Fanta used AI to test frequency strategies and found that the one that generated the most cumulative attention produced the best results for its sweepstakes campaign.
The campaign, by EssenceMediacom France, promoted an Xbox giveaway on Meta using a targeted frequency strategy, which AI metrics company Xpln.ai says delivered 47% more cumulative attention per user and nearly double the awareness lift when compared to a traditional frequency cap.
Dominic Di Talamo, UK managing director at Xpln.ai, said: ‘The strategy generating the highest cumulative attention also produced the strongest improvement in brand recall and awareness, reinforcing the link between attention and media effectiveness.’
The five-week campaign tested two delivery approaches: a standard frequency cap of up to three impressions per user per week (not guaranteeing repeated exposure) and a guaranteed target frequency of two exposures per user per week. The two resulted in similar attention time per impression, but the targeted frequency strategy resulted in a 29% higher exposure frequency and a ‘significantly stronger’ sweepstakes awareness lift.
Di Talamo explained that a predictive AI model was used to estimate the attention duration of each impression based on the ad’s context (such as format or placement). He said this allows Xpln.ai to capture ‘something traditional metrics miss’ by tracking the total amount of time a user looks at the advertising message across all exposures during a campaign.
‘This allowed us to directly compare how the two frequency strategies translated into total attention delivered to individuals during the campaign,’ he added. ‘The target frequency strategy produced more repeated exposures, resulting in 29% higher exposure frequency and 47% more cumulative attention per user. This illustrates an important principle: even when individual impressions generate short attention spans, repeated exposures can accumulate attention over time, increasing the overall opportunity for the message to be processed and remembered.’
MediaCat contacted Essencemediacom France, but the agency declined to comment unless given copy approval.