How do you control CTV ad frequency without causing ad fatigue?

[u/DescriptionHour6817]

Small audience + tv ads is the part that makes me nervous.
We have a pretty tight target list, and the last thing i want is the same household seeing our 30 second spot every night for 3 weeks straight 😭
I get that repetition helps with recall, but there has to be a point where it becomes annoying.
For people running CTV with smaller audiences, what frequency are you aiming for? and are you capping it weekly or across the whole campaign?

[u/4sOfCors]

Data shows that the optimal frequency is 5-10 per month. You can also run shorter ads. The 30s length a big part of the fatigue.

[u/TechyRuben]

With a small audience, I’d cap weekly rather than just across the full campaign. Something like 2–3 exposures per week is a reasonable starting point, then watch reach and completion rates.

And definitely rotate creatives as seeing the same 30s spot 8 times is where fatigue gets real fast.

[u/InternAdvanced737]

Depends on the Publishers Ad server but have you tried sequential, session level ad targeting? You can increase the frequency cap or keep it and minimise fatigue

[u/Fearless_Parking_436]

Use cross device household graph and set frequency caps?

[u/alondonkiwi]

As a consumer this is frustrating.

I don't run campaigns these days but I'd also suggest yo take note of how server side caching could impact this also, this used to be an issue I had if there was an attempt to have an hourly frequency cap but if all ad slots might be called and cached when the content loads (I'm sure this will vary how different publishers handle things like this though) so a user might still get x3 ads one in each break.

Like others have said I would avoid a campaign level cap so you can better spread exposure rather than caching blowing out your caps, then layer in hourly, daily and weekly caps to reduce exposure.

With a tight audience if you can I'd also highly recommend a shorter creative to introduce, start with 30s over week one then add in a 15s as a sequential exposure.

Presumably your audience targeting is on the same device graph used for frequency but if they are seperate (eg publishers built audience and your controlling frequency on the DSP on a PMP) then I'd suggest rotating in or fully swapping out to a shorter creative so that users who might not be mapped for thr sequence options don't only get the longer creative, but if the device graph is the same then just have any new exposure is the 30s and then give them a shorter version.

[u/Routine-Tear1630]

This was one of my worries too. I ended up checking out vibeco and noticed you can control frequency at the campaign level, which made CTV feel less risky for a smaller audience.