Consumers are bombarded daily with digital ads, leading to ad fatigue, banner blindness and annoyance. Only a fraction of ads cut through the noise and engage users. Frequency capping – limiting the number of times a specific user sees an ad – is critical to ensure programmatic ads reach the right audience, resonate and enhance user engagement.
The role of programmatic advertising in modern digital advertising cannot be overstated. Programmatic advertising – the fully automated, real-time buying and selling of digital ad space using artificial intelligence, data and real-time bidding – is now a key element of paid media strategies, accounting for 90 per cent of display advertising budgets.
It maximizes efficiency and precisely targets users to effectively reach high-intent audiences. However, it’s estimated that consumers are exposed to thousands of ads daily [Ev1] across all media, with fewer than 100 of these ads able to capture active attention. Research shows that 74 per cent of users feel overwhelmed and annoyed by the number of ads that flash across their screens.
For marketers, it’s critical to hit on the right number of times to reach your audience with an ad to ensure your message is seen while avoiding ad fatigue, banner blindness and reduced click-through rates. Frequency capping in programmatic advertising – limiting the number of times a specific user sees an ad per day, week or month – is critical to ensure programmatic ads reach the right audience, resonate and enhance user engagement. By improving the user experience, frequency capping will also help prevent excessive, wasteful ad impressions and improve budget efficiency and return on investment (ROI).
If frequency capping is not part of your programmatic advertising strategy, you risk ads becoming part of the noise. Consumers are left with a negative perception of your brand and start to ignore it, leading to lower engagement and conversion metrics and increased cost per acquisition.
To finetune programmatic ad frequency, drive positive customer experiences and maximize ROI, it’s critical to take an iterative, data-based approach using the information you collect from campaigns to find the right level of exposure to attract users and avoid ad fatigue.
What is frequency capping in programmatic advertising?
In digital marketing, frequency is the average number of times a single user sees your ad during a campaign. The goal is to find the optimal cadence to reinforce messaging and build awareness without overexposing users, which could lead them to ignore your ads. This is known as banner blindness.
Frequency capping in programmatic advertising is a feature in most digital advertising platforms that allows advertisers to control how many times a single user sees a specific ad within a specified period, such as per day, week or month. Once the ad cap is met – say 20 impressions per week per user – the platform will stop serving the ad until the following week.
Just as programmatic advertising is now an integral marketing strategy, leveraging the discipline of frequency capping is essential to drive performance.
There are several foundational terms used in frequency capping in programmatic advertising.
- Impressions are the number of times an ad is displayed to a user, regardless of whether the user sees or engages with the ad.
- Cap impression frequency is the most popular form of frequency capping in programmatic advertising. It institutes a maximum number of impressions a user can see in a specific period.
- Cap view frequency is used in video advertising to control the number of times a user sees a video ad.
- Time capping limits establish the timeframe in which an ad can be shown.
- Dayparting schedules ads to run only during specific hours when users are active online.
- Creative rotation uses different ad creatives and, in combination with frequency capping, helps keep messages fresh and attractive to users.
How reach and frequency work together in programmatic advertising
In programmatic advertising, reach refers to the total number of unique individuals exposed to a specific ad. The greater the reach, the greater number of people seeing your message.
Frequency is the average number of times each of these unique users sees that ad. The greater the frequency, the more times the same group of people is seeing your ad.
Successful programmatic ad campaigns balance reach and frequency to maximize brand visibility and message recall without inducing ad fatigue. Achieving that balance requires aligning your budget to your campaign goals and where users are in their buying journey. This is what will increase your return on ad spending.
For example, if the goal is to build awareness at the start of the buying journey, your budget should prioritize maximizing exposure to as many individual users as possible. If the goal is to reinforce your messaging with existing viewers by retargeting ads during the consideration stage, then it’s important to increase frequency.
Why frequency capping matters for campaign performance
Frequency capping in programmatic advertising will help you capture the attention of your target audience across their buying journey: awareness, consideration, decision.
Effective frequency capping can help:
- Minimize the noise. When you limit the number of times an individual user sees your ad, they will be more inclined to look at it and engage.
- Enhance ROI. The discipline enforced by frequency capping extends to your ad budget, cutting waste and improving efficiency.
- Improve brand image. Consumer expectations have never been higher. They want relevant ads delivered at the right time. They do not want to be constantly flooded with the same ad. A better consumer experience will create a more positive impression of your brand.
- Boost performance. When relevant ads are shown to an interested audience, click-through and conversion rates increase and cost per acquisition decreases.
How to set effective frequency caps in programmatic campaigns
There are several key strategies to develop effective frequency caps for programmatic advertising campaigns. The starting point is to understand your campaign goals in the context of your industry and market (i.e., B2B, B2C, local, global), the buying journey, how the advertising platforms you’re using work and the tolerance of your target audience for receiving ads.
The precise number of times an ad should be shown for optimum impact will differ by brand, product and campaign. However, there are generally accepted best practices to help guide your frequency capping strategy.
- Understand what you want to achieve. At the beginning of the marketing funnel, the goal is building brand awareness. The most effective way to do this is to increase reach or the number of people who see your ad by setting higher frequency limits of between eight and 15 exposures per week across all channels. In the consideration stage of the buying journey, a more moderate frequency of between five and eight exposures per week with sequential messaging and rotating creatives will help keep content fresh and your brand top of mind. In the decision or conversion stage, a more targeted approach around high-intent moments (up to three impressions per day) with direct calls to action will help increase urgency to act.
- Know your target audience. What is their threshold for ad repetition? Use the data you’ve already collected about them – demographics, interests, online behaviour and past purchases – to inform your frequency capping strategy.
- Create a schedule to rotate ad creative. Regularly refreshing ad designs and messaging will help keep your target audience’s interest and prevent banner blindness.
- Use dayparting and time capping. By scheduling ads to run during the times your target audience is most active online will help drive engagement.
- Monitor and adapt. Frequency capping is an iterative process. Use the reporting features platforms provide to keep track of how different frequency levels impact key performance indicators, such as click-through and conversion rates, viewability and cost per mille. Experiment with different frequency caps using A/B testing to optimize campaign performance.
- Take a multichannel approach. Manage frequency capping across all channels to ensure your brand is not over-exposed.
Tip: According to generally accepted channel benchmarks, ad exposures should be capped at six for connected TV, 10 for online video, eight for audio, 20 for display ads and 12 for native advertising.
Common frequency capping mistakes to avoid
Setting caps too high or too low
These are among the most common mistakes when it comes to frequency capping in programmatic advertising. Marketers are either too focused on building visibility at all costs or too focused on avoiding ad fatigue and wasted advertising spend. In both cases, this leads to missed opportunities to advance users through the buying journey and ultimately to a sale.
Approaching frequency capping as a one-time action
Frequency capping is not static. Ongoing monitoring and optimization are essential to drive performance.
Not taking a holistic view of frequency capping
In today’s multichannel digital world, ads are distributed across media platforms in a wide range of different formats. Tracking how many times your target audience is seeing an ad on all channels is the only way to gain an accurate view of exposure across all touchpoints.
How reach and frequency impact programmatic ROI
Efficient, targeted reach will increase visibility and brand awareness among relevant audiences, creating the opportunity for increased engagement.
The impact of setting effective frequency levels will build familiarity, brand recall and improve the likelihood that users will engage and take the actions you want them to take.
When the right balance between frequency and reach is achieved, users will receive the right messaging at a time when they are most receptive, minimizing wasted spending and cost per acquisition, and maximizing ROI.
While there is no one-size-fits-all optimal ad frequency in programmatic advertising, understanding the role of reach and exposure and how to balance them is critical to achieve campaign goals. An experienced media partner can help you create a frequency capping strategy that leverages data and best practices to drive ROI.
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