Commentary

We Need A 'Frequency Currency' For Premium Video

by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, March 27, 2026

Yes, ad frequency matters, particularly on TV. It matters not just because delivering the same ad to the same person repeatedly is annoying and creates negative perceptions of the brand among impacted viewers, but because it's a big waste of most advertisers' money when their TV spend only reaches a small portion of their target audience available at that time.

Why does over-frequency happen on TV and premium video streaming?

First, over-frequency happens because the same brands keep buying the same highly rated shows, ensuring they saturate heavy TV viewers while ignoring that the “media math” of TV advertising dictates that buying lots of small programs ensures maximum and most efficient dispersion (reach) among target audiences. See the late Erwin Ephron’s brilliant paper, “Learning to live in Lilliput, the media land where small is beautiful: Optimizing reach with low ratings and other thoughts on TV fragmentation.”

Second, over-frequency happens because digitally trained programmatic ad buyers request and receive “frequency caps” on their CTV campaigns. But, as anyone who has ever watched ad-supported streaming services knows, frequency capping on most CTV programming is a farce -- a pure farce.

Control over the sale and ad serving of most premium streaming ad inventory is massively fragmented across dozens of demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, agencies, programmers, distributors, matching services, agencies and ad networks. Sure, they might each promise a daily frequency cap of three, which means that collectively, any one viewer might get a dozen of the same ads each day on that programming, since each of the many entities are siloed and can’t coordinate with each other to make good on the promise they sold their clients.

What should be done about this over-frequency problem? First, the industry needs to fess up about it and stop making faux promises of frequency capping. Suggesting that it's being done is a lie. Second, stop pretending that over-frequency is okay. It is not. It is bad for viewers. It is bad for advertisers. And it is bad for publishers.

And third, we need to see industry players more neutral to inventory monetization step up and offer a cross-company solution that manages and measures actual frequency delivery by creative and campaign to each user and household: a “frequency currency.”

Who might this be? Nielsen and MediaOcean immediately come to mind, but I could also imagine that any one of the heretofore “alt measurement movement” players could execute this.

Why not? There’s no technical barrier to doing it. Will the TV companies, streamers and big tech platforms all play along? They might -- certainly if it was Nielsen, whom they are all already working with.

What do you think?

12 comments about "We Need A 'Frequency Currency' For Premium Video".

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Joshua Chasin from KnotSimpler, March 28, 2026 at 11:13 a.m.
We've all become so accustomed to the model of the same ad appearing 5 times in a single streamed episode that we just take it for granted... I think there is a case to be made that some standard be set that requires a span of time between exposures of the same piece of creative to count as separate impressions. Imagine I'm watching a 30 second commercial. I watch the first 10 seconds, tune away, tune back, and see the last 10. Does anyone think that is two impressions? But if I see the first 10 seconds today, and the last 10 tomorrow (assuming we're not talking about a "pause" situation), then each counts as an impression. THe only difference? Time between.

So why do we think I've been reached 5 times when I see the same spot 5 times in an hour-long show? Show it to me one, 5 days in a row, on the same show and I get it.
Reply

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 28, 2026 at 11:35 a.m.

Josh, spot on. for years, research has demonstrated the power of "recency" in ad viewing and its ability to impact brands' sales ... the high level of frequency models that many use on CTV are driven by digital banner experiences where each banner has little impact so you need to hit a person with a lot of them to be noticed. Showing five TV ads to a person in a single show is not nearly as effective as showing it once a day for five days, as you mention. Or, even better in most cases, showing those five over ten days or fourteen to maximize sales effect, particularly in high volume and high velocity purchases like packaged goods and e-commerce.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 28, 2026 at 8:05 p.m.

Dave, you can't compare linear TV with streaming re frequency capping for a number of reasons. The key , where loss of attention is concerned, is when the same commercial is repeated in the same break. But this is a no no for most linear sellers.

It should be noted that the huge increase in the number of ad messages, including same show repeats, was due in large part to advertisers switching from "60s" to "30s" in the 1970s and, more recently, their adoption of "15s" as the most common ad unit. This was done to mitigate against high CPM increases--but it also greatly increased the number of messages thrown at consumers.

As for frequency capping--or in the case of linear TV, insisting that no commercial be repeated in the same telecast, that's simply unrealistic. It can't even be considered for movies or sports presentations bur if applied to half- hour and one-hour shows, the inevitable result would be a huge hike in CPMs as that's the only way the sellers could make up for the lost GRPs that would result. Re Streaming, frequency capping poses the same problem but also, it's a myth that an advertiser can control how often a consumer watches his commercials. If you "cap" your ads at 3, thinking that you have "reached" that consumer 3 times and that's enough, in reality, you probably got him to watch your message only once and very few will actually keep their eyes on the screen for the full 15 or 30 seconds.

You may have noted a study by TVision a while ago re the "negative"effects of excessive ad repetotion. What was found was that TV ad exposure is not so seriously affected iuntil you get to extreme and atypical levels, which prevail in a tiny percentage of the cases. Why? Because many of the commercials we see today use entertaining elements to hook viewers--special effects, kids, animals, humor, celebrities, etc-- and these are not turn-offs for many viewers.

My point is that we may have to learn to live with this "problem", it's built into the system.

Howard Shimmel from Janus Strategy & Insights, LLC, March 28, 2026 at 8:14 p.m.

Dave, the other thing worth mentioning is that linear and streaming opearate as two separate, distinct ecosystems and the industry hasn't found a scalable way to plan and integrate across the ecosystems. Bill Harvey and I are doing some research of Nielsen One campaigns to try and measure what % of CTV impressions are pretty much wasted because they are falling among people with excess linear exposure. My sense is that it's very material. datafuelX has a patented forecasting technique that forecasts TV viewership into a set of digital IDs called PrecisionX. PrecisionX can be used to forecast exposure to a brand's campaign- tomorrow, next week, next month- and these forecasts can be used a sjgnals to avoid this waste. We did a POC for NBCU when Kelly Abacarian lead research there, found that the accuracy of our forecasting is strong enough for use- 80%+ accuracy for forecasting if an ID would be reached. We're hoping the industry realizes that it's not just linear excess frequency or CTV excess frequency, it's frequency on the TV screen that's an issue, and a solution exists.

Dan C. from MS Entertainment, March 29, 2026 at 8:09 a.m.

If this is how the industry is defining "premium video" there are millions of viewers who disagree.

In the buyer's defense, which I usually am not - haha - there are just too many platforms and too many different models when it comes to video now. Add in the fragmentation of audiences and interests across all of these platforms across all of these devices AND what the viewer considers entertaining, and you get lots of money pushing antiquated thinking and measurement methods.

Think different and for the love of god, stop giving Nielsen so much power when there are tools and technologies available that constantly reinforce that Nielsen is as useful as a two-wheeled tricycle.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 29, 2026 at 3:21 p.m.

Ed, for sure, we need more research in this area. At the least, over-frequency is an enormous waste of money for advertisers whether or not it also overly annoys viewers. As far as accepting it because "it is built into the system," I reject that. Systems, servers and platforms in our industry are always in development and we can't just accept problematic parts of it because they are legacy components. We can fix the over-frequency problems. It is not a technology issues.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 29, 2026 at 3:27 p.m.

Howard, yes, linear and streaming TV advertising largely operate in separate silos. But, there are no technology barriers holding them from being better integrated. There are many ways to better plan, negotiate, activate, optimize and measure in more integrated ways. It doesn't have to mean full ad delivery integration. It can start with data-driven harmonization. Mine and other companies do that regularlay. There aren't technology or scalability issues; just ones of a lack of real desire to fix things and a willingness to work through the execution issues to make it happen.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 29, 2026 at 3:31 p.m.

Dan, I agree that what is "premium" is in the eye of the beholder. As to whether Nielsen is the right one to solve the problem or not, I suggest them because they have the market position to accomplish it, and that is more important than having a history of being the most-cutting edge in technology.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 30, 2026 at 11:49 a.m.

Dave, here's some interesting historical facts about excess frequency and high degrees of ad clutter in ad breaaks to ponder.

When TV first began it was customary for the networks to air twice and sometimes triple the number of commercils per hour in their daytime game shows and serials--compared to prime time. This, plus their bias against "women's fare" caused many advertisers to decry daytime TV and assume that because of the ad clutter, women weren't paying attention to the commercials. However, when ad recall studies were conducted, they showed that daytime commercials attained the same level of verified ad recall as those in primetime.

When cable arrived on the scene similar complaints were made about its excessive ad loads, yet when recall studies were conducted cable usually came fairly close to the primetime norms--about 15-20% lower, but not at all proportionate to the clutter differential. And in one major study about 25 years ago, using unaided recall for people who had jsut been watching broadcast and cable in the evening hours, the two platforms got virtully identical results.

My conclusion from this is that, yes. people do become accustomed to high doses of commercial clutter. This does not mean that a brand should ignore the subject regarding when and how often its own commercials are scheduled. But trying to change the entire industry's business plan--which relies heavly on lots of ad clutter---- may be a bridge too far.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 30, 2026 at 1:15 p.m.

Ed, thanks much. The historical perspective is very helfpul. Actually, I am not worried about chanigng the entire linear and straming TV indsutry. Many of today's players will be shunken, bankrupt or gone in a few years. I am hopiong to encourage the ones who want to survive, thrive and win to use true ad frequency control as a powerful and highly differntialiting benefit for the advertiers, publishers and viewers.

Phil Guarascio from PG Ventures LLC, March 30, 2026 at 2:04 p.m.

dave,
the respnes you've received all have value, but still don't assure me that the problem is understood. the smartest advertisers WILL find a way to reasonably "feather" their campaigns to a point where reach consideration is recognized and acted upon. the research communiy may want a perfect answer; a savy marketer will push for doing it bettr. we were solving this for P&G in the late '70's and i pushed for solutions when i was at GM --where this is a particular problem because of the narrow buying parameters used by regionla associations and individual dealers. it was so over done at one point in time that we initiated a program to either reward or penalize stations that ignored our intra clutter plan. the outcome wasn't pretty, but we did succed at some level of clean up and our own research supported our move. the industry will NEVER reach consus on this, the big players on the spend side will have to find their own spolutions with the help of platforms that offer realistiic benefits and understand the issue.

keep pushing at the windmill : it will evenyually dend some.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, March 30, 2026 at 5:21 p.m.

Great points Phil. Important validation that top brands have - and will - push their partners to achieve better; and, not let the pursuit of perfect get in their way.
And yes; we'll keep pushing and make it happen for many.