Frequency & Fatigue Visualizer
Decay-curve simulator · no sign-up · shareable link
Frequency is a witness that becomes a weapon: the first exposures build memory, the later ones buy annoyance at full CPM. Set your audience, daily impressions, CPM and how fast creative wears out, then watch effective CTR decay across 14 days, the day fatigue sets in, and how much spend goes to impressions past the efficient cap. Runs entirely in your browser.
Frequency = impressions ÷ reach · effective CTR decays ~exponentially past the 3rd exposure
Day-14 frequency ≈ 4.2
From CTR-by-frequency buckets: the drop past 3 is your decay
Beyond day 14
First day effective CTR falls below 70% of fresh.
₹0
Impressions past 4.0 frequency at full CPM.
No fatigue within 14 days — frequency reaches 4.2 with CTR at 86% of fresh. You have headroom; scale or extend the flight.
Effective CTR (% of fresh) across 14 days — dashed line is the 70% fatigue threshold
What each field wants
- Audience and delivery
- Targetable audience size, impressions per day, and days live. Frequency is impressions ÷ reach — everything downstream follows from that one division.
- Fresh CTR and decay rate
- CTR on first exposures and the percentage CTR loses per extra frequency point past the third. Prospecting creative typically decays 8–15% per point; retargeting faster.
- CPM
- What you pay per thousand impressions — the price of every wasted exposure past the cap.
How this number is derived
Frequency first, everything else follows
Average frequency on day d is cumulative impressions ÷ audience. Effective CTR on day d is fresh CTR × (1 − decay)^(frequency − 3) once frequency passes 3, flat before that — the grace period where repetition still helps recall.
Fatigue day is when CTR crosses 70%
The tool marks the first day effective CTR falls below 70% of fresh. That threshold is a convention, not physics — but teams that refresh on it stop the "it just stopped working" conversations, because the decay was visible a week early.
Waste is spend past the cap at decayed CTR
Impressions served past frequency 4 in a day are priced at full CPM but earn decayed clicks. The waste figure is their cost — usually the cheapest argument for a refresh you will ever make.
A 2L audience at 60k impressions a day
- Audience
- 2,00,000
- Delivery
- 60,000 impressions/day · ₹280 CPM
- Creative
- 1.4% fresh CTR · 12% decay per point
Day 5 frequency ≈ 1.5 → CTR still ~1.4%
Day 9 frequency ≈ 2.7 → CTR ~1.35%, fatigue approaching
Day 12 frequency ≈ 3.6 → CTR ~1.24%, crossing the 70% line within daysFatigue lands around day 12–13, and every day past it spends ~₹16,800 at decaying efficiency. A creative refresh scheduled for day 10 costs nothing and saves the week — the calendar invite is the intervention.
Cap and cadence orientation
Starting points, not laws. Your CTR-decay history overrides all of these.
| Prospecting cap | 3–4 / week | Fresh audiences forgive repetition poorly; refresh creative instead of raising caps. |
|---|---|---|
| Retargeting cap | 5–7 / week | Warm audiences tolerate more — but decay per point is steeper once it starts. |
| Refresh cadence (paid social) | 10–14 days | Hero angles survive ~2 weeks at scale before CTR decay crosses the line. |
| Fatigue threshold | 70% of fresh CTR | The line this tool draws. Act on the trend, not the exact crossing day. |
What this assumes, and what it doesn't model
Assumptions
- Uniform delivery across the audience — real delivery skews toward the most active users, so true fatigue arrives earlier than this average.
- Exponential CTR decay past frequency 3 at a constant rate you set.
- CPM constant over the flight; auction inflation during peaks is not modelled.
Deliberately not modelled
- Average frequency hides skew: your heaviest users fatigue far earlier than the mean suggests.
- Does not model creative-level differences — one hero and three fillers average into a misleading middle.
- The 70% fatigue line and the 4.0 efficient cap are conventions; calibrate against your account history.
- Ignores conversion-side fatigue — landing pages wear out too, just slower.
Common questions
Is high frequency always bad?
No — frequency with fresh creative is how messages land. Frequency with the same creative past the decay point is paying full CPM for annoyed impressions. The tool separates the two: the cap line is about repetition, the decay curve is about staleness.
How do I estimate the decay rate?
Pull CTR by frequency bucket (1, 2, 3, 4, 5+) from the platform for one fatigued ad set. The per-point drop past 3 is your decay — 8–12% is typical for decent creative, 15%+ means the hook was novelty, not resonance.
Should the cap differ by funnel stage?
Yes. Prospecting caps stay low (3–4/week) because every impression is an interruption; retargeting can run 5–7 because the buyer already raised their hand. Set caps per ad set, not per account.
Can I share the scenario?
Yes — every slider lives in the URL, so the link restores the exact decay curve for the creative review.
Last reviewed September 6, 2026.