As you know I’ve been consulting for Nielsen and have published a number of articles sharing what I’ve learned from meta-analyses of over 127,000 cross-platform campaigns measured by Nielsen ONE covering linear, CTV, mobile, and computer, and covering all the major walled gardens as well as streaming and the open web.
There are two main reasons why I am harping on reach these days:
- Ad dollars have virtually zero effect on the people not reached.
- Ad dollars and GRP are highly correlated, and it hurts me to see high GRP and low reach, but that is what I am seeing in too many cases.
Here is a taste of my latest findings, covering 402 recent campaigns from a dozen of the world’s largest advertisers across nine major verticals. I have grouped the 402 campaigns into quintiles by GRP. And I’ve compared these campaigns to norms from 7648 campaigns. As you will see, there is a lot to be concerned about in terms of high spending on GRPs resulting in high frequency but low reach, especially when compared to “role model” campaigns:
What the table above shows is the normal pattern of very high frequency escalating in relationship with the size of the campaign, and very low frequency decreasing as the size of the campaign grows. For example, in the bottom Quintile, in which the average GRP is 75, the average reach is 18%, and the average frequency is 4.1, 68% of people reached received only 1-3 opportunities to see, which most marketers might consider to be insufficient frequency.
Yet in Quintile1, where the averages are 4879 GRP, 56% reach, and 87.3 average frequency, only 22% of people reached received 1-3 frequency. If those people reached only 1-3 times are left out, the reach goes down from 56% to 44%.
As we build out our AI agentic tech stacks, wouldn’t it make sense to use addressable media to fill in those targets reached with insufficient frequency?
Looking at the problem of excessive frequency, this is scarcely a problem to be overly concerned about in Quintiles 4 and 5. But as campaigns get larger than that, the problem rapidly increases. In the top quintile, more than half of those reached are receiving more than 50 frequency. Of course, the degree to which this high level of frequency can be regarded as a problem depends on the length of the campaign (number of weeks), and also on the specifics of how closely together people tended to see the same ad.
It is time for all of us to get back to basics. We spend a vast percentage of our time passionately talking about new things but, as Erwin Ephron warned us, we are losing sight of the fundamentals.
The problem of excessive frequency can be solved by a combination of three methods:
- Use of an incremental optimizer.
- Use of addressable media to reach only unreached targets and targets reached with insufficient frequency, in the course of optimization and reoptimization inflight.
- Pooling media inventory together within a single ad insertion system so as to be able to actually implement frequency capping effectively. My colleagues and I have created the UltiMedia platform with tvbeat to make this an easy button to press. Currently available within the U.S. Spectrum, and through tvbeat in eight other countries.
Our podcast explores the topic of Being in the In-between Phase, a liminal stage of growth when we can feel disoriented, lonely, or frustrated, and why it’s also a powerful indicator that real growth is happening. Rather than rushing to “fix” the discomfort, this episode invites listeners to slow down, listen more deeply to themselves, and learn how to navigate uncertainty with trust, patience, and self-awareness.
This month’s podcast length is ≈46 minutes. Watch the Video
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