Frequency Capping is a Campaign setting that allows you to limit the number of impressions per user per day for each individual Campaign. Frequency Capping limits the number of times your ads will appear to the same person in one day.
By default, your Frequency Caps are automatically optimized by BidIQ®, our proprietary real-time bidding algorithm. BidIQ® processes hundreds of variables for each and every user to determine whether or not to bid, and how much, at the time of each potential impression.
Adjust your Campaign Frequency Capping
By setting your own manual frequency caps, you are limiting the ability of BidIQ® to automatically optimize your campaign's performance. This will result in lower performance and under-delivery.
To set a manual Frequency Capping for your Campaign:
- Log in to AdRoll ABM and go to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks
- Click the Campaigns tab
- Find the campaign that you want to adjust and click on the campaign name
- Click Edit
- Scroll down to Choose Web Settings and click Advanced Options to expose the hidden Frequency Capping settings
- Toggle off Automatically optimize frequency caps
- Enter your number under 'Impressions per user per day'. Extremely low frequency caps can not be guaranteed.
- Click Save
The manual Frequency Capping will be manually set for this specific campaign only. We suggest that you monitor your Campaign performance closely and toggle on Frequency Capping to 'Automatically optimize frequency caps' to let our BidIQ® determine how many times your ads appear to each user.
Account Level Frequency Capping
Account-level frequency capping can be used to help more evenly distribute impressions across multiple accounts in one-to-many ABM advertising strategies. For example, if your account list contains many accounts of different sizes, you may implement a manual account level frequency cap to more evenly allocate impressions to each account, so that large accounts do not receive a disproportionate amount of impressions.
- Manual account frequency: Choose the number of impressions you want to serve to each account on your list for the respective campaign.
- Automatically balance account frequency: BidIQ prioritizes equal impression distribution across your target accounts to prevent larger accounts from receiving more impressions.
- Only apply if your list contains 7 or more accounts to avoid underspending your ideal budget.
- Account Level Frequency caps should be carefully balanced and considered with User Level Frequency caps, so as not to overly restrict delivery.
Examples
Example 1: (Consider the following setup)
- Account Level Frequency Capping: 10 impressions per day
- User Level Frequency Capping: 5 per day
In this example, any single account can only receive a collective of 10 impressions. Since the user cap is set to 5, this means that a single user can receive up to 5 impressions. If 2 users receive 5 impressions each for that day, they will have fulfilled the account level cap (and therefore stopped any additional ad serving for other users in the same account).
Example 2: (Consider the following setup)
- Campaign 1 Frequency Capping: 10 impressions per day
- Campaign 2 Frequency Capping: 30 impressions per day
In this example, Account A’s total daily visibility is the sum of its individual campaign limits. Since the caps are independent but additive, the account can receive a collective total of 40 impressions.
If Campaign 1 reaches its 10-impression limit, ad serving for that specific campaign will stop. However, Account A can continue to receive up to 30 additional impressions from Campaign 2. Once both campaigns hit their respective limits, the total account-level cap of 40 is fulfilled, and all ad serving for Account A will cease for the remainder of the day.
Important
- Account-level frequency caps are at the campaign level. If the same account exists in multiple campaigns, the daily possible impressions that account can receive is the aggregate of your account frequency caps.
Best Practices
BidIQ is designed to optimize your campaign performance within the specific parameters you set based on your audience size: this includes balancing your budget and your performance goals.
If you're observing high ad frequency in your campaign, it's often a key indicator that one of two situations is occurring:
- Your budget might be too high relative to your target audience size. BidIQ will spend the allocated budget, and if there aren't enough unique users to reach, it will show ads to the same users more frequently.
- Your audience size might be too small relative to your budget. With a limited audience, BidIQ may repeatedly show ads to available users to meet your budget requirements.
When this happens, it's a good time to review your audience size. You might need to expand your audience targeting settings to reach more people or lower your budget so it aligns with the size of your existing audience.
FAQ
How can I set a specific impression cap for an individual account across multiple campaigns?
If you need to control for impressions to a specific account, it is best to set up an individual campaign that is only targeting that single account, and then applying an Account Level Frequency cap.
Why do my ads appear multiple times on the same page?
Occasionally, you may see multiple ads from your campaign appearing on a single webpage simultaneously. This is known as a "Page Takeover."
While this often occurs at random due to the structure of real-time bidding exchanges, our system utilizes BidIQ to evaluate every ad opportunity independently. If a page takeover occurs, it is generally because BidIQ has identified that specific user as having a very high probability of converting, or the context of the page is highly relevant to your business.
When a page takeover occurs, you effectively secure a monopoly on that high-value user's attention, preventing competitors from showing up on the same page. Even in these instances, you are typically only spending a fraction of a cent per impression, ensuring resources are not wasted.
Because ad exchanges operate in milliseconds and bids come from different sources, there is no technical way to guarantee this will never happen. However, we have strict frequency caps in place to ensure this is a rare occurrence. For the vast majority of your audience, ads will be shown at a normal frequency.