Frequency

Frequency is the average number of times one person saw your ad during the selected period. It connects impressions and reach and is the most important early warning sign of ad fatigue.

Formula

Frequency = impressions ÷ reach

Example

A Meta campaign gets 250,000 impressions with a reach of 100,000 people.

Frequency = 250,000 ÷ 100,000 = 2.5

Each person reached saw the ad 2.5 times on average. Since it is an average, some saw it only once, others much more often.

Frequency in lead generation

Some repetition is intended: many people don't inquire on first contact, but only after they have seen an offer a few times. If frequency gets too high, though, the effect reverses. The audience knows the ad, stops clicking, click-through rate drops and cost per lead rises – even though budget and offer haven't changed.

This happens especially fast with small audiences, such as B2B on LinkedIn, a local market or retargeting. Reach is limited there, and every extra dollar mainly increases frequency.

Whether a high frequency actually hurts you only becomes clear when you look at results. LeadMetrics syncs spend and daily metrics of your ads and connects them with leads and deals from your CRM. In dashboards you can see, ad by ad, how cost per lead and deals develop over time.

What to do when frequency is high

• Refresh creatives: New visuals, hooks or formats give the same audience a new reason to respond.
• Broaden the audience: More reach spreads the same impressions across more people.
• Adjust the budget: Once the audience is exhausted, more budget mostly buys more repetition.

Common mistakes

• Looking only at the average: A frequency of 2 can mean that part of the audience sees the ad very often.
• Mixing time periods: Weekly frequency is not comparable with monthly frequency.
• Judging frequency without results: Only a falling click-through rate and rising cost per lead show that repetition has stopped working.