I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
How much is too much?
“Thinking ‘bout me.. Is it that sweet?… That’s that me espresso.”
Remember the first few times you heard Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” from Short n’ Sweet 2024?
Perhaps it appeared in one Instagram Reel. Then another. Soon, it was playing in cars, shops and almost every corner of the internet. By the end of 2024, it was Spotify’s most-streamed song of the year.
That is how novelty catches us.
A new dance on Instagram. A lipstick shade we have not seen before. A package that looks nothing like the others on the supermarket shelf. A DTC product that makes a familiar category feel new again.
Novelty interrupts us. It gives the brain something new to inspect.
Repetition then makes it familiar.
But what happens when the song, package or ad keeps appearing?
When does recognition become repetition, and repetition become irritation?
How can DTC brands repeat themselves enough to become recognizable without becoming easy to ignore?
It’s Monday, and we’re asking: how much exposure is too much?
🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by Glara
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for the best option in your category, one brand gets named, and it is rarely luck. It is whichever product data the model could actually read and trust. Glara shows which of your products get recommended, which get skipped, and exactly what is missing from each. Then it applies the fixes you approve, all reversible, and ties the result back to sessions and revenue in Shopify, Centra, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud. AI answers keep shifting, so it keeps checking.
One, two, three, eight
Did you know that a first glance rarely wins a purchase?
In fact, shoppers need at least eight encounters to trust a brand.
This could mean discovering a DTC brand through a Reel, encountering it again in a creator’s post, receiving a retargeting ad and finally returning through an email or search.
With every encounter the product becomes easier to recognize and process.
What initially felt unfamiliar begins to feel known, and that familiarity gradually turns into trust and liking.
Psychologists call this the Mere Exposure Effect.
But the effect does not rise forever.
Source: Pitstop Marketing
Familiarity vs fatigue
Our brains pay particular attention to change.
When something new appears, it creates a gap between what the brain expected and what it encountered.
This is called a prediction error, and it signals that there may be something worth learning.
With each repetition, though, the stimulus becomes easier to predict and produces less new information.
Research describes the weaker neural response to repeated stimuli as repetition suppression.
The brain does not forgotten the ad. It simply learns that paying attention to it is unlikely to reveal anything new.
This gradually weakens our response, a process known as habituation.
It is why we eventually stop noticing a ticking clock.
The same can happen to a product demonstration, creator video or retargeting ad. After enough repetitions, shoppers begin scrolling past without consciously registering it.
The emotional response also fades.
A funny line is rarely as funny the tenth time, and a surprising visual stops being surprising once we know what comes next. This is known as hedonic adaptation.
After this, if the ad continues interrupting the shopper, indifference can become irritation.
That feeling may then spill over to the brand itself.
💡 Have repeated ads ever convinced you to buy something?
Aggressive retargeting can also create psychological reactance, where the shopper no longer feels reminded, instead they feel pursued, and their instinct is to resist.
This is why Jones Road Beauty planned to turn one successful organic TikTok into three versions with different opening hooks. The central idea remained familiar, but each opening gave the brain something new to notice.
Blueland takes a similar approach. It repeatedly returns to the promise of powerful, plastic-free cleaning, but presents it through demonstrations, comparisons, retail offers and problem-specific messages.
We see that the safer strategy is to repeat the association without repeating the exact ad.
A meta-analysis of 81 studies and 268 exposure curves found that liking rose with repeated exposure, reached a peak and then began to decline.
So, how much is too much?
Research gives us three useful markers:
Eight to ten exposures for memory and liking. One advertising meta-analysis found that recall continued increasing through at least eight exposures, while attitudes towards an ad peaked at approximately ten. Spacing the exposures out also worked better for brand attitudes than delivering them close together.
Two to three exposures per week for purchases. A field study examining advertising exposure and purchase behaviour found an optimum of between two and three weekly exposures among customers already loyal to the brand.
Four repetitions as a direct-response warning sign. Meta found that by the fourth repeated exposure to the same creative, the associated likelihood of conversion had fallen by approximately 45%.
Source: While 59% of consumers prefer email for marketing messages, 70% unsubscribed from at least three brands in the past three months due to excessive messaging, Optimove
For DTC brands, the fourth exposure to the same creative is a useful checkpoint, not an automatic expiry date.
If impressions are rising while clicks and conversions are falling, customers may not need less of the brand. They may simply need a different way to encounter it.
This is why HexClad tests new ads against existing creatives across formats, value propositions and influencers. This approach helped the cookware brand double its creative-testing output while increasing top-of-funnel spend by 60%.
The answer is not simply to show an ad fewer times.
It is to recognize when that particular ad has stopped working.
How loop keeps repetition in the loop
Loop Earplugs is a Belgian DTC brand that sells reusable, design-led earplugs for sleep, focus, concerts and everyday noise sensitivity. Its different models can soften, filter or block sound depending on what the wearer needs.
It sells one central idea: greater control over what we hear.
But people want that control for different reasons: sleeping through noise, concentrating at work, protecting their hearing at concerts or managing sensory overload.
Each use case gives Loop a new story to tell around the same product.
For an eight-month UK TikTok campaign, Loop built its retargeting strategy around continuous experimentation:
It varied the entry point. The team tested different customer problems, hooks, visual styles and content variables.
It mixed the formats. Spark Ads appeared alongside In-Feed Ads, preventing the campaign from relying on one execution.
It rotated the winners. Recent high-performing creatives entered the campaign while ads showing signs of fatigue were paused.
It excluded existing customers. People who had already purchased were not chased with the same acquisition message.
The results
26% lower CPA than Loop’s UK average
More than 30% higher ROAS than its benchmark
13% of total UK sales generated during the campaign
Around 10× the sales contribution of a typical Loop campaign
9× increase in campaign spend while maintaining its target ROAS
Loop has since accelerated its production system too. Its video-production time reportedly fell from three weeks to five days, allowing the brand to explore new narratives before existing ones become exhausted.
Loop does not avoid repetition.
Its product, visual identity and central promise remain recognisable.
What changes is the person, problem, format, hook and story surrounding them.
The customer keeps meeting the same brand.
Just not the same ad.
The anti-fatigue campaign checklist
Fix the memory cues. Keep colours, packaging, tone and the central promise recognisable across every ad.
Build multiple angles. Rotate customer problems, use cases, objections, emotions and formats, not just headlines or backgrounds.
Segment by intent. Give cart abandoners stronger reminders, reduce pressure on casual visitors and exclude recent purchasers.
Set frequency guardrails. Use caps where available and review smaller retargeting audiences more frequently.
Watch for wear-out. If frequency rises while engagement and conversions fall, pause the creative. Preserve the winning insight, then introduce a genuinely different execution.
Repetition is not the problem.
Repetition without anything new is.
The goal is to become familiar enough to be remembered, but varied enough to remain worth noticing.
Like a good pop song, your brand needs a recognisable hook. Just do not play the same verse until customers reach for “skip.”
How's the depth of today's edition?
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
See you next week,
Nithya
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