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Frequency caps

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Overview

Frequency caps on X allow you to optimize ad delivery to maximize reach against your target audience at the optimal exposure level. Whether its brand lift or offline sales impact, Frequency caps can help you optimize your campaigns to deliver efficient business outcomes through better control over impression delivery and target audience reach over extended periods of time. 

Frequency caps are available globally within ad group details for Reach, Engagement, Video Views, and Pre-Roll Views objectives. 

 

Why should I use Frequency caps?

  • More control over ad delivery. Frequency caps allow you to control how many times someone sees your ad throughout the duration of your campaign
  • Maximize audience reach. Frequency caps allow you to maximize reach by redistributing impressions to new audiences
  • Enhanced campaign outcomes. Frequency caps give you more control over your media delivery so you can further optimize for the outcomes that matter most

 

Data-backed best practices

 

  • Campaigns with frequency caps have 16% lower cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and 5x lower cost per thousand unique users (CP1KUU) than campaigns without frequency caps, controlling for market, vertical, and campaign length.*
  • Weekly frequency of exposure has an effect on driving upper-funnel brand metrics. From our research, we found that up to 80% of the overall potential impact on Ad Recall and Brand Awareness occurs within the first 2 exposures per week of a campaign.**
  • As we move down the funnel, a slightly higher frequency is needed to drive lift. This relationship can be seen in our analysis of Campaign Awareness, whereby more exposures per week are needed to achieve 80% of the overall potential impact.**
  • While further value can be attained with increased weekly frequency, the impact of each added weekly exposure diminishes relative to the first impressions. With a fixed campaign budget, increasing the weekly frequency of exposure has a trade-off on the size of the audience reach.**
  • The length of the X ad campaign is important in driving upper-funnel brand metrics, where campaigns with a duration of between 4 and 12 weeks see higher lifts in Recall (+5%), Brand Awareness (+18%), and Campaign Awareness (+14%) than those with flight under 4 weeks at 4 exposures per week.**

 

*Source: Meta-analysis of 1,708 Global X Ads campaigns that ran between December 2020 and July 2021.

**Source: Meta-analysis of all 301 Nielsen Brand Effect studies of US X Ads campaigns that started between January 2019 and May 2020.

 

FAQs

You can set a limit to the number of impressions seen per person per ad group on a 24-hour, 7-day, or 30-day basis. (Example: Up to 2 impressions every 7 days.)

Frequency caps are set at the ad group level from the Campaign Form, Ads Editor, or via the Ads API.

 

#ProTip:

Frequency caps can affect the pacing and ongoing cost per result (CPM, CPV, etc.)  of your campaign. This is because setting a cap limits the number of impressions you can bid on in the auction. If you encounter this, consider extending your campaign flight, expanding your target audience definition, raising your bids and adjusting your cap settings. 

 

For more information, please contact your X Account Manager.

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