On this page
The short answer
A Display, Video or Demand Gen campaign with no frequency cap has no limit on how often one person sees the ad. A few heavy users of one site or app can take hundreds of impressions each. Oppy lists every such campaign that spent recently.
Why it matters
Reach and impressions are two different numbers, and most reports print only the second. Without a cap, the spread is lopsided: most people see the ad once or twice, while a small group who spend all day on one site or app sees it again and again.
Those repeat impressions are not free. They come out of the same budget that could have reached somebody new, and past a point they buy irritation rather than attention. Search does not have this problem because nobody sees an ad without searching first.
How Oppy decides
The check reads every campaign in the account with its channel, its spend over recent weeks and its frequency caps.
Checks that weigh money or clicks judge what they find on your own account's numbers, not on one figure applied to every account, so what counts as a problem on a small account is not the same on a large one. Checks on settings read how the account is set up.
When there is too little to go on, the check says so instead of guessing. A finding always comes with the rows behind it, so you can read the evidence before you decide.
| This check | |
|---|---|
| Step of the audit | Structure |
| What it reads | Campaigns, their settings and their results |
| Needs trustworthy conversions | No. It does not wait for the tracking step. |
| What happens next | Reported in the audit with the rows behind it. The decision stays with you. |
Check it yourself in Google Ads
- In Google Ads, open Campaigns and filter the table by campaign type: Display, Video and Demand Gen.
- Open a campaign's Settings and expand Frequency management or Frequency capping, depending on the campaign type.
- Check whether a cap is set, and on what: impressions or views, per day, per week or per month.
- Repeat for every campaign that spent in the last 30 days. Add the Frequency column to the campaign table if your account shows it, to see the average per person.
What to do about it
Set a cap that matches the job of the campaign. A remarketing campaign aimed at recent visitors can carry a higher cap than a prospecting campaign aimed at strangers. A common starting point is a few impressions per person per day or per week, then adjust once you see reach and conversions move.
On Video and Demand Gen, Google may manage frequency for you with a target rather than a hard cap. That is still a decision, as long as somebody made it on purpose.
Terms on this page
Other checks in this area
The checks next to this one in Wasted spend, each with its own page.