Commentary

Omnicom Launches Frequency Probe, Finds 'Negative Reach'



As part of a longer-term research project to understand what constitutes optimum ad frequency in today's multimedia, multimodal world, Omnicom's OM Intelligence unit this morning published the first in a series of reports finding that excessive frequency actually produces "negative reach," a phenomenon that happens "when a consumer has seen your …

6 comments about "Omnicom Launches Frequency Probe, Finds 'Negative Reach'".
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  1. Joel Rubinson from Rubinson Partners, Inc., April 20, 2026 at 12:29 p.m.

    I do not buy into this.  frequency over what time period?  how does that relate to recency theory (the late Erwin Ephron) which I have determined in experiments with Viant and NCS increases ad response by 2-3 x. Frequency is needed to probabilisticly dliver an ad proximal to an upcoming purchase. How about Movable Middles vs "Dead zone" brand rejectors? do they have the same frequency response curves? as Einstein said, "It is important to make things as simple as possible but no simpler".

  2. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, April 20, 2026 at 12:49 p.m.

    Joel, Erwin's theory was based on a misreading of a study by Professor Jones which measured the supposed share of market sales effects of household --not viewer--reach for TV campaigns over a week for an arbitrary sample of packeged goods brands. From this  Erwin concluded that the ideal TV media plan should attain a 70% reach but a 1.0 frequency every week  adding  the famous quote, "Frequency is grabgrass". Amazingly this has been quoted ever since by people who seem to think that it meant that frerquency should be avoided --which makes no sense at all. Of course, its less desirable to pile up your frequency so the consumer is exposed many times in a short time frame, but aside from that, without frequency you have no ad campaign.

  3. Curtis Smith from Klick Health, April 20, 2026 at 3:10 p.m.

    This is not really about effective frequency, and more about repeititve frequency within a couple platforms in a very short time period. It's people being annoyed by same CTV ad running 3,4,5x within the same program or within a short period of time (an hour). Same with Social where retargeting ads hitting you every time you open the ap. 4x in one program is different than 4x in a week.

  4. John Grono from GAP Research, April 20, 2026 at 6:06 p.m.

    Spot on Curtis.   The repetitive frequency degrades the product ... and also degrades the quality of the broadcaster's product.   No wonder viewing is declining.

  5. Joel Rubinson from Rubinson Partners, Inc. replied, April 21, 2026 at 1:08 p.m.

     I found that ads delivered probabilistically proximal to the category purchase event had 2-3 times the ROAS. also, I find excessive frequency is not so excessive to Movable Middles.  that is fresh data and experimental evidence

  6. Joanna OConnell from OMG, April 22, 2026 at 2:25 p.m.

    Heya Joel – My team and I are appreciating the dialogue we are seeing here coming out of this article.

    For full context and transparency, this is how we asked the specific question that seems most germane to your comment (where we were trying to understand consumers’ awareness of ad repetition and how they perceived it under different situations): "When watching your streaming subscription(s), how do you feel when seeing the same advertisement two or more times during your show?" And we gave folks choices for level of annoyance at "same ad during your show" when it occurs 2x, 3x, 4x or more. And at 4x or more, 61% of people chose "very frustrating." We asked tons more questions – for example, under different situations like different from the same brands, same ad across different platforms, etc. that led to the full analysis in the piece. So if you are interested in how the full report turned out you can check it out here (sorry in advance, it’s gated): https://transform.omnicommedia.com/whitepaper/why-frequency-matters-combating-negative-reach-download-form/

    Also, I wanted to mention that we hyperlinked to your work on the Movable Middles in our Future of Brand Influence thought leadership in the context of rethinking traditional notions around audience selection (as well as highlighting the MMA’s piece, Brand as Performance: Proving Brand Marketing Drives Long-Term Growth), because we think the whole body of work around marketing growth frameworks is so fascinating and so important. If you want to check out that piece, it’s here (also gated, sorry, haha): https://transform.omnicommedia.com/whitepaper/future-of-brand-influence/

    Joanna

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About the Author

Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.

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