Media Buying
Frontload
The intentional concentration of the vast majority of a campaign's commercial spots in the earliest days of the scheduled flight.
What is Frontload?
Frontloading is a scheduling strategy that pushes 60–80 percent of total spots into the first week of a multi-week flight, tapering down sharply afterward. The logic is psychological: a concentrated burst creates immediate salience, drives first-mover action, and leaves residual awareness to carry through the rest of the flight on reduced weight.
Frontloading is particularly effective for time-critical promotions — a weekend sale, a concert ticket release, a limited-edition product launch — where the call-to-action window is short. It is less effective for steady-state brand building, where continuous presence matters more than initial burst. Experienced planners pick between frontload, evenly-distributed, and backload patterns based on the specific campaign objective.
Why it matters
Highly effective for promoting time-sensitive events, such as weekend retail sales or upcoming concerts, to build immediate, massive momentum.
Related terms
- AM Drive / PM Drive— The morning (typically 6 AM – 10 AM) and afternoon (typically 3 PM – 7 PM) rush hour broadcast periods.
- Flight / Flight Dates— The specific, contractual start and end dates of a marketing campaign or a schedule of broadcast commercials.
- Direct Sales— Advertising inventory sold by the station's internal account executives directly to local business owners, completely bypassing advertising agencies.
- Spot Television— Denotes all available commercial advertising time available for purchase from a local television station, encompassing both local and national spots.