Is the solution to run fewer ads—or to advertise differently?
The solution isn’t to disappear from media. The solution is to change the way you compete. Shutterstock doesn’t propose “cutting investment” as the only answer, but rather reorienting strategy toward high-impact creativity—better selected and better executed. The report emphasizes two directions:
- → Impact over volume
- → A cohesive message across multiple formats
In fact, the document notes that multi-format campaigns with a consistent message can deliver 40% higher ROI than single-format efforts or scattered campaigns. The idea is clear: it’s not about speaking less, but speaking better.
What role does AI play in ad saturation?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become marketing’s big productivity tool, but it can also act as fuel for saturation. The report notes that the surge of AI-generated content contributes to the rise of generic creative and the flooding of channels with fast, cheap messaging.
While AI can speed up workflows—58% say it enables them to work in a fraction of the time and 54% say it can double output—the problem is that doubling output in a saturated environment can mean doubling the noise.
The recommendation is to use AI + metadata for adaptable marketing, personalization, and optimization—not to produce assets with no differentiation.
How is ad saturation measured and how can fatigue be anticipated?
There isn’t a single universal metric for every brand, but a few practical signals can help brands detect saturation:
- a drop in CTR and engagement with no changes in targeting
- increasing frequency with diminishing returns
- a decline in perceived believability
- campaigns that feel repetitive or interchangeable
- creative that loses differentiation versus competitors
The most actionable “early warning” insight from the report is this: if your campaign exceeds the repetition threshold, credibility drops.
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