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Strategy/Tactics|January 3, 2023

The Power of Frequency for your Multiscreen Campaign

Frequency is the key to seeing the biggest results from your TV and streaming TV advertising. Here’s how to make your campaign—and your business—memorable.

Two woman watching tv and a tablet

    In this article:

  1. Goal One: Growing Your Business
  2. Goal Two: Promotions and Special Events

In advertising, the power of frequency, the average number of times a unique consumer sees your ad, can’t be understated. It’s important to make sure potential customers are exposed to your message enough times so that it makes a lasting impression. Ideally, audiences will eventually recall your creative without even trying.

Think about familiar TV ads, jingles you have memorized, and commercials you know within the first few seconds—it all has to do with frequency, and exposure through the #1 brand builder, TV. Recent research revealed that consumer ad recall was 2.2 times higher, and purchase intent was 1.3 times higher, for the same ads viewed on TV compared to smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.1

The Spectrum Reach Ad Portal Optimizes Your Campaign

Our DIY, self-service ad platform, the Spectrum Reach Ad Portal, will automatically optimize your ad campaign’s frequency. This makes it easy to build effective campaigns on the best of TV and streaming TV, ensuring potential customers will see your ad enough times to remember your business and your message. And TV ads drive results. Surveys suggest 68 percent of viewers took some kind of action within 12 months of seeing an ad on TV.2

 

Here’s how to get frequency right.

The sweet spot: make sure your target audience sees your ad at least three times during your campaign for the biggest results.

Watch this video to learn more.

To maximize the power of your campaign, be mindful of two additional campaign metrics in addition to frequency: impressions and reach.

Impressions

The overall number of times your message is seen

Reach

The unique viewers that see your message at least once in any given period

Balance the metrics of frequency, impressions, and reach to boost the effectiveness of your campaign and then set goals to optimize your campaign.

For example, you can run your ads more or less frequently over certain periods of time, favoring certain geographies to adjust your frequency, reach, and impressions in different ways depending on your business goals. Here are two sample campaign goals:

1

Goal One: Growing Your Business

If, like most business owners, your goal is to grow your business as a whole and build your customer base, your campaign should maintain an equal balance between frequency, reach, and impressions to grow your customer base over time. Start by reaching a high percentage of your target audience (50% is a good jumping-off point) with a steady amount of frequency.

If you have a smaller budget, you might consider targeting a smaller geography with your ad spots. Ask yourself: how long are people willing to drive to get to my business? Do my customers shop online more frequently than they come in the store? If so, targeting a certain geography isn’t as important as targeting the right demographic with regular frequency.

When it comes to impressions, be sure to run your campaign for as long as your budget allows and refresh your creative every so often, so your message stays engaging and relevant.
 

2

Goal Two: Promotions and Special Events

If you’re hoping to generate leads in the run up to a special event (i.e., a sale or limited-time offer), your campaign should focus more on frequency and less on reach and impressions to get your message in front of your customers as many times as possible.

Here, too, targeting a smaller geography can be effective. Focus on reaching a concentrated audience, with a shorter campaign (approximately 2-3 weeks leading up to the event), and working toward the “frequency magic number” of 3.

And if you’re able to run a longer campaign (and up your impressions), you can continue building on this magic number to drive even more results.

 

Get the exposure you need to make your business a household name.

Our DIY online tool, the Spectrum Reach Ad Portal, makes building a TV + streaming campaign simple. You can choose a package that’s ideal for connecting with the audience you want to target. Each package is already optimized to utilize the frequency magic number of 3 and ensure audiences remember your message. From there, it’s easy to balance frequency, impressions, and reach, and to make the most from your advertising spend.

With the Spectrum Reach Ad Portal, it’s simple: Reach more customers. On more screens. On your budget. All through one easy-to-use self-service ad platform.

Sources:

  1. (1) Comcast and Mediascience, October 2022: https://corporate.comcast.com/stories/comcast-advertising-research-long-form-tv-streaming-advertising-memorable
  2. (2) Admall Audience SCAN 2022 – Retail Shoppers Audience Intelligence