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How much is too much? In this blog post, we cover the ins and outs of ad frequency, and how to make it work for you.
Sometimes, you have to tell someone something more than once to get through to them. Nowhere is this more true than in advertising, where repetition is often key to success. If the Little Caesar only said “Pizza!” once, the ad would be half as effective!
Seriously though, reinforcing brand messaging is often the difference between success and failure. The more times a viewer watches an ad, the more likely they are to recall that ad later.
But when it comes to repetition, there can be too much of a good thing.
In this blog post, we talk about the basics of “ad frequency,” how much is too much, how to figure that out, and what to do about it.
Case Study: find out how OKO was able to boost Loop Media’s revenue by 500% — on the first day.
What is ad frequency?
Ad frequency refers to how many times an ad gets shown to a single viewer over time. This metric is important because it helps businesses understand how often potential customers see their ads.
Repetition can be good in advertising. Studies have shown that audiences have a tendency to remember brand messaging more clearly if they see an ad several times. In one study, viewers who saw the same ad 6 times in an hour of TV had 92% recall of the ad, compared to 64% for viewers who only saw it once.
But that repetition isn’t an unadulterated good. At a certain point, ads can cross a threshold between “reinforcing a brand message” to “irritating people.”
Among the viewers in that study who saw the ad 6 times, intent-to-buy dropped 16% compared to viewers who only saw the ad once. There are downsides for the streaming services themselves, too: 51% of viewers who felt they were being served the same ads too frequently would switch to a different service to get away from it.
What is frequency capping?
At the threshold between reinforcing your brand message and getting on people’s nerves is your ad’s frequency cap.
A “frequency cap” is exactly what it sounds like: a cap on how frequently an ad can be shown to individual viewers. Advertisers — and occasionally publishers — can set limits on ad frequency to avoid overloading audiences, via Supply-Side Platforms, Demand-Side Platforms, or through their monetization partners.
Particularly in the earlier days of CTV advertising, when fewer advertisers had entered the space, it was common for viewers to see the same ad, over and over, the entire time they were watching. The entrance of more competitors into the field has helped alleviate this problem, as has the development of better tools to cap ad frequency.
But, for a tool to be useful, you’ve got to know when and how to use it.
Types of frequency capping
There are a couple of different ways to limit the number of times viewers see your ads.
- Dayparting: If you’re limiting the time of day your ads are being served to viewers, individual viewers won’t see the same ad all day, instead running into pockets of it at pre-set hours of the day.
- Time Capping: This limits the number of times an ad can be served within a set span of time, kind of like when a bottle of aspirin says the maximum amount you can have within 24 hours. They’re not saying you can never have aspirin again, just no more until tomorrow.
- Impression Frequency: Unlike the above, this cap is total. A customer can be shown an ad a set number of times, and then they’re never supposed to be served that particular ad again unless you arrange for a retargeting campaign down the line.
Ad frequency caps can be set at the ad, campaign, or advertiser level, and get described in terms like “4×24” (which would mean “four times in 24 hours”).
What is the best frequency cap for advertising?
The answer to this question is the same as a lot of other questions in adtech: it depends.
Different campaigns have different costs, different conversion actions, have different values, and therefore different advertisers will see different ROIs for the same ad frequency rates as one another.
Additionally, different ads may wear out their welcome with audiences at different rates: we’ve all seen ads that were funny the first time but got annoying, fast. But we also all know at least one beloved local business that’s managed to run the same TV spot for decades without any changes.
Ad length, too, can play a part here: people may grow tired of sitting through the same ad more quickly if the ad is a 60-second spot, but tolerate it at a higher frequency if it’s a 15-second creative.
And lastly, the problem may not be in your ad frequency, but in your audience targeting. Viewers will, of course, receive ads far more warmly if those ads are relevant to them and their interests. If you don’t have your audience targeting dialed in, then some viewers are going to consider seeing your ad even once to be too frequent.
How to determine your frequency cap
If there’s no hard-and-fast rule, the solution is experimentation. Keep a close eye on your Key Performance Indicators: conversions, audience engagement, ROI.
CTV advertising allows for unprecedented amounts of control over your campaigns compared to traditional television, so there are a lot more sliders to play with. Adjusting your audience targeting, your time of day, consumer behavior and more may impact campaign performance.
There will come a tipping point where you begin to see diminishing returns on your campaign, and that will enable you to see where to set your frequency caps.
Final Thoughts
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for frequency capping. But hopefully with these guidelines, you’ll have a starting point for figuring out frequency caps that work for your campaigns.
If you’re a publisher delving into CTV, these and many other questions can be answered for you by the good people at OKO Digital. Founded in 1996, we’ve been Google Certified Publisher Partners for years, and pride ourselves on getting the results our partners need. Reach out to our team today to get started.
