As Aesop, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and some bloke called Neil Curtis all said: “Can one desire too much of a good thing?” And who are we to argue with that stellar line up?

The simple fact is that an abundance of anything makes it feel at best every day and mundane, and at worst irritating and annoying. 

‘You can have too much of a good thing’ is something you’ll hear all the Net Vis staff say when we’re discussing ad frequency with our clients. We know ad frequency can make or break a campaign.

Here’s a little Net Vis know-how on fine tuning your ad frequency to hit the consumer sweet spot.

What does Ad Frequency mean?

Let’s take it from the top. Ad frequency is about how often your target audience* sees your ads whilst browsing online. So, if your frequency is set to 3, an individual will see your ad 3 times. 

*we’re assuming you’ve done your research and refined your ads to make sure your demographics are right – but check out our demographics blog here and if you’re not 100% you’ve got this spot on, give us a call.

Why does it matter how frequently someone sees my ad?

Imagine you’re out for a walk and every bus that goes past you has the same ad on it. When you notice a few of the same ads, you’ll give a wry smile maybe. But by the time you’ve seen 20 buses with the same ads plastered up the side, you’d be forgiven for finding it more than a bit repetitive. Now imagine you walk into the cinema and all the ads in there are for the same thing too. It’s going to begin to feel a bit irritating. You’re probably not feeling too positive about that product or service right now.

A successful ad campaign is all about balance. To raise brand awareness and push conversion rates, you need enough exposure for people to see your ads and want to know more, without saturating them to the point of overwhelm and alienation.

Here’s what we do at Net Vis:

We monitor our client’s ad performance.  Keeping a close eye on ad metrics allows us to identify any signs of ad fatigue or diminishing returns. If we spot any sign of that, we know it’s time to change it up, look for new audiences or run new ads. We find we’re usually a step ahead of the metrics, experience means we can usually predict when performance will drop.

We adjust the frequency caps. You can set caps to limit how often your ads are shown to each individual within a certain time frame. This is simple to do and an absolute no-brainer for protecting against ad fatigue. This will give you much more control over your campaign.

We keep it fresh. We try whenever possible to use a number of different creatives and messages for our client’s ads. This helps maintain audience interest and engagement as they’re not seeing the exact same ad each time.

We test, refine and test again.  Even though we’re pretty hot (OK, brilliant) on ad frequency, we still test to see what works and what doesn’t. We’re constantly checking metrics and reviewing and refining our ads to maximise ROI whilst minimising ad fatigue. Keep on top of your metrics and you’ll soon spot what’s working and what isn’t.

Fine tuning your ads, the Net Vis way

Understanding ad frequency helps you to make the most of your online ad campaign without blowing your budget or alienating your audience.

When Net Visibility run your online ad campaigns, we put your ads through a series of checks and balances before your campaign goes live. Alongside our decisions on ad frequency, we also make sure your audience is niche enough that your ad gets seen by the right people, but not so small that the same people see it too much.

For example, last year we were working with a client who runs a large festival. Once the early bird offers had been snapped up, we helped them to produce a set of ads that would work for the reduced target audience pool, changing up assets and using decreasing tickets numbers to keep the ads fresh and engaging without needing to reduce the frequency of the ads.

It’s what we call the Goldilocks principle: too few ads, the campaign is cold, too many and you’ll burn your customers. Get it just right and everyone will be coming back for more.

There you have it, a bit of Shakespeare, a fairy tale, and some Net Vis wisdom!

Need a little hands-on help with your ads? Give us a call, we’d love to help.