Reach and frequency buying on Facebook

Reach and frequency buying on Facebook is one of the first options that you can select when creating a new campaign.

Its main purpose is to help advertisers have a more accurately plan and predict the delivery, cost and reach of branding campaigns.

Our people-based marketing allows marketers to plan for reach and frequency hand-in-hand, with the added ability to activate that plan with the same level of control.

Kumi Harischandra, Facebook team

Key features of the reach and frequency buying on Facebook

The reach objective lets to show ads to the maximum number of people in your audience and maximize the number of impressions people see within that same target audience.

1. You can have a lifetime frequency for each user.
2. Estimate your branding reach and frequency with certainty.
3. Estimate the number of people who will see your ad
4. Set up budget limits with how much you want to spend

https://facebook.exceedlms.com/student/home/show_enrollment/41457385

What is reach?

Reach should be something you know. It’s basically the number of unique users that Facebook has shown your post or ad to.

Keep in mind that reaching people doesn’t necessarily translate to views of your ad or posts. More reach might also not be the best way to increase brand lift, as a recent Facebook study shows.

We know there is a point of diminishing return and reaching 90% of a population is probably not the most cost-effective solution. But the concept of impact can help marketers understand the fact that reach matters for scale and growth.

Jon Feigenbaum, Facebook team

http://insights.fb.com/2016/09/08/reach-and-frequency-dynamics-smarter-planning-greater-impact/

Reach is also not the same as impressions. One user might see the ad twice. That counts as two impressions but one user in your reach. In most campaigns, your reach will most likely be lower than your impressions.

This is where frequency comes into play.

What is frequency?

Frequency tells you how often a unique user saw on average your post or ad.

In the example above, you frequency will be two. As the same user saw twice your ad. Most of the time, your frequency will be a two-point decimal number, like 1.45 or 3.56.

It will average out the number of times your ad was shown to your target audience. If a person saw your ad twice and another didn’t, Facebook will average that out to 1.

A low-frequency (below 1) means your target audience is not being properly reached by your ad. Whereas, a high-frequency (above 3), means you are close to creating banner blindness to your target audience.

http://insights.fb.com/2016/07/21/effective-frequency-reaching-full-campaign-potential/

According to a Facebook study, with a frequency of 2 per week, up to 95% of the total potential brand lift in purchase intent was captured.

With the regular auction buying, it’s difficult to define your reach and frequency. You can only define your frequency cap at 1, when optimizing for daily unique reach; however, you can’t increase that number.

Some companies have objectives or goals with regards to how many people they want to reach and how often.

This is where reach and frequency buying on Facebook becomes important and a handy tool for advertisers.

What is reach and frequency buying on Facebook?

With reach and frequency buying on Facebook I can accurately plan and predict the delivery, cost and reach of my branding campaigns.

With it, you can:

1. Define the number of times you want your target audience to see your ad.
2. Plan and book your campaigns with time so that you can organize your digital campaigns along with your traditional marketing campaigns.
3. Go beyond traditional media campaigns (TV) onto Facebook and Instagram.
4. Build sequential ads to deliver your brand’s story to a target audience.
5. Set up reach, frequency and cost of your branding campaigns.
6. Advertise across multiple devices

https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-reach-and-frequency-buying

When to use reach and frequency buying on Facebook?

Reach and frequency campaigns are useful for branding purposes or products that require a long marketing prospectation.

These are some situations when you want to use reach and frequency buying on Facebook:

1. As an advertiser, you want to compare your TV efforts with digital marketing efforts.
2. Your client is launching a new product. You want to optimize for reach and frequency.
3. You are launching a product and want to get to reach out to people.
4. It takes time to market your product or you have a long marketing cycle.
5. Educating your audience is key in your customer journey. You need to educate your customer before trying to convert to prospect or sale

Facebook also provides a good table where you can visually see the differences as to when to use which frequency on your ads:

http://insights.fb.com/2016/07/21/effective-frequency-reaching-full-campaign-potential/

Keep in mind that you can’t use the reach and frequency buying on all audiences. Here are audiences you CAN’T use with this feature:

• Website Custom Audiences
• Fan-exclusion targeting
• Friends of Connections targeting
• Operating system specific targeting

How can I buy reach and frequency ads on Facebook?

You can buy ads for Facebook and Instagram through the Power Editor and Facebook Marketing API. 

Both will show graphs as see below where you can set up:

1. Frequency Cap
2. Number of Days
3. Budget

However, keep in mind that as of the writing of this blog post, there are some limitations to this feature as seen below.

What are some limitations for reach and frequency buying on Facebook?

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind when planning and buying ads using reach and frequency.

IMPORTANT: This content is also key to read as you will be asked during the exams.

Delivery – some limitations and features

1. Reach optimization will show your ads to the maximum number of people.
2. Impressions optimization will show your ads as many times as possible. The same person may see ad several times.
3. Ad Sets must be 1-90 days in length and can be booked six months in advance of your launch date.
4. You must reach a minimum of 200,000 people per Ad Set.
5. You can deliver ads on Facebook and Instagram.
6. The system delivers to hit the reach and frequency target while also prioritizing the selected objective. If your primary KPI is action based — such as conversions or website clicks — consider the auction for more optimal buying options.
7. Frequency planned is a cap, not a guarantee. We will deliver to an average without going above the set cap.
8. You may cancel or make changes any time before your Ad Set starts.
9. Audience holdouts can be up to 5%.
10. Ads must be uploaded to the Ad Set within six hours after the scheduled start time. If they are uploaded after that, the Ad Set will be cancelled.
11. Supports image, vide ads, carousel ads, slide show ads and canvas ads
12. CTA: apply now, book now, contact us, download, learn more, save, sell now, shop now, sign up, watch more, get directions, call now, message now.

Ad Sets – some limitations and features

• Ad Sets can contain multiple ads. If there are multiple ads within a reach and frequency Ad Set, delivery will optimize toward the best-performing ads based on the objective you’ve selected.
• You may choose to manually rotate creative within an Ad Set or use ad scheduling to set the rotation schedule in advance.
• You may choose to use ad sequencing to have control over the order that the ads in your Ad Set are seen.
• Each Ad Set has its own Budget, Reach, Frequency, Targeting, and Placements.

Targeting – some limitations and features

• You may target one country per campaign, so if you’re interested in reaching people in multiple countries, you’ll need to set up separate reach and frequency Ad Sets.
• It’s best to avoid creating too narrow of an audience in order to maximize results.
• You can use exclusion targeting when retargeting audiences with video.
• Reach and frequency campaigns are compatible with the majority of Facebook’s targeting capabilities, but the following are exceptions:
  • Website Custom Audiences
  • Fan-exclusion targeting
  • Friends of Connections targeting
  • Operating system specific targeting

Things you should know for the exam

1. Understand when advertisers should use the reach and frequency buying on Facebook.
2. Read both research studies conducted by Facebook in order to get a better sense of benchmarks. You can find both links below.
3. Do a test-run with Facebook and try to run some dummy campaigns with this feature to see how it really works.
4. Go over the limitations and FAQ’s of reach and frequency.

Other readings from Facebook

Here are some readings, webinars and research I highly recommend reading before the exam if you are still unclear on this topic:

1. Effective Frequency: Reaching Full Campaign Potential
2. Reach Matters: Driving Business Results at Scale
3. Reach and Frequency Dynamics: Smarter Planning, Greater Impact
4. Building Your Brand with Reach and Frequency Webinar
5. Facebook Marketing API – Reach and Frequency Buying

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