Report: Frequency of exposure of Snap Ads affects lift in ad breakthrough

Snapchat carried out a research into how the frequency of exposure of Snap Ads drive marketing success. Here are the key takeaways giving you insight into Snap Ads data.

Snapchat's Reach and Frequency tool gives control over the reach and frequency tradeoff. If the frequency of exposure is too high, reach will be sacrificed; if it’s too low the campaign’s impact may be sub-optimal.

To allow advertisers to take better advantage of this control, Snapchat circulated a report with affixed insights.

The data has been collected form over a hundred Snapchat campaigns consisting of Snap Ads which helped understand the frequency of Snap Ads and the level of brand impact.

Measured by:

Ad breakthrough

The extent to which the ad campaign is noticed and recalled by the audience.

Action intent

The extent to which the ad campaign elicits the desired action, e.g. intention to make a purchase in the next 7 days or watch a newly released movie online.

Also Read: 5 ways to win like Amazon on social: Talkwalker Report

Read on to know the key takeaways.

Weekly frequency of Snap Ad exposure impacts the ability for an ad to breakthrough.

The study found that frequency of exposure affected lift in ad breakthrough, with sharp and steady increases in lift, with increasing exposures, up to around a frequency of 2 a week, after which only modest gains in the lift were observed.

A lower weekly frequency is sufficient for longer campaigns

The study observed shorter campaigns (running for 1-4 weeks) benefiting more from a higher frequency per week than longer campaigns (5-12 weeks); for longer campaigns 75% of the estimated total campaign impact in ad breakthrough was achieved with a frequency of ~1 a week, whereas shorter campaigns needed a higher frequency of ~2 a week to attain the same level of campaign impact.

Although, there was no difference in the vertical mix between these two groups of campaigns, the longer campaigns were for more established brands and products, partly explaining the use of longer, “always-on” type media activations.

The frequency required for driving ad breakthrough was similar by vertical

To explore the impact of market factors on the relationship between frequency and brand lift, this analysis focussed on 29 campaigns in the CPG and entertainment verticals (53% of the total shorter duration campaigns).

The average lift was higher for entertainment than CPG, the relationship between frequency of exposure and lift in ad breakthrough was similar. The analysis found that on average, a frequency of ~2 per week was able to drive 75% of the total potential lift in ad breakthrough for both CPG and entertainment campaigns. This suggests that the relationship between frequency and lift in breakthrough might not be related to market factors, as far as can be explained by the differences in the verticals examined in this sub-analysis.

The frequency required for driving intent differs by vertical

The relationship between the weekly frequency of Snap Ads exposure and subsequent lift in action intent was found to be substantially different between these CPG and entertainment campaigns. The lift in action increased sharply with weekly frequency for entertainment campaigns up to ~ 2 per week, but for CPG the same was not observed. 75% of the total
potential lift in intent for entertainment campaigns was achieved with a frequency of ~2 a week, CPG campaigns required a higher frequency of ~3 a week.

The results here show that while possible to drive some degree of total brand impact with relatively low levels of weekly frequency, advertisers might be sacrificing significant levels of potential campaign lift by doing so.