A limit placed on how often the same person can be shown an advertisement within a defined period.
A control used to reduce overexposure and improve media efficiency.
Short and sweet:
A limit placed on how often the same person can be shown an advertisement within a defined period.
A control used to reduce overexposure and improve media efficiency.
See also: Frequency, Reach, Programmatic Advertising
Frequency capping sets a hard limit on how many times a single person can be shown the same ad within a given period, preventing a campaign from repeating a message so often that it starts to annoy rather than persuade. Without a cap, retargeting campaigns in particular can end up chasing the same small pool of people relentlessly, burning through budget on impressions that add little additional value beyond a certain point. Finding the right cap is a balancing act, since too low a limit can under-deliver a message while too high a limit risks the exact fatigue the cap was meant to prevent.
A retargeting campaign for a mattress brand might use frequency capping to limit each shopper to three ad views per day, preventing the same banner from feeling like it’s stalking them across every website they visit.
Facebook’s ad platform lets advertisers set this kind of limit directly in campaign settings, capping impressions per user over a rolling seven-day window.
Without a cap like this in place, a small business could accidentally burn through its entire ad budget serving the same handful of people dozens of times instead of reaching new customers.
