For those who have been working in digital marketing for a long time, the frequency metric in Facebook advertising is certainly not unfamiliar. However, for newcomers to the field, this concept is still quite unfamiliar, and the question is how much frequency will achieve the best effectiveness.
1. What is Facebook ads frequency?
Facebook Ads frequency is the average number of times your ad is delivered to your target audience. When an advertising campaign reaches and delivers to more customers and spends more money, the frequency metric will increase. The formula to calculate frequency is:
Frequency = Impressions / Reach
Facebook Ads frequency directly affects the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. Usually, a person needs to see the ad repeatedly to remember the product image, service, brand, and then decide to take the action you are calling for.
However, if the ad is repeated too many times, it will cause fatigue and annoyance for users. This leads to higher advertising costs but less than expected effectiveness. In some cases, this metric is only for reference if the business wants to run ads solely to increase brand awareness.
2. What is a reasonable Facebook ads frequency?
Too low Facebook Ads frequency will make customers unable to remember your brand. But if the frequency is too high, it will make users uncomfortable. So what frequency is enough? This depends on many factors such as business sector, product, ad content, and profit metrics. It is difficult to set an absolute number for this issue.
If one user sees the ad 2-3 times but still does not care or ignore the CTA (call to action) and you still have to pay, it will be very costly and wasteful. For common, inexpensive products targeting a broad customer segment, the ad frequency is usually around 1.7 – 2, which is quite high.
However, for high-priced products where the business needs customers to remember the brand, a frequency of 1.7 – 2.0 is normal. The appropriate Facebook Ads frequency is as follows:
- For common, popular, inexpensive products, frequency should be around 1 – 1.5, which is reasonable.
- For expensive products or those in the process of brand building that need to be remembered by customers, frequency should be 1.7 – 2 or even higher, up to 4. Absolutely avoid letting frequency reach 10, as that will cause user aversion.
3. Guide to reducing frequency in Facebook ads
Over time, the Facebook Ads frequency metric tends to increase. This is because businesses continuously compete with each other, striving to bring their products closer to the target customers. However, the effectiveness of an ad only lasts for a short time and cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Reducing the frequency metric to make ads more effective, able to reach the right target audience, and boost sales is what you need to aim for. The ways to reduce Facebook Ads frequency are as follows:
Maintain continuous Facebook ad running
When the ad is running, you should limit editing the ad content and avoid turning the campaign on/off midway. Even a small edit will cause the ad to restart from the beginning. This means the ad will run again to the old customer pool instead of reaching new customers.
As a result, the frequency will increase rapidly, and sales effectiveness will decrease. If you want to edit the ad, wait until the campaign ends. You can also run two campaigns in parallel to compare results before making changes. This is a very important note when running Facebook ads.
Maintain a stable budget
To reduce the frequency metric, digital marketers need to pay attention to maintaining a stable budget. Sudden increases or decreases in ad budget will reduce the campaign’s effectiveness. Facebook’s AI will have to relearn the entire old customer pool and may also retarget the same old customers, reducing purchase efficiency. Regularly check your ad account.
Exclude customers who have interacted or purchased
For fanpages that have run ads for a long time, the old customer pool is already large and has seen the ads many times, so running ads again targeting them is ineffective. The budget will be wasted unnecessarily. Excluding this customer segment helps the ad reach new customers, thereby reducing ad frequency.
The frequency metric in Facebook advertising partly helps evaluate the effectiveness of an ad campaign. By optimizing this metric, you can reach customers more effectively and increase sales.