TV Survey Practice Test

Recency measures the timing of the last ad exposure and how recently a viewer saw it. The key idea is that the closer the exposure is to the moment of decision or recall, the stronger its impact tends to be. A viewer who just saw the ad is more likely to remember it and be influenced by it than someone who saw it much earlier, so measuring recency captures how fresh the message remains in memory and in consideration. This focus differs from frequency, which is about how many times the ad is aired, and from reach, which counts how many unique people saw it at least once. It also isn’t about the overall decline of viewership over time (wear-out); it specifically emphasizes the freshness of the last exposure and its immediate effect on recall and action. In practice, recency planning uses short time windows (e.g., exposures within the last day or few days) to maximize messaging impact.