Media Buying 101: Frequency Cap CAN Make A Big Difference
Continuing my Media Buying 101 series of posts, I want to talk a little bit about frequency capping. When purchasing banner inventory by CPM (cost per one-thousand impressions) a frequency cap saves you from spending your budget on a handful of users. A frequency cap determines how many times a unique visitor sees your advertisement. Most advertising networks will allow you to specify the frequency cap of your choice as long as it is stated in the initial insertion order (you may want to check if it can be changed once you’re into your flight).
When paying a CPM > $1.00 I like to set the frequency cap to 2 views every 24 hours per unique visitor. This means that a unique visitor (determined by IP address) will see my advertisement 2 times every 24 hours. This is a very important part to the optimization process, as we’ve also had some very successful media buys with a 4/24 frequency cap (some campaigns the visitor finally clicks after seeing the creative multiple times).
So before you give up on your media buy (thinking it won’t work or you can’t optimize anymore) I highly suggest you play around with the frequency cap. I am amazed by the number of affiliates that don’t even know what this is. Good luck!
Email
TwitThis
RSS
4 Responses to “Media Buying 101: Frequency Cap CAN Make A Big Difference”
-
I think testing of freq is VERY under-rated in both CPV & media buys. I have played on the opposite end of moving converting campaigns with – ROI to longer freq cap. IE from 24hrs to 72hrs from 72hrs to 1 week and yes, even a monthly . The results? What once was losing money is now net positive and on some campaigns the difference is double digit. I will try going the other way too and post the results IE from 1/24 to 2/24 is conversions but light volume.
Phoenix
-
Ryan says:
Great tip. Thanks for sharing!
-
I really need to revisit this from some of my PPV ads. I was aware of what it meant but it really is something that gets ignored as most of us begin focusing on different targets and keywords.
Personally I killed a campaign the other day that was profitable for the first few days and then kind of trailed off into the red. I was originally worried about the freq cap but then checked my analytics and still saw I was getting about 98% unique traffic. Would you consider the analytics reading a good measure for deciding if your lander needs a larger cap or not?
-
Ryan says:
Hey Mike thanks for your comment. 1) Once you get a profitable campaign be really careful about making changes. Sure you want to optimize, but do it slowly, and if you notice your optimization is having a negative effect, promptly move things back the way they were. 2) Since this is a CPV campaign the frequency capping is going to be a little different than when media buying. First, I recommend that you use Prosper 202. After a few days checkout the IP logs (Analyze > IPs). See if the same people are viewing your pages and not converting. I would personally adjust the cap based on this data. Good luck!
I think testing of freq is VERY under-rated in both CPV & media buys. I have played on the opposite end of moving converting campaigns with – ROI to longer freq cap. IE from 24hrs to 72hrs from 72hrs to 1 week and yes, even a monthly . The results? What once was losing money is now net positive and on some campaigns the difference is double digit. I will try going the other way too and post the results IE from 1/24 to 2/24 is conversions but light volume.
Phoenix
-
Great tip. Thanks for sharing!
I really need to revisit this from some of my PPV ads. I was aware of what it meant but it really is something that gets ignored as most of us begin focusing on different targets and keywords.
Personally I killed a campaign the other day that was profitable for the first few days and then kind of trailed off into the red. I was originally worried about the freq cap but then checked my analytics and still saw I was getting about 98% unique traffic. Would you consider the analytics reading a good measure for deciding if your lander needs a larger cap or not?
-
Hey Mike thanks for your comment. 1) Once you get a profitable campaign be really careful about making changes. Sure you want to optimize, but do it slowly, and if you notice your optimization is having a negative effect, promptly move things back the way they were. 2) Since this is a CPV campaign the frequency capping is going to be a little different than when media buying. First, I recommend that you use Prosper 202. After a few days checkout the IP logs (Analyze > IPs). See if the same people are viewing your pages and not converting. I would personally adjust the cap based on this data. Good luck!
4 Comments