What is the frequency in advertising?

For most marketers, reaching your target audience is the first step in a successful advertising campaign.
Frequency (or repeat exposure) of the message is the second.
Things to consider: Exposure does not equal frequency; increased frequency can be the key to success; and the role of frequency varies by category of product or service promoted.

Once your campaign’s target audience is defined and the media mix is chosen, it’s time to think about frequency. In the context of advertising, frequency can be defined as the number of times a person is exposed to an advertisement or the number of times an advertisement is repeated through a specific medium over a specific time period.1

Table of Contents Show

Table of Contents:
What is Frequency Capping?
Why is Frequency Capping Important?
Frequency Capping Best Practices

The key to deciding on frequency within shared mail or newspaper advertising rests in the following:

Exposure does not equal frequency
The reason to deviate from a 3x frequency “rule of thumb”
A clear understanding of your specific campaign objectives and the role frequency will play
Considering the frequency benchmarks for each media

The role of frequency is to drive curiosity, recognition, and decision. For decades, marketers have relied on the belief that a frequency of three is all that is needed to get to the decision. But is it really that simple? This belief is based on the definition, by Herbert E. Krugman2, of consumer’s reactions to each exposure, in an essay about effective frequency. Krugman never actually stated that a 3x frequency is required in media advertising. Rather he spoke of a 3x exposure in terms of psychological response:

The third and subsequent exposures act as a reminder of the “What is it?” and “What of it?” It will position the consumer as being able to quickly react when the time comes to make a decision.

Marketers should also remember that exposure is not equal to frequency. Frequency is the number of times a message/advertisement is paid to be placed in a medium. Exposure, however, only occurs when the message is read, viewed, or heard by the consumer. Due to today’s crowded media landscape, consumers’ evolving media habits, and scattered media engagement, an ad may need more than three times and via a variety of media to expose a consumer to a message and move them through the psychological response laid out by Krugman.

Following are several reasons for increasing frequency:

Your competitors are advertising … a lot
Remember, you are not alone in trying to get the attention of your target audience. The more competitors advertise, the greater the frequency needed to gain share of voice. Four or five times may be required in a cluttered environment.3
A large number of companies are advertising in the medium you selected
You selected that medium because it gets a lot of attention from your target audience. So did a number of other companies in and outside of your category. More frequency will be required to ensure consumers see and process your message.
Your product/brand has lower recognition or loyalty than the competition
For example, a new product or brand introduction will require greater frequency to get consumers’ attention, build trust, and start processing the message.
You have a short window of time to generate the desired action
With less time to impact the purchase decision process, marketers will need to accelerate the path to purchase. Adding frequency in a shorter time period will increase the opportunity for people to see and process the advertising message, ultimately moving them faster to decision.
Your message is difficult to understand
When things aren’t simple, it bears repeating and repeating again. An example of this can be seen with health insurance companies. Typically, in the second and third quarters, these companies continue to increase ad frequency to bolster message understanding in a health insurance landscape transformed by the Affordable Care Act years ago.
Media engagement is low
As a by-product of consumers’ multi-tasking habits, engagement can be lower for some media in specific situations. If consumers can easily skip your ad (think DVR and television), additional frequency will be needed to secure exposure and reaction to your message.

Your campaign’s target audience is defined, the media mix chosen; now it’s time to think about frequency.

Frequency is the necessary tactic to drive customers’ exposure to a message, product, or service. Repeat exposure leads to a decision, which in turn, leads to action. Ultimately, frequency is essential to achieving your advertising campaign goal: driving consumers to action.

1 investorwords.com [accessed 12.20.2016]

2 Krugman, Herbert, “Why Three Exposures May Be Enough”, Journal of Advertising Research, December 1972

3 Ekstein, Summers, Ambruster & Co., September 2013

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In advertising, frequency determines the number of times an internet user will see an ad in a certain amount of time. Finding the optimal frequency limit will determine if ads will receive the right amount of spotlight by being viewed.

Mostly, it’s advertisers who care about frequency capping; however, it’s important for publishers when serving direct campaigns–wider the capping more ad impressions there are.

What is Frequency Capping?

Frequency capping limits the number of times an ad will be exposed to a user. The main goal is to avoid showing the same ad to the same user too many times.

If the same ad is frequently served for the same user, it can count as intrusive advertising and reduce the campaign’s CTR.

Who is responsible for setting frequency capping for ad campaigns?

If there is a direct deal between publisher and advertiser, frequency capping is negotiated in the Insertion Order.

Usually, advertisers themselves have to choose the frequency cap (in Xandr, Adform, Eskimi, Google DV360 and other DSPs). Sometimes, even ad platforms provide a service of setting automated frequency capping.

When it comes to specific ad formats, like, interstitial ads, advertisers or publishers have no control over setting frequency capping because it’s already set by default. For interstitial ads, Google sets frequency capping that cannot be changed–1 ad displayed per hour for 1 unique user.

If you have a Google Ad Manager account, you can set frequency capping for direct campaigns by yourself–per week, day, month, lifetime or even per minute/hour. Frequency capping is also used for programmatic deals but not for Open RTB.

How is frequency capping applied for programmatic?

There is added frequency capping management for programmatic, which means that the frequency cap is rather automated. It’s mostly set by advertisers, but, for example, for preferred deals, monetization platforms can set it as well.

Setupad experts setting frequency cap on Xandr platform on the preferred deal

Why is Frequency Capping Important?

There is not a defined number of times you should set ad frequency. Low frequency might not deliver the results previously intended. High ad frequency can result in overexposure that can negatively impact advertisers’ brand in customers eyes, and cause low CTRs.

Why do publishers see the same ad but on different ad placements?

The answer is quite simple: The advertiser runs wrong frequency capping or hasn’t set any capping for the publisher’s site. This, however, brings more yield for the publisher because the advertiser is spending more money to display ads on the site.

Setupad experts say that good frequency capping is 1 or 2 ads per minute, avoiding ad clutter, having a reasonable budget, and reaching a bigger audience.

Frequency Capping Best Practices

For retargeting campaigns

Retargeting campaigns usually come with two types of goals:

– re-engage page’s visitors by targeting them with relevant products/services;

– increasing ad campaign’s conversion goals.

Advertisers are usually willing to pay bigger CPMs for such campaigns, so frequency cap for remarketing works as a great practice because it can save some budget.

For example, it could be optimal to have 8 impressions per day + a combination of 4 impressions per user in one hour. Sometimes, the first few impressions can be delivered for a higher CPM price, while others that come next for lower, thus increasing the total amount of ad impressions.

Brand awareness campaigns

Brand awareness campaigns can afford to have a high frequency cap (for example, 30 impressions per campaign, 12 per day, and 8 per hour) per user, and sometimes there is no limit per campaign, just per day. The main goal is to gain brand recognition fast across the chosen target audiences.

Just, so you know 30 impressions per campaign are not that many because the average user sees between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day.

Extensive visibility equals better brand recognition on the site and new potential customers. The general costs of brand awareness campaigns are higher because of lower CTRs and immediate conversions, so you as a publisher can earn more from these direct campaigns.

Displaying premium quality banners

Many consumers experience banner blindness (ad is there, but the user ignores it), so the ads you serve must be high-quality and memorable, and users are willing to click on them. Usually, it means setting frequency cap–1 impression per user in one hour or up to 3 impressions per day.

Conclusion

If you have direct campaigns or programmatic deals, make sure that you can successfully monitor the performance of ads served and get the best possible result by adding a frequency cap.

Just so you know, you won’t find one formula for ad frequency that will suit all served campaigns. Analyzing the previous campaign’s results and careful evaluation of current campaigns will give you a clear perspective of the frequency.