Repetition and Frequency

Today I was scrolling again through facebook, you know, like we all do sometimes. On the right side I saw two adverts, one on Audi A3 and the other on Adobe's Bridge CC. We all know that our digital footprint is saved and one of the things businesses then do is personalize advertisements. Usually, I probably wouldn't have given these two ads too much thought, but now that I am one of the co-writers of this blog, I started reflecting.

I have been moderately interested in Audi for a while now, and I have also spent some time quite a while ago on their website to configure cars. However, I was playing around more with the A8, which is a totally different type of car (A8 being a limousine vs A3 being a compact car). Thinking back, throughout the past couple of months, I can remember seeing ads on the A7, A4 and now on the A3. My student budget definitely isn't large enough to be able to buy an A7 or A4, and I am currently not even looking to buy a new car, because I am rather satisfied with the one I have now, but I am considering to at least take a look at an A3 when the time is right, in probably a decade or so ;)

Thinking about this, this Audi advertisement has been repeated again and again for months. Before that, I thought that it's a nice car, but nothing more. Now, I am considering taking a closer look at it in the future. Could it be that the fact that this Audi advert has been continuously repeated at a specific frequency influenced my purchasing decision, even if it's in the (far) future? I'd say most certainly.

Advertisements on social media platforms like facebook: do they work? Well I would say that they have at least an effect on all of us. Some of us reject them entirely, and others react positively. So theoretically, social media platforms do have the ability to connect businesses with their consumers. And they are, obviously, (ab)using this connection and pouring all their advertisements onto us for a very long time. They repeat this regularly and implant the idea into our heads that it might be worth taking a closer look at their product. 

Both businesses, as well as social media platforms have recently started to develop their initiative of giving us consumers all the advertisements we "need". An example here would be that ads can now also be found in between the posts of our facebook friends and pages we liked. Scrolling down, I found out that for me after every 8-11th post, an advertisement appears. I would be interested to see after how many posts an advertisement appears on your facebook page, so feel free to just write it in the comment section below if you want :)

Have a nice day

~Christian