The average number of times a person is exposed to an advertisement or marketing message during a defined period.
A planning metric that helps balance memorability with the risk of audience fatigue.
Short and sweet:
The average number of times a person is exposed to an advertisement or marketing message during a defined period.
A planning metric that helps balance memorability with the risk of audience fatigue.
See also: Reach, Ad Impression, Frequency Capping
Frequency measures the average number of times a single person sees a given ad or piece of content over a set period, calculated by dividing total impressions by total reach, and it plays a big role in how a message lands psychologically. A low frequency can mean a message never really sinks in, while a frequency that climbs too high risks annoyance and what’s sometimes called ad fatigue, where people start actively tuning a brand out. Managing it well usually means balancing reach and frequency together rather than optimizing for either one alone, since maximizing reach at the expense of adequate frequency can leave a message forgotten just as quickly as it was seen.
Advertising research often cites the idea that a person needs to see a message with a frequency of around seven times before it truly sinks in, a rule of thumb marketers still reference today.
A Facebook ad campaign might set a target of three impressions per person per week, aiming to stay memorable without tipping into that annoying, repetitive territory.
Television advertisers during must-watch events like the Super Bowl accept an extremely high repeat rate for the same handful of viewers, betting that repetition during one huge audience moment beats spreading impressions thin over weeks.
