January performance usually drops for one reason: brands keep running Q4 creative into a totally different shopper mindset. The fix is not more spend. It is a repeatable creative system that matches post-holiday intent, rotates fast, and stays honest on measurement.

Meta and Google both frame the post-holiday window as a real shopping period (often called Q5). If shoppers are still buying and your ROAS is falling, the weak link is usually creative and post-click alignment.

1) Why January ads fail: fatigue plus intent shift

Creative fatigue

People have seen your holiday ads too many times. Meta even provides “Creative Fatigue Recommendations” to help identify and fix this.

Intent shift

After December 25, shoppers move from gifting to:

• Self-gifting and upgrades

• Gift card spending

• New Year routines and organization

Think with Google highlights Q5 shoppers are still actively buying, which supports treating this as a new season, not downtime.

2) The January system: angles, formats, cadence

Stop thinking in “ads.” Think in a pipeline:

• Angles: why someone buys now

• Formats: the reusable structures

• Cadence: weekly refresh, minimum

• Distribution: what each platform needs

TikTok also advises refreshing creative when performance declines, which is basically TikTok politely yelling at everyone to stop running stale ads.

Minimum viable cadence

• Weekly creative drop

• 2 new hooks per week

• 1 new UGC video per week (or 2 if spend is serious)

• 1 refreshed static set per week (new headline + new visual)
  
  

3) Your January angle bank (6 angles that consistently work)

Use these to replace holiday urgency.

• Self-gift upgrade: “You deserve the upgrade.”

• Reset and organize: “Start the year clean.”

• Routine builder: “Make this your daily essential.”

• Proof and trust: reviews, UGC, testimonials

• Gift card spender: “Use your gift card on something you will actually use.”

• Value framing: durability, versatility, cost per use (not discounts)

Convert Via POV: If your creative still screams gifting or shipping cutoffs, you are speaking the wrong language.

4) Formats that scale (so you can produce fast)

Pick 3 formats and remix weekly.

• UGC demo: problem -> product -> result

• Voiceover explainer: 3 reasons it is worth it

• Testimonial montage: fast trust builder

• Before/after: transformation

• Catalog + hook overlay: best for retargeting, but refresh the hook

TikTok Creative Codes and best practices emphasize native-feeling creative and frequent refresh.

5) Platform playbooks

Meta: rotate creatives and manage frequency

• Keep 3-5 creatives active per ad set

• Run a simple structure: winner, challenger, experiment

• Use fatigue signals and Meta’s recommendations to spot deterioration

TikTok: native creative, fast testing loops

• Creator-style pacing and editing

• Test 3 hooks on the same footage

• Refresh quickly when performance drops

Google PMax: feed the machine fresh assets

Google recommends a strong variety of assets and updating as your message evolves. Video assets can also expand eligibility across inventory.

Convert Via POV: If you do not refresh PMax assets, you are letting Google remix the same story until it stops working.

6) Post-click rule: message match or wasted spend

Your ad angle must match the landing page headline and above-the-fold content. Google’s guidance on Quality Score explicitly ties relevance and consistency between ads and landing pages.

January landing page basics

• Headline mirrors the ad angle (upgrade, reset, routine, gift card)

• Clear value above the fold

• Fewer stacked popups and banners

• Fast load on mobile

  
  

7) Measurement: avoid fake wins in January

January is full of attribution traps: cheap retargeting, more branded search, email and SMS overlap.

What we track

• Blended ROAS / MER trend

• New customer rate

• Creative-level deterioration (CTR, CVR)

• Incrementality when possible

Google’s Conversion Lift is an incrementality tool designed to measure conversions driven by people who saw your ads.

8) The 30-day January rollout

Week 1
Replace all holiday creative. Launch 3 angles: self-gift, reset, routine.

Week 2
Scale winners. Swap hooks. Add proof creative.

Week 3
Refresh PMax assets. Add 1-2 UGC variations. Expand audiences.

Week 4
Run an incrementality test if available. Lock winning angles for February.

How Convert Via helps

We build the pipeline end-to-end:

• Angle bank and hook library

• Weekly creative testing roadmap by platform

• Meta fatigue rotation plan

• TikTok native creative briefs

• PMax asset group strategy and refresh cadence

• Landing page alignment and CRO support

• Measurement sanity checks and incrementality planning