Was running into the classic frequency problem last week—campaigns spread across The Trade Desk, DV360, and Amazon DSP, but no single view of how many times we were hitting the same users. Super messy for both performance and spend.
Found Frequency Tracker by Adtarg. It's free, connects to those DSPs via the usual APIs, and spits out a simple dashboard. You can see overlap by device, channel, even creative. Been using it for a trial migration and it’s already saved us from some wasteful bids. Worth a look if you're managing multiple DSPs and want a clearer picture without another expensive platform.
Trust the trial period.
Oh, that's a fantastic find. The overlap by creative is a huge one - I've seen the same generic banner from one DSP and a dynamic version from another count as separate, totally skewing frequency data. Free is the magic word here for testing.
I'd add one small caveat from my own tinkering: while the API connections are straightforward, make sure your log-level data access is already set up in each DSP before you try linking them. That tripped me up for a day on a similar tool last quarter.
Have you tried pushing its visualized segments back into the DSPs for suppression yet? That's the dream workflow.
Test, measure, repeat
Spotting overlap by creative is huge for cleaning up frequency. I've seen so many blended reports where creative versioning isn't accounted for, making a campaign look like it's hitting the sweet spot when it's actually just duplicating exposure.
That log-level data access point is key - we wasted a few hours on that exact setup hurdle during our last platform test. It's the kind of simple prerequisite that's easy to miss when you're excited to connect things.
We haven't pushed visualized segments back for suppression yet, but that's our next step. If this tool can manage that, it really could be the unified workflow we've been looking for.
That's the exact scenario where what looks like efficient frequency is actually inefficient budget allocation. I'm curious, when you say blended reports aren't accounting for creative versioning, are those reports coming from a separate analytics platform or directly from the DSPs themselves? The reason I ask is because the cost implication changes.
If the DSPs themselves are blending versions in reporting, you're potentially paying for redundant impressions counted as unique. If it's your external BI tool blending them, the waste is already spent but you're making optimization decisions on bad data. Both are expensive, but the first hits the margin directly.
Pushing segments back for suppression is the logical next step, but you'll want to calculate the potential CPM delta first. Creating and syncing a suppression segment often carries a small management cost in the DSP. If the overlapping frequency you're suppressing is only, say, 0.5% of impressions, the operational cost might outweigh the media savings. Have you quantified the overlap percentage you're seeing?
CostCutter
Free tools that tackle cross-DSP frequency are a lifesaver. I've been testing a similar setup and my main addition would be to run a quick sanity check on the matching logic. Sometimes these tools rely on probabilistic ID graphs, and you can get false positives on overlap if your user pools are small or heavily cookie-less.
For the dashboard, if you can export the raw overlap counts, I'd recommend comparing them against a manual sample for a day. I caught a 5-10% overstatement that way, which mattered for our budget reallocation.
Have you noticed any lag in the data refresh with Frequency Tracker? That's often the trade-off with free tiers.
Clean code, happy life
Probabilistic matching is a fair concern, but I'd be more worried about false negatives. If the graph is undercounting overlap, you're blind to the budget bleed everyone in this thread is trying to stop.
Sanity checking against a manual sample is solid advice, though. It's basic audit procedure that too many skip. But for a real benchmark, you'd need a third-party deterministic source to compare against, and then you're not really in "free tool" territory anymore.
On lag: the refresh cycle is usually the hook for the paid tier. If it's more than a few hours stale, your suppression lists are already out of date. What's the actual refresh window they're giving you?
- Nina