Manage Frequency

Frequency Management is an operational lever that allows Quantcast to reach a target audience at a specified average frequency. The number of times a unique user must be exposed to an advertising message in order to drive the desired outcome varies based on the brand’s objective.

• For example, to drive awareness with display and video, industry norms recommend a frequency of 3-5.
• Conversely, to shift consideration, increased exposure to an ad is more likely to shift a subject’s perception of a brand, so benchmarks recommend a frequency of 10-12.

Ultimately, Frequency Management is designed to drive incremental lift on brand measurement studies such as Brand Lift and Foot Traffic and limit user ad exposure when necessary.

How Frequency Management Works
Rather than setting frequency caps on a campaign, frequency management is designed to drive an average frequency across the life of a line item flight, while maintaining a minimum threshold of the composition of the audience that you are reaching.

The calculation is as follows:  # of Impressions / Unique Reach

These numbers are derived from impressions and user counts for the entire flight of the line item rather than daily figures used for ‘frequency capping’. 

Goal Types and Audience Targeting that support Frequency Management

Frequency Management  is designed as an optimization lever for campaign KPIs/goals that don’t have an optimizable feedback loop. Each goal type is tuned specifically to optimize to the selected goal, and how a line item delivers will differ based on the campaign goal that is selected.

Frequency Management is currently only available when the goal of the line item is:

• Audience Validation
• Brand Study
• Foot Traffic

These goal types are only available for Quantcast Influence targeting types which include:

• Search Powered Audiences
• Demographics
• Search Powered Audiences + Demographics
• Audience Grid
• Shopper Targeting

Supported Ad Formats

• Standard IAB display
• Rich Media
• Video formats
• Mobile Web: Smartphone and Tablet are supported only if Desktop targeting is also included on the line item

Note we do not currently support Frequency Management on Native units.

Success Measurement

When the goal is a typical brand objective such as awareness lift, we recommend measuring this by leveraging a brand lift study using a control vs exposed incrementality methodology. For those trying to drive in-store traffic, we recommend a store traffic incrementality study.

Set Frequency

The default setting in the system is an average frequency range of 3-5. This is the default range expectation for awareness campaigns which make up the majority of our brand lift study objectives.

Use the frequency slider to set the desired average frequency for a line item. It can either be a range (IE 5-9) or a discrete number (IE 8).

There are some additional stipulations:

• The range cannot have a larger distance than 5 from the min to max frequency goal
• The max cannot be smaller than the min target frequency
• To choose a discrete goal, set the slider so the min and max are the same number

Frequency Parameter Limitations

Average frequencies can be set as follows:

Video Limits

There is less supply in video than in display, so there are less opportunities to win video impressions with the same person over the campaign line item flight duration. The higher the frequency target the more challenging it is to achieve it. This is especially true and more difficult for highly constrained flights, regardless of creative format.

Recommended Frequency

The number of times a user must be exposed to an advertising message in order to drive the desired outcome varies based on client objective, as well as targeting type, creative type (such as video or display) and creative message.

While there is no ideal frequency, there are industry benchmarks and considerations that can be leveraged in setting campaign parameters.

1. Campaign Objective Aligned with KPIs
   
   
2. Additional Considerations
   
   

Video Brand Impact

Video has the benefit of leveraging motion, emotion, sight and sound to deliver the creative message and can often (not always) be more effective at driving certain objectives.   

Frequency Constraints

Constraints include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

• Geotargeting to small target areas
• Custom whitelists/blacklists
• Inventory type (Video is more scarce than IAB standard inventory)
• High viewability thresholds
• Mobile device targeting

Adjusting Frequency Mid-Campaign

You can adjust frequency during a campaign, however there are a few factors that could impact achieving the target frequency:

1. If the frequency target is updated too close to the end date of the line item, the system may not be able to achieve the desired frequency in the allotted time or reduce the number of exposures that have already occurred
2. If the updated frequency is significantly different from the original, the line item may need more budget added to achieve the new target

Example: If the original target frequency is 4 and the reach is 1mm, then the line item will need 4mm impressions to reach the target. If an updated target frequency of 8 is selected while maintaining the reach of 1mm, an additional 4mm impressions will be needed to reach the updated target..

Although frequency adjustments can be made at any time, it is not recommended to add new frequency controls to a brand lift survey campaign that has already been running. Without controlling frequency from the beginning, you will likely reach a large number of cookies that will all be considered ‘exposed’ by Nielsen or Millward Brown. Once you start controlling frequency, the cookies that get the frequency treatment will be those exposed in the future and a subset of the overall audience reached. However, the brand lift survey will be distributed evenly across all ‘exposed’ cookies throughout the entire campaign and will not likely show the desired lift as if the frequency treatment had been applied to all exposed users from the campaign start date.

Success Expectation

Frequency management achieves an average frequency +/-1 of the target in >80% of line items.

For example:

• A discrete goal of 8 will be considered successful within 7.1 - 8.9
• A target range of 5-9 will be considered successful anywhere within the target range (so 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 will be deemed successful)