Effective Frequency: One Exposure or Three Factors?

Gerard Tellis

This 1997 article on effective frequency argues that neither those who believe very few exposures to an ad are enough nor those who believe in constant repetition are right if viewed as a universal generalisation about the effects of advertising.

Effective Frequency: One Exposure or Three Factors?

Gerard Tellis

For decades advertising researchers have been searching for the holy grail of effective frequency the precise number of exposures that maximizes consumer response to an ad. It has become the magical number which tells a manager how much exactly to spend on advertising. The advertising literature on this topic can be divided into two schools of thought which I refer to here as minimalists and repetitionists.

Minimalists are those who believe that a few exposures achieve the maximum response. The earliest proponent of this view is Krugman (19772), who argued...

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