Contents
- Frequency is the ratio of impressions to reach: the average number of times a person saw the ad.
- It's the first figure to look at when a cost per result rises for no clear reason.
- It's never additive: two campaigns at a frequency of 3 on a shared audience don't give 6.
Definition
Frequency, or repetition, measures the average number of exposures of one person to an ad over the period.
Formula
Frequency = impressions divided by reach.
Worked example
A campaign goes from a frequency of 2.1 to 5.4 in six weeks. CTR halves over the same period and cost per result rises 60%. The creative hasn't aged: it's the audience that has seen it too much.
Orders of magnitude
Beyond 3 to 5 on a cold audience, fatigue becomes visible on most accounts. The threshold depends on format and duration: a short video holds up longer than a static image.
The most common mistakes
- Aggregating it across campaigns. An account's frequency means nothing if several campaigns target the same audience.
- Concluding creative fatigue without looking at reach. If the audience is too narrow, changing creative won't fix anything.
- Ignoring frequency on retargeting campaigns. They reach high thresholds very fast, by design.
Where to find the metric
In Meta, the Frequency column. In LinkedIn Ads, Average frequency. On Google Ads, the notion exists on Display and YouTube, not on the Search Network.
Frequently asked questions
The Adwise team connects Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, GA4 and Search Console so agencies and freelancers can run their campaigns from a single place.