Frequency cap
A frequency cap limits how many times the same user sees an ad or a push notification within a given period, for example no more than 2 pushes a day, or no more than 5 banner impressions a week. The goal is to stop the same person from seeing the same ad too many times in a row.
Why limiting impression frequency matters
Without a frequency cap, a user who's seen the same ad or push too many times starts tuning it out (banner blindness) or gets annoyed enough to unsubscribe or report it as spam. Both outcomes hit the channel's performance directly: CTR drops, cost per click rises, and for push campaigns, the unsubscribe rate climbs, shrinking the base available for future campaigns.
Frequency caps on a PWA's push base
For an owned push base built through a PWA, frequency capping matters even more, because the base is an asset that depletes: aggressive, uncapped campaigns burn through subscribers fast and raise the spam-complaint rate with the notification provider. Segmentation and scenarios in APEX's push engine let you set frequency and logic per segment instead of blasting the same stream at the whole base indiscriminately.
FAQ
- What's a reasonable frequency cap for push campaigns?
- There's no universal number, but most platforms aim for 1-3 pushes a day per user — the right figure depends on the vertical and how warm the base is.
- How does a frequency cap relate to unsubscribes?
- Directly: the higher the uncapped impression frequency, the faster annoyance and unsubscribes climb, so a sensible cap is really a way to extend the base's lifespan, not just a formality.
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