Frequency Cap

Frequency Cap is a setting in advertising platforms that limits the number of times the same user will see your ad over a given period (day, week, month). The tool is available in VK Ads, myTarget, Yandex Direct (for YAN), all DSP platforms.

Without a frequency cap, the same person can see your banner 50+ times in a week. This leads to banner blindness, irritation (negative brand effect) and wasted budget - you are showing advertising to people who have already decided “no”. According to my observations, after 7–10 impressions, CTR drops by 2–3 times compared to the first 3 impressions.

The optimal frequency cap depends on the type of campaign. For wide-ranging image campaigns – 3–5 impressions/week. For retargeting to a “hot” audience (abandoned carts) – up to 10–12/week is acceptable: the person is still making a decision. For new potential clients in performance, I set it to 5–7/week and monitor frequency by segment.

Frequency cap and cross-device tracking are related: if the platform is not able to deterministically identify the user on all devices, one person with a phone and a laptop will receive double frequency. This is especially noticeable in cookie-free environments.