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Frequency

Updated 20 August 2026

Frequency in Meta Ads is the average number of times each person in the reached audience saw an ad during a chosen period, calculated by dividing impressions by reach.

Key facts about Frequency

Also known as
Average frequency
Formula
Frequency = impressions ÷ reach
Category
Delivery
Last updated
20 August 2026

In AdOps

How does Frequency work inside AdOps?

Frequency is not available in AdOps. Neither reach nor frequency appears among the 19 Meta Graph API fields the AdOps metric catalogue maps, so no rule condition can test it; Impressions and CPM are the closest signals the 45-metric catalogue carries.

The AdOps metric picker open over a condition row: a panel with Meta Ads and Custom metrics tabs, a search box, and a scrolling list of metrics with Spend selected. Sample data
Forty-five Meta metrics and your own sheet columns in the same list, each carrying a reporting period and any of six operators. Read the details

Frequency is how many times the average reached person saw an ad: impressions divided by reach. AdOps cannot read it. Reach and frequency are not among the 19 Meta Graph API fields its metric catalogue maps, so a frequency threshold cannot be written into an AdOps condition, and no rule can act on one.

How is frequency calculated?

Divide impressions by reach over the same period. An ad set that delivered 1,200,000 impressions to 400,000 people over 7 days has a frequency of 3.0. If the next week delivers the same 1,200,000 impressions to 240,000 people, frequency rises to 5.0 while the spend of Rp 6,000,000 has not changed at all.

Why is rising frequency a warning?

Rising frequency on flat spend means the audience is being re-shown the same creative rather than expanded. It usually arrives alongside a rising CPM and a falling CTR, and it is one of the mechanisms behind ad fatigue, because the cost of the next result climbs while nothing about the campaign setup has changed.

What can an AdOps rule use instead?

Impressions and CPM. Because both are in the 45-metric catalogue and both support all 11 reporting periods, a compare-to-metric condition can test CPM over Last 7 days against CPM over Last 30 days, and a CTR (link clicks) floor can catch the engagement drop that usually accompanies over-exposure.

Glossary

The terms an advertiser usually reads in the same sitting.

Ad fatigue
Ad fatigue is the decline in an advertisement's performance caused by the same audience seeing the same creative too many times, typically visible as a falling click-through rate and a rising cost per result while impressions keep accumulating.
CPM
Cost per mille (CPM) is the cost of 1,000 ad impressions, calculated by dividing ad spend by impressions and multiplying the result by 1,000.
Auction overlap
Auction overlap happens when two or more of the same advertiser's ad sets compete for the same person in the same Meta auction; Meta enters only the ad it expects to perform best, so the remaining ad sets lose that delivery opportunity.
All glossary terms

Turn this metric into a rule that watches it.

Pick the metric, pick one of the 11 reporting periods, set the threshold, and choose what happens when it is crossed. Nothing runs on your campaigns until you set the rule live.

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Inside the product

What the screens actually look like

Nine screens from the working dashboard — the rule builder, the metric picker, the dayparting grid and the log that records what happened. Scroll the strip.

  • The AdOps Performance Dashboard showing a Purchase ROAS card at 2.380x and an Aggregated ROAS card at 2.088x, both badged Profitable, a Monthly Budget card at Rp 155jt, and a Spend Breakdown ranking the top five ad accounts against a budget utilisation bar at 45.5 per cent.
    Performance Dashboard. Two ROAS figures to three decimals, a budget meter, and spend ranked by ad account — over Today, Last 7 days, Last 30 days or This month.
  • The AdOps rule list showing twelve automation rules, each with an on/off toggle, the ad accounts it manages, and when it last triggered — some minutes ago, others on a dated timestamp.
    Rule List. Every rule, what it manages and when it last fired. The toggle is the only thing between draft and live.
  • The AdOps condition builder showing a task with time-of-day conditions across seven day tags, a nested AND group holding a lifetime spend condition under 400,000, and a second task with four stacked metric conditions.
    Conditions. Metric, period, operator, value — joined with AND or OR, and nestable, so a rule can say something a dropdown cannot.
  • The AdOps metric picker open over a condition row: a panel with Meta Ads and Custom metrics tabs, a search box, and a scrolling list of metrics with Spend selected.
    Metric picker. Forty-five Meta metrics and your own sheet columns in the same list, each carrying a reporting period and any of six operators.
  • The AdOps dayparting timetable: a grid of hours against the seven days of the week, with the daytime hours filled navy for every day and the night hours and weekend evenings left empty.
    Dayparting grid. Or draw the hours instead. Anything outside the shape you fill in simply does not run.
  • An AdOps execution log detail: one campaign, two action panels badged Not Executed, each listing the action parameters and every condition evaluated with its actual value, its expected value and a Pass or Fail badge.
    Rule Log detail. Why a rule did nothing is recorded as carefully as why it did something — actual against expected, condition by condition.
  • The AdOps activity log listing budget increases and campaign renames, each row naming the affected campaign by id, the rule that caused it and how long ago it happened.
    Activity Log. One row per change AdOps made in your account, naming the campaign and the rule responsible.
  • The AdOps ad account list: eighteen Meta ad accounts with on/off toggles, account ids, Active or Inactive badges and this month’s spend in rupiah.
    Ad Accounts. Accounts discovered from Meta arrive switched off. Nothing is read, and nothing is changed, until you turn one on.
  • The AdOps custom metric editor mapping a Google Spreadsheet: a spreadsheet id, a sheet name, a column to match campaigns on and a column holding the values.
    Custom metric. Point AdOps at a sheet, name the matching column and the value column, and your own number joins the metric list.

Every figure is rebuilt from the product’s own interface and filled with invented data — no customer name, ad account or spend figure appears anywhere on this site. See how a run works