The Frequency Dilemma
In 1972, Herbert Krugman argued that three exposures were the magic number for people to act. Within his famous study, he declared that one exposure ignited curiosity, two exposures allows the user to evaluate whether the ad has any value and by the third exposure, the viewer is now familiar, and this acts as a reminder. This study took place before the boom of digital advertising, when people were roughly exposed to 500 messages a day, nowadays, it’s more like 5000, is this still valid?
In the last decade we’ve seen an increase in display retargeting activity (IAB), no doubt a large majority of this is from performance marketers who see ‘efficient’ results from messaging anyone who has visited their site with an arsenal of ads because they have shown ‘intent’ to buy and probably keep hammering them with ads even after they’ve bought, especially if they purchased offline or through a different device. They must surely be reaching hundreds of exposures per month, this feels like too much, no?
Recent research from Burton et al submitted in the Journal of Advertising Research last year supports the bombardment approach and suggested that consumers who saw an advertisement 10 or more times had greater purchase intentions than consumers with fewer exposures.
The Advertisers Association, however, challenged this approach earlier this year in their ‘Arresting the Decline of Public Trust in UK Advertising’ report to decrease the bombardment of advertising in the media with the hope of regaining trust in advertising. They are aiming to work with ISBA, DMA and the ICO to develop best practice guidelines to reduce excessing advertising frequency.
We need only look at the rise in adblockers to suggest that users are moving away from internet ads, approximately 40% of Europeans, currently use ad blockers according to Global Web Index. The top motivation for ad blocking is ‘too many ads’ (48%). I work in advertising and I’ve had my ad blocker run in the background for my personal computer for the last 3 years, and I know without advertising I probably wouldn’t be able to read a lot of content. I’ve made a conscious effort to unblock sites I read regularly, promise.
Recently Marc Pritchard, CMO of P&G, mentioned at this year’s Cannes Lion festival that they would no longer be interested in frequency anymore as they will only focus on reach. Fortunately, they have been able to link sales growth with web searches and are able to influence this by showing their ads to more people, rather than increasing the frequency.
Beyond evidence from studies or opinions from marketers and consumers, brands should be able to use big data and algorithmic attribution modelling to suggest not only the optimal frequency for each channel but also the sequence in which the activity should be placed to deliver the best effectiveness. Unfortunately, this is only valid for digital activity which can be tracked which feels like it’s declining as more of us are using activity within walled gardens making it harder for us to interrogate their data and combine them up with one another to deliver an overall story. Better to find out here than to invest in hundreds of thousands of pounds in tech and be told in the kick-off session after the contract has been signed that over half of your activity can’t be tracked properly.
“Marketing’s job is to profitably, get more people, to buy more stuff, on more occasions, at higher prices.” (Jon Bradshaw 2016). Evidence-based marketers have been debating for a sustainable model whereby brands think just as much about the consequences their activity has on the overall brand in the future as they do beyond the first action people take after being exposed to an ad., I’d suggest that brands look further beyond the next 12 months and think about keeping the advertising ecosystem alive for them to continue advertising in future years. As an industry, we have burned out the media channels which have previously elicited the best response (face-to-face, direct mail and telephone) and we seem to have no problem abusing ads on the most personal devices held by our customers today. Either we reverse this trend of ad bombardment and become more sustainable marketers or get ready to embrace a world where people are exposed to half a million ads a day, smh.
