Frequency

What is Frequency?

Frequency in paid media is the average number of impressions per person reached. It is automatically calculated by platforms and exposed in campaign reports.

It is one of the most underrated metrics. Many advertisers look only at CPM, CTR and ROAS, and forget that campaigns lose performance because the audience is saturated.

How to calculate

Frequency = Impressions / Reach

If a campaign had 150,000 impressions for 50,000 people, frequency is 3.

Ideal frequency by objective

• Awareness/branding: 4 to 7 — you want brand recall
• Traffic: 2 to 4
• Conversion (cold): 1.5 to 3
• Retargeting: 4 to 10 (warm audiences tolerate more)

Practical example

Conversion campaign of a sneaker store across 4 weeks:

Week	Frequency	CTR	CPA
1	1.2	2.4%	R$ 38
2	2.1	2.2%	R$ 42
3	3.3	1.5%	R$ 65
4	4.6	0.9%	R$ 110

Classic fatigue pattern: frequency rises, CTR falls, CPA spikes. From week 3 it was already time to refresh creatives or expand the audience.

How to control frequency

• Rotate creatives every 2 to 3 weeks in long campaigns
• Expand the audience: broader lookalike, new interests
• Cap frequency in campaign settings (Meta allows caps in awareness campaigns)
• Increase budget gradually, not double at once (the algorithm distributes to the same audience)
• Use different formats: Stories, Reels and feed show the creative in different ways

Common mistakes

• Ignoring frequency until CPA explodes.
• Thinking high frequency is good because "it shows the brand more". It shows too much and annoys.
• Expanding budget without expanding the audience.
• Keeping the same creatives for months. Brazil has shorter fatigue cycles than other markets.