Frequency cap is a really important concept in the world of display advertising, and digital marketing overall. Setting a frequency cap allows you to limit how many times your ad displays to a particular consumer. Think about it from the consumer’s standpoint: If you inundate them with too many advertisements, you may actually do more harm than good.This is precisely where frequency caps come into play! Frequency caps allow you to optimize consumer experience, showing just the right amount of value-add display advertisements.
Some common ways in which you can leverage frequency caps:
Number of times a consumer sees any of your ads in particular time period. Often, advertisers do this on a daily basis. For example, you may not want anyone to see your ad more than ten times per day. However, you can also set tighter frequency caps. For example, you may limit how many times a consumer sees your ads per hour. Perhaps you do not want consumers to see more than one ad impression per hour.
You can also place frequency caps on specific ads. What if you want to run one ad uncapped but another with a tight cap? Maybe you only want to display one of your ads up to twenty times per consumer per day, but another up to five times.
You can also set specific frequency caps by type of consumer (and where they fall in your segmentation). For example, you may only want to show up to five ads per day to your homepage browsers (those newly exposed to your brand). However, you may choose to run nearly uncapped on those consumers who are in the checkout process (those super engaged consumers who are about to buy something).
Frequency caps also help you manage your own budget wisely. Rather than inundate certain users with too many ads, why not spread out your ad impressions across more consumers?
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