Reach and Frequency: The Currency of Cross Device
Without the ability to de-duplicate audiences across multiple screens, the ability to cross-screen target – is, well, useless. It’s something that cross screen companies claim they do on the “back end” but none have been able to show it. The need for understanding how reach and frequency across device drives performance and efficiencies is the foundation of successful, measurable cross screen targeting.
When RUN de-duplicates unique users across devices, we are getting the industry at large closer to standardizing the concept of "reach and frequency" beyond just TV. Digital and mobile have typically been excluded from R/F analysis because of an inability to measure people across all environments, but that is no longer a concern. As a result, cross screen media plans are more powerful.
We recently redesigned a whole tab in our portal to better express person-based R/F. Check it out below.
Understanding the Graph (cohort analysis graph)
Reach & Frequency provides users with the ability to toggle between unique people and unique devices. This will always default to ‘By People,’ meaning that uniques are de-duplicated across multiple devices. If the user selects ‘By Devices’ then the unit of measurement for each unique is a single device.
Making this selection will influence the data on the entire page including both the stat boxes in the upper right hand corner and the data in the cohort analysis graph below. If the user looks at uniques as devices then the number of uniques will be higher with a lower frequency compared to uniques as people.
Y-axis
Displays the number of uniques (either people or devices depending on selection). It is very important to notice that this is a logarithmic scale. Each label on the axis increases exponentially from the label that comes before it.
X-axis
Each bar represents a cohort of unique people or devices that have been hit with impressions at a specific frequency.
Example
If the first bar goes up to 5 million on the Y-axis and the second bar goes up to 3 million on the X-axis then that means out of the total number of uniques, 5 million of them have seen an impression once and 3 million of them have seen an impression twice.
Use Case
Users can layer KPI trend lines on top of this in order to determine which levels of frequency gives the campaign the best performance. This will default to displaying the green CTR trend line, but others will be available for selection if applicable. If a campaign has video placements then Completion Rate will be available, and if there are conversion pixels placed then Response Rate will also be available. The user can choose to select any and all of the KPIs to layer on top of the frequency cohorts
Export Data
During the campaign users will be able to download the report having the same selections available as before: campaign, placement, device, and segment all by day, week, and month. The main difference is that now the user will be able to choose the report by unique people or unique devices.