January 26, 2024
Have you ever fallen in love with a podcast and listened to back-to-back episodes, only to hear the same ad played over and over (and over and over)? There's no doubt you'll remember the advertiser, but it may leave you feeling more annoyed than inspired to purchase the brand.
Some marketers leverage frequency capping in their campaigns as a strategic measure to optimize and enhance the effectiveness of advertising efforts. Frequency capping allows advertisers to control the number of times a specific ad is displayed to an individual user within a given time frame. This can help prevent overexposure, ensuring that users do not become fatigued or annoyed by seeing or hearing the same ad repeatedly.
By setting limits on the frequency of ad impressions, advertisers can maintain a more balanced user experience, leading to higher engagement and increased chances of conversion. Additionally, frequency capping can contribute to cost efficiency by eliminating unnecessary impressions, allowing advertisers to allocate their budgets more effectively and focus on reaching a wider audience with diverse content.
In podcast advertising, frequency capping is done by utilizing the unique IP address of a listener. Many podcast hosting platforms that offer Dynamic Ad Insertion can leverage frequency capping as tactic, including (at time of this blog post) Megaphone, AdsWizz and ART19. Soundrise recommends a frequency cap between 3 and 7 times per week (per show), aligned with the industry standard.
At Soundrise, podcasts like The Lincoln Project, That Trippi Show, The Enemies List and Zero Line from the Resolute Square network can layer in frequency capping if needed as they are hosted on Megaphone.
Podcasts from PRX, Radiotopia and other Soundrise partners are hosted on Dovetail, PRX's proprietary platform. Dovetail does not currently offer frequency capping as a capability, however, Soundrise can employ tactics for advertisers interested in controlling their reach:
• Episodic buying: An episodic campaign strategy offers flexibility by allowing advertisers to target specific episodes. By definition, this strategy controls ad frequency by reducing the number times a listener hears the ad and increasing the total audience of unique listeners.
If not buying episodically, there are other creative ways to keep frequency in check, such as:
• Selecting episode drop days: If running on a daily show, our sales and operations team can work to schedule your ads on specific drop days (e.g. every other).
• Allocating impressions to newer episodes: If available, our sales and operations team can request a certain percentage of impressions to run in newer episodes (instead of in the back catalog).
Both of these tactics minimize the chances of a binge-listener hearing your ad multiple times in the same listening session.
Overall, incorporating frequency capping or other frequency strategies into campaigns reflects a thoughtful approach to ad delivery, prioritizing the listener experience with positive results in campaign performance. Soundrise can help guide you in determining the right approach to meet your marketing objectives.
