Ad frequency means the number of times your audience has seen your ads.

You can look at ad frequency at the campaign level, which means the number of times—on average—each person in your audience has seen all of your ads.

You can also calculate ad frequency for each ad in your campaign. Ad frequency for an individual ad tells you how many times each person in your audience has seen that ad.

How to calculate ad frequency

To calculate ad frequency, you divide the total number of impressions for your campaign or ad by the total number of people you've reached.

Most major ad platforms will provide you with impressions and reach for each campaign and ad.

Why does ad frequency matter?

Running digital ads requires a balance. On the one hand, your ads need to be seen enough for people to take action. On the other hand, as the same people see the same ads repeatedly, they become less engaged and your overall performance decreases. Marketers call this phenomenon ad fatigue or audience fatigue.

Once your ad frequency passes a threshold, you will see decreased campaign and ad performance. This threshold will vary by advertising platform and campaign. You can't predict it ahead of time. But, understand it will happen.

Practical strategies for optimizing ad frequency and reducing audience fatigue

1. Segment Your Audiences: Run diverse audience segments to ensure your audience only sees the most relevant ads.
2. Rotate Your Ads: Regularly rotate new ads into each campaign. Doing so will keep viewers engaged and reduce audience and ad fatigue.
3. Retarget High-Intent Users: Set up retargeting campaigns to convert high-intent users. Retargeting audiences will be smaller than audiences in your prospecting campaigns. So, ensure they have the appropriate amount of ads in them and prepare to rotate ads more often.