Commentary
Is Frequency An Effective Strategy?
- by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, Yesterday
How much is too much? I find myself asking that question often -- especially in the world of digital media. I also find it an interesting question for other categories of business, and I always come up with the same answer: Too much of a good thing is, simply, still too much.
Frequency comes up most often in the context of display advertising, where reach and frequency are common terms applied to how media budgets are reviewed. A media plan is examined to see how deep into the audience it can go, which is reach. It is then analyzed to see how often that audience will see your ad, which is frequency.
Frequency comes up in video advertising a lot lately. The same ad can run during video streaming seven, eight or nine times in one sitting. The effect is detrimental -- the audience is annoyed and wants to stop seeing your ads. In display, a high frequency creates ad blindness, which is when the audience literally blocks out the chance to see your ad because they are tired of it. In both cases, frequency is bad.
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But what about in other instances across other categories?
I am a music nerd who Ioves U2. When I decided to listen to their most recent record on Spotify, I was surprised to see a slew of re-releases of old singles and records with deluxe this or that. I love U2, but that was overkill. Too many releases were swamping the channel.
It’s like some of the hip-hop artists of the decade, who drop record after record on top of one another and
don’t give room for any release to breathe. For the longest time that was Drake, until he lost an infamous rap battle.
Then there's Ryan Adams, known for releasing records in bunches.
But as a fan of his music, I found that too much music getting released too frequently made it difficult to settle in and get to know any of it.
So too much of a good thing is, apparently, too much.
The worst offender of this theory is still email -- retail email specifically. I recently was told to check out a brand of hats, which shall remain nameless. I liked them and bought three hats from them. I then became overwhelmed by two emails per day until I unsubscribed. Their emails were delivering coupons and new hat releases. I hadn’t even received the hats I purchased yet (I still haven’t) and here they are trying to convince me to buy more hats. It is an unrealistic expectation -- desperate and mildly offensive.
Email is good for creating a relationship, not for treating the customer as a cash register. I will likely never buy another hat from this company because the experience has been so poor. They clearly need me to buy more, judging by their desperation emails.
When used in a strategic fashion, frequency is a way to build a relationship, but it needs to be modulated with careful timing -- not just an all-out “shock and awe” campaign to bludgeon the consumer into submission.
I doubt the marketers responsible for these campaigns intended to cram my inbox every 12 hours with desperate pleas for purchase, but that is exactly what happened. I know the data: Retailers see a jump in sales when they email the customer. Sure, but the data also speaks of wearout. In that analysis, frequency and length between touches are important metrics to consider. Unfortunately, neither those marketers, Drake, or even U2 are considering this key element.
So, going forward, give the consumer a chance to breathe, would you? Please, let your message have some time before you bang us over the head and make a desperate cry for sales. You will see this strategy work out better in the long run.
Terrific points! The best way to kill an ad or campaign early is wearout from too much saturation. And what I don't understand is why some keep jumping on to the next thing without letting what they've shared marinate and resonate potentially to be appreciated.
I was recently bemoaning to a colleague with agency and TV network experience that were all so damned smart about targeting and activation, but that if my wife and I sit down to watch for one-hour shows in a row on ad-supported streaming on a binge night, we'll see the same two ads like 4 times in every episode. he told me that this was flipside of advance targets; when the targets get really granular, there aren't enough advertisers bidding on you. So they end up showing you the same ads over and over.
Meanwhile, every binge night, I have to listen to my wife ragging on me, "if you people are so smart, why is this the 15th time we have seen this ad tonight?" I wish I had a good answer for her.
As regards Ryan Adams, another point worth noting is that Wednesdays and maybe Black Hole are really the only decent studio albums he's put out since 2020-- and there have been FOURTEEN of them.
So the "solution" is to greatly reduce your ad spend--even if competing brands don't reduce theirs? Is less really more when you are using ridiculously inflated ad "audience" data. I think not.
At best, only 40% of all ad "impresions" actually involve a consumer starting to look at--or listen to or read--your ad. And beyond that most only "connect" with your ad message for a few seconds. So what's the problem re"oversaturation?
Of course it's annoying when a CTV service runs the same ad message 7-8 times in a one- hour episode of a former CBS or NBC drama series--or a movie.But what percentage of a typical consumer's media day sees this kind of stupidity play out---.5%, 1%, maybe 2%? So, are we getting all bothered about what is really an exception for most consumers?
There's a time honored concept in advertising called share of voice. It holds that to maintain your monentum realtive to rival brands you need to spend proportionately to your share of category sales--or close to it. A sudden reduction, if maintained over a long period, is asking for trouble. Just as dropping all advertising for sustained periods is regarded as taking a similar risk. I think that that concept still holds water, though it's desirable to control your frequency so you don't over --or under--do it and so you direcct as much media weight against your prime targets.
So, Josh, how many times per month do you and your wife sit down and binge watch four or more one-hour episodes of the same drama series in a row? Is that an every night or a once in a while activity?Just asking? Also, do you feel the same way when you watch a three- hour baseball or basketball game on TV and the same commercials are played every inning?Me--I simply ignore those commercials.
As media buyers we live and breath frequency control across omnichannel campaigns. Some ads get more frequency because they are easily ignored (display ads typically) - but we are stringent on frequency for CTV because of the issues you identified. It feels like some buyers don't frequency cap and I have to wonder if they are just trying to burn the media budget to get their commission vs. what's in the best interest of the client.
Your specific instance of email is a more nuanced issue of using frequency in remarketing to get more from an existing customer vs. finding new customers. This is almost never a path to lasting growth and it's not just emails - with so many brands forcing you into a text sign up for a "discount code" and then blasting you with texts at a cadence that is unrealistic. This just happened to me with a leather goods company. I love their products but I don't want a weekly text about an item I may purchase at most 1-2X a year. I think loyalty marketing is fundamentally broken and needs a reset.