Ensuring your audience gets to see your ads is important, but avoiding ad fatigue is even more critical. Frequency capping helps you find the right balance when serving your ads. Read this glossary page to find what frequency capping is, its benefits, and best practices.
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Frequency capping is a technique that limits the reach and frequency of your ads. Nowadays, every advertising campaign requires the use of multiple channels and marketing touchpoints to ensure consumers get exposed to ads repeatedly. However, serving ads too frequently can cause your audience to experience ad fatigue and tune out. When that happens, you are wasting your ad spending budget.
Setting a limit on the frequency your ads get exposed to your audience can save your budget and achieve a balance between ad exposure and audience engagement.
When you set up a campaign in most ad networks and programmatic ad platforms, you can opt for the frequency cap feature. Demand-side platforms also usually offer this feature. The platforms track how frequently an ad is shown to the same user. Also, custom algorithms and tailored AI-powered advertising technologies can include frequency capping as part of their packages.
When you set a frequency cap, the platform checks it before serving the ad. If the cap has been reached, the ad is not served; if not, the platform serves the ad. For instance, if you’re running a campaign, you can set the cap to limit the number of daily, weekly, or monthly impressions the user will receive.
To set caps, there are three elements you should consider. First, how many times should you show an ad to a user? This number is the optimal ad frequency. The other two elements of a frequency cap are selecting the ad you want to limit and setting the timeframe for the cap.
This technique helps you control how often users see your ads, preventing you from blowing through your ad budget. Here are some of the benefits of using frequency capping. As we said before, it prevents your ad from boring your audience. When a user sees the same ad over and over, they get bored and annoyed.
Frequency caps limit the number of times your ad will be served in front of the same user. By limiting ad frequency, you can spread your impressions, extending your campaign’s life. In essence, frequency capping gives you control over the ad budget, ensuring your budget is spent effectively.
Finding your optimal frequency cap requires measuring and adjusting. Ideally, you should start the campaign with a frequency cap based on historical data for similar campaigns. Then, refine it by checking on a few key metrics. For instance, check the ad schedule performance to find the time of the day or day of the week your ads perform the best.
Check the conversion rates curve to see if they drop after a few impressions. It will tell you how many times a user can watch the ad before losing interest. You can detect ad fatigue if high-frequency ads are producing a low click-through rate and conversions.
Mainly, advertisers use frequency capping when they want to stay within budget. In digital campaigns, frequency capping prevents ad fatigue, reduces engagement, and wastes spend. Brands apply frequency capping during awareness campaigns to avoid overwhelming users. In retargeting campaigns, frequency capping prevents oversaturation and irritating the users.
When setting a frequency cap in a campaign, there are a number of best practices that can ensure your success. First, tailor the frequency caps based on brand maturity, campaign duration, and message complexity. For instance, an established brand will benefit from lower frequency, while new brands may need a higher frequency.
Rotating creatives keeps the content fresh and reduces the chances of annoying the users. Finally, you’ll want to continually review metrics to refine frequency and ensure audience engagement remains high.
