Data-Backed Tips: Ad Frequency without Wear Out

Finding the right ad frequency for your audio campaign can feel like walking a tightrope. If your number is too low, you may not reach and influence your audience. If it’s too high, you risk annoying them. And if you over-correct in either direction, your odds of meeting your campaign goals plummet. 

TLDR: There’s no magic number. But we’ve done the research, and our data scientists at the Insights Lab identified some tips to help you find the right ad frequency for your next campaign.

Tailor Your Frequency

Brand familiarity, flight length, and competition affect optimal frequency. Your campaign objectives and market position should inform your strategy. 

TLDR: It depends on many factors—scale up or down based on how your brand fits into these categories.

Make Adjustments to Extend Reach

If you have less than 50% reach with less than 2x frequency, it’s time to make some adjustments. To extend your campaign reach, consider:

• Increasing impressions

• Consolidating products

• Decreasing flight length

• Narrowing targeting

TLDR: If your campaign isn’t meeting these thresholds, consider making adjustments.

Higher Frequencies Deliver Results

The more you hear something, the more likely you are to remember it. So, it’s not surprising that higher ad frequencies produce better results. Across the funnel, higher frequency correlates to higher lifts. Our studies show:

• Better Brand Awareness: Across 170+ studies, in every brand metric, 4+ ad exposures generated the highest brand awareness.

• More Brand Familiarity: On average, new brands need 2x the number of frequencies per week to get the same amount of lift as established brands.

• Bigger Conversion Lifts: While 1.3x frequency per week produced a +8.2% conversion lift, 2.7x delivered a +15.5% lift—that’s nearly double.

TLDR: When it comes to frequency, more is more—more awareness, familiarity, and conversion lift.

Variety Prevents Wear Out

Creative variety keeps campaigns interesting and prevents ad fatigue. Wear out projections depend on a few key variables, most notably the relationship between frequency and campaign length. Here are some factors to consider:

• Frequency

• Campaign length

• Campaign objective

TLDR: Creative variety matters. Be sure to rotate your creative to curb wear out.

Frequency is Make or Break for Campaigns

TLDR: Finding the right balance isn’t magic—but there’s a science to selecting the right frequency. And we can help. Whether you’re a new brand trying to raise awareness, an established brand looking to increase product sales, or somewhere in between, we can help you choose the right ad frequency for your next campaign—without wear out. 

Let’s make campaign magic.

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