Buying Mass Reach with Optimal Frequency Online
Five? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? How many ads does it take to reach your target consumer? How do you as a marketer walk that fine line between aggressive and annoying? How can your campaigns maintain ROI without sacrificing volume?
Young Bean Song, Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute at Atlas DMT and Greg Rogers, Director of Strategy & Insights at MEC: Interaction set out to solve this complex question in one hour or less at the AD: TECH session “Buying Mass Reach with Optimal Frequency Online.”
First up was Song, who gave this simple definition of that ever-elusive “optimal frequency”:
”The ad frequency for a give user or set of users that maximizes an advertisers goal.”
Song says most people aren’t getting enough impressions when it comes to banner and CPM-based advertising. As many know, different users convert at different numbers of impressions - someone may purchase after seeing an ad once vs. another who purchases after seeing the ad ten times. The trick is to cap your impression frequency at that level which you can still maintain a positive return for each incremental conversion.
Easier said than done, right? Song gives us a few general guidelines:
- The more targeted your inventory, the more sustained your conversions will be across frequency levels.
- Take a look at your ad verticals and don’t treat each one the same. The nuances of the industry niche can have a big impact on the optimal frequency.
- Conversion rates typically diminish around 4-6 impressions.
- The most profitable frequency levels can be higher than the most efficient frequency levels. Remember to balance volume & efficiency.
Song closed by advising marketers to save their precious impressions for someone who hasn’t seen their campaign a hundred times before. It’s like that cheesy dating book says - they’re just not into you. It’s time to move on.
Next up was Rogers, who presented a case study on a “Tech Advertiser” and began with the often-heard statement that “first impressions are everything.” Those marketers that have first exposure advantage stand a good chance of winning consumers over to their brand.
But beware the ‘Enthusiast User’ says Rogers, those gamers, day traders, sports fans, and tech geeks. While they can be a valuable acquisition target, they can also cause a huge drain on campaigns, taking a disproportionate number of impressions and causing big distribution skews (though Rogers says such skews are inherent in almost every campaign).
Like Song, Rogers pointed out the rule of diminishing returns and the importance it plays in setting an accurate frequency cap. For “Tech Advertiser”, an exposure limit of 5 impressions per 2 week period resulted in a CTR increase of 45%. Not too shabby. Even more impressive was the improvement in campaign efficiency - costs per acquisition went way down.
Other quick points of note:
- Capping is not a perfect science - you need to test and monitor.
- It’s still awaiting widespread public acceptance - there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the practice.
- Be aware of volume and efficiency trade-offs.
- Focus on eliminating the most overt examples of campaign waste.
Song and Rogers ended with a quick Q & A and advised everyone to take a look at the white paper on the Atlas site for more detailed information.
On the whole a great session. Marketers should remember that this session dealt with CPM and banner based ads only - search is a whole different ball game. Recent studies say it makes sense to leverage multiple messages, as conversion cycles tend to last much longer in that channel. So, unlike a night at the pub, it doesn’t always pay to cut yourself off early.
