Ad Frequency
Ad frequency is the average number of times one person sees your ads over a period, so a frequency of 15 to 20 means each person saw your ads 15 to 20 times.
What ad frequency should you aim for?
It depends on who's seeing the ads. On cold traffic the job is reach: as many new people as possible, because they're the pool you get to retarget later. On people who just booked a sales call, high frequency is the point. I aim for 15 to 20 across the 72 hours between the booking and the call, from about 30 short-form pieces and a few long-form ones.
| Audience | Frequency I aim for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Booked a sales call, call not held yet | 15 to 20 over about 72 hours | Builds in days the trust organic content builds in three to four months |
| Webinar registrants before the live event | High, from 30+ short-form pieces | Gets people to show up live and take the VIP spot |
| Cold prospects | As wide a reach as the budget allows | New people now are the retargeting pool later |
Why is a high frequency fine before a sales call?
Because the audience is small and the content is varied. These are people who asked to talk to you in the last few days, and an organic buyer would usually spend 90 to 120 days watching your content before getting to the same point. A frequency of 15 to 20 compresses that, as long as every view is a different piece: an answer to a question your closer hears, a case study, the mechanism behind the offer.
It's one part of the pre-call sequence, next to the confirmation page, email and SMS and a setter call. Across past client accounts that full build has increased show rates by up to 34%.
When does a high frequency become a problem?
When it's the same ad. Since Meta's Andromeda update, ads that look and sound alike give the system nothing new to learn from, and costs spike. The volume path of 30 to 50 new creatives a week also burns creatives out faster. With 10 to 15 strong, genuinely different creative ideas in the account, Meta rotates them instead of burning one in a week, so the frequency your audience sees is spread across different messages.
Warm audiences have a second limit: they run out. Followers and recent engagers are a finite pool, so exclude anyone who engaged in the last 30 to 90 days from cold campaigns and give them their own retargeting. On cold webinars, that exclusion keeps cost per registrant flat or dropping instead of climbing.
FAQ
Is a frequency of 15 to 20 too high?
Not for people who booked a call in the last few days, as long as they're seeing 15 to 20 different pieces of content. It's too high when it's one ad shown over and over, because nobody learns anything new from the same ad a tenth time.
Does ad frequency matter on cold campaigns?
Less than reach does. On cold traffic you want the budget finding new people, because they become the audience you retarget once they visit, apply or book.