About reach and frequency buying
Reach and frequency buying is an alternative method for buying ads that lets you book campaigns in advance with predictable, optimised reach and controlled frequency. You can create multiple versions of reach and frequency campaigns and compare and share them in Campaign Planner.
Research from Facebook Marketing Science shows that reach and frequency buying can help you have a greater impact on brand perception, raise awareness of your product or drive on or offline sales. This research also shows that reaching a higher number of people can be a more efficient strategy for brand advertisers than targeting a narrower, more precise audience. Efficiencies of scale are often greater than the benefits of greater performance on a small audience. A person is considered as affected when your ad has its intended effect on that person.
For example, brand advertisers with large market share and high levels of brand awareness can use reach and frequency to lower the number of times people are shown their ads in order to increase the number of people who are shown their ads. They may choose to limit the number of times people see their ads to just one to two times each week in order to be able to reach a more substantial portion of their total audience. When using reach and frequency buying, the system will make a prediction about how many people the brand advertiser will reach given their set budget and frequency cap.
For new brands that have a low market share or are running shorter campaigns, a high-frequency strategy may be beneficial. Many factors influence the effective frequency level. Your market, message and media should be considered during the campaign planning process.
Reach: The number of people who saw your ads at least once during the campaign's lifetime. Reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of your ads by the same people.
How it's used: Reach gives you a measurement of how many people were exposed to your message during an ad campaign. People may not always click on your ads, but they may be more likely to engage with your business when they see your message. Your reach can be affected by your bid, budget and audience targeting.
How it's calculated: This metric is calculated using sampled data.
Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your ad.
How it's used: Frequency helps to build awareness and recall by showing your message to people in your target audience multiple times. Frequency may average one to two per ad set or may be much higher, depending on your budget, audience size and schedule.
However, it's important to monitor frequency along with your results and relevance score to make sure the same people aren't seeing your ads too frequently during a campaign. If performance begins to drop as your frequency numbers rise, your target audience may be experiencing ad fatigue, and it may be wise to change your ad creative or targeting.
How it's calculated: Frequency is calculated as the number of impressions divided by the reach.
Frequency cap: A frequency cap is the maximum number of times an individual will see your ad in a certain time frame. With reach and frequency buying, your frequency cap defaults to two impressions every seven days, meaning an individual will see your ad at most two times every seven days.
You can adjust your frequency cap with reach and frequency buying so that you're delivering as many or as few impressions as you'd like.
Learn more about best practices for adjusting your frequency cap with reach and frequency buying.
CPM: The average cost of 1,000 impressions.
How it's used: CPM is a common metric used to gauge the cost-effectiveness of an ad campaign. It's often used to compare performance among different ad publishers and campaigns.
How it's calculated: CPM measures the total amount spent on an ad campaign, divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. (Example: If you spent £50 and got 10,000 impressions, your CPM was £5.)
Retargeting: Retargeting means delivering ads to an audience based on their previous interaction with your ads. Using retargeting, you can run one ad to your targeted audience and then run a second ad only to the people who interacted with the first one in some way, whether it be clicking on the ad or making a purchase on a website or app.
For example, if you run a video ad about a new line of clothing, you can run a follow-up ad that builds on the previous ad's narrative and is only shown to people who watched or clicked on the initial video ad.
It's important to note that your audience will get smaller over time if you use retargeting, which may result in lower delivery. If you'd like to tell a narrative using multiple ads shown in a specific order without narrowing your audience, try ad sequencing.
Learn more about when to use retargeting vs sequencing for your reach and frequency campaign.
Sequencing: Sequencing means delivering ads in a specific order so that you can tell a story over a series of ads within a campaign. For example, if you wanted to run an ad for a new TV show, you could show a preview of the first episode in your first ad, followed by a second ad that previews the second episode and so on.
Learn more about how to sequence your ads.
Learn more about when to use retargeting vs sequencing for your reach and frequency campaign.
Under-delivery: Under-delivery is when your reach and frequency campaign isn't able to deliver your ads as originally predicted, usually because of an error in the campaign or ad account.
Historically, 97% of Facebook reach and frequency campaigns have delivered within 5% of predicted reach and impressions. In rare cases, the system has to bid higher than expected for each impression. This can result in the campaign delivering fewer ads as more of the campaign budget is spent on the cost per impression (CPM).
You can check if your campaign is delivering on schedule by looking below the ad campaign name in the campaign overview section of Ads Manager, where you can see the delivery status in blue.
Learn more about under-delivery and how to avoid it.
Reach objective: The Reach objective is a campaign objective designed to maximise the number of people who see your ads. If you're looking to grow awareness or change perception of your brand, the Reach objective lets you maximise the number of impressions your ads receive via impressions optimisation.
The reach objective is compatible with reach and frequency buying. When paired together, the reach objective and reach and frequency buying gives you the greatest reach optimisation available.
Learn more about the reach objective.
Brand awareness objective: The Brand Awareness objective is a campaign objective that optimises to show your ads to people who are most likely to pay attention to them.
The Brand Awareness objective is compatible with reach and frequency buying. When paired together, your campaign will optimise first for reach and second for brand awareness so that your ads will be shown to the maximum number of people who are likely to take interest in them.
Learn more about setting up a campaign using the Brand Awareness objective.
Video Views objective: The Video Views objective is a campaign objective that optimises to show your ads to people who are most likely to watch them. The Video Views objective is compatible with reach and frequency buying.
Learn more about how to set up a campaign using the Video Views objective.
Learn more about setting up a reach and frequency campaign.
* Nguồn: Facebook