In marketing 101 at Wharton, I learned about frequency and repetition. 
"The author of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, writes that your average prospect must be exposed to various forms of your marketing nine times before becoming a customer. And because his rule of thumb is that you miss your prospect two out of three times, it takes 27 attempts to achieve those nine exposures."

Repetition and frequency works.  It's the reason why radio play at the record labels is so important.  Repetition and frequency.  You hear Britney Spears in the car, in the super market, at the club, and pretty soon, you love the new Britney song. It's the reason why television is so powerful.  When you see moving images it also invokes an emotional response which may count as multiple impressions. It even works in the gym....

So with that in mind here's what the average person's behavior looks like [via]:

1. The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
2. The second time, he does not notice it.
3. The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
4. The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
5. The fifth time, he reads it.
6. The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
7. The seventh time, he reads it through and says, "Oh brother!"
8. The eighth time, he says, "Here's that confounded thing again!"
9. The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
10. The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
11. The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
12. The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
13. The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
14. The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such a thing a long time.
15. The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
16. The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it some day.
17. The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
18. The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
19. The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.
The list you've just read was written by Thomas Smith of London in l885.

In today's ad cluttered world it might be 30 or 40 impressions before a purchase occurs.  If we can get some type of estimate on this number we can back into our ROI and thus we purchase media based on number of impressions. 

So if I purchase some ad space at a rate of $20 CPM and I am guaranteed 100,000 unique impressions, I just spent $2000 to reach this audience.  Then since I can't really follow these people around, I can only assume that they'll be at other sites that fit the same demographic.  (That's why niche sites can charge a higher CPM since they can nearly say that there will be overlap in your audience) and that eventually these folks will get that 30 to 40 impressions and buy your product. 

Is it possible to reach an audience with ONE media buy?  Seems impossible right?  After all, when you watch a show, when you read a magazine, when you listen to a radio show, the audience gets the one/maybe two impressions of your ad......

Creating multiple impressions through engagement
The Gatorade What is G commercial during the Superbowl was pretty interesting.  A user made it Klickable and we noticed extended views, more time spent with the video, and noticed interesting engagement points.   End result: a 30 second commercial became a 2-3 minute engaging impression.  Value = 4-6x not bad. 
But still not the holy grail of conversion. 

Creating multiple impressions through varying perspectives
In the music video world, a Klickable video was created by each of the different band members.  So when the user clicks on the motorcycle in video version one, the lead singer tells us how he loves motorcycles because they are fast and he loves speed.  In video version two, the drummer tells us how he hates motorcycles because of his aversion due to a bike accident when he was a little kid.  Kind of cool.  We took the same music video and got you to watch it 5-7x.  Still not converting.  But closer. 

Creating multiple impressions through a game
In the film trailer world, you usually view a trailer once and you make a quick decision on the film based on actors in the movie, the title, and any other emotions that the trailer might invoke. 
But what if the film has none of your favorite actors and doesn't invoke the right emotions because they lose you in the beginning?  Within those 5 seconds that you make the decision?

A Klickable film trailer was created with the usual things klickable, actors, objects, period items, but also it was told that a certain object contained free movie tickets.  Then it was sent to the wrong demographic for the film (the film skewed 30-40 female and was sent to 20+ male demo).  Next day some emails came in telling us that they had watched the trailer for an hour.. an hour and they couldn't find the tickets.  But what happened to the lead character?  Now their interest was piqued.  And some even went to see the film.   Value = 100%.   We got the 20+ impressions in there.  Score!

Does the repetition and frequency argument make sense?  As marketers I believe that we understand that our jobs is to make the repetition and frequency cycle quicker.  (Thus leading to a sale today instead of next week). 

As a fun game see if you can identify these tag lines that have been beaten into our heads:
1) "Where's the Beef?"
2) "Just Do it"
3) "You're in good hands",
4) "Dont' leave home without it"
5) "We try harder"
6) "The ultimate driving machine"
7) "We bring good things to life"
8) "When you care enough to send the very best"
9) "Tastes great less filling"
10) "Let your fingers do the walking"

i'm sure that you can identify these pretty easily (first person to email me (roger at klickable dot tv) with the correct companies that match each of these slogans wins a prize (yet to be determined)).

Photo Courtesy of fatcontroller