Frequency or Individual User Cap for CPM & CPV

Optimization is a key factor in success for internet marketing campaigns. There are so many variables needed to be tested until a campaign is fully tested & optimized.

One of these variables is frequency capping or also called as individual user capping.

If you are new to media buying, or CPV Marketing, you have to understand the frequency cap concept before setting up your first campaign.

What is a Frequency Cap or Individual User Cap?

Frequency cap or individual user cap is the number of times a unique visitor sees your ads within a given time. For CPM ads, when time period is not specified, the default time period is 24 hours.

In plain English, if frequency cap for a campaign is 2, it means a unique visitor will only see your ad maximum of 2 times within 24 hour period.

Why Do You Need to Set a Frequency Cap?

• Some sites have autorefresh javascript within their code. When you visit these types of sites, every X seconds, the site refreshes itself, by counting each refresh as an extra impression, and charging the CPM advertisers. So, a visitor might leave a page open, leave the computer and come back several hours later. Meanwhile, your ad can be shown to the same user thousands of times, by wasting your advertising budget.
• If a site is getting more than average page views per user numbers, you have to be careful. Forums, social sites, user generated content sites usually fit in this category.

Setting Individual User Cap for CPV/PPV Campaigns

Deciding on individual user caps for CPV campaigns is little different than CPM campaigns. You have to think about cookie length, audience target size (super targeted, or not, etc.), and start by testing.

Every PPV traffic company has its own settings. Below is a screenshot from Trafficvance. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

On CPV campaigns, I usually start with the default settings (1 view per 12 hours), and keep testing it. Some campaigns on CPV tend to lose its profitability after a while, and this is when you start playing with the individual user cap, and find the optimum settings by testing.

Branding or Performance Campaign

If your campaign’s goal is branding, you might want to be more flexible with frequency capping. Even if a visitor sees your banner several times a day, and you are charged for it, it might be worth. At the end, you’d like to promote the brand, and show them the ad as much as possible.

Some branding campaigns don’t even set frequency caps, and that’s also fine.

But if you are running a performance based campaign, you have to take frequency capping seriously, and test until you find the most optimized level for your campaign.

Frequency capping might easily turn a losing campaign into a profitable one. So, make sure you work on it before your next CPM or CPV campaign.