Paid Social
Reach
Reach is the number of unique people who saw your content or ad at least once, regardless of how many times.
It measures audience size, while impressions count total views including repeats. For example, an ad seen three times by one person is one in reach but three in impressions. Reach is a key metric for awareness goals.
Reach only means something against a defined denominator: 400,000 people reached is a fraction of what, exactly? Sizing the real target population first turns reach from a vanity number into penetration, the percentage of the people who could buy who have now seen the message. The planning trade-off is always reach versus frequency inside a fixed budget: more people fewer times, or fewer people more often. For considered purchases, concentrated frequency on a narrow audience routinely beats shallow reach across a broad one, which is the opposite of the instinct the big number encourages.
Example
A campaign reports 1.2 million impressions and 400,000 reach: each person saw it three times on average. The brand's target market in Bangkok is roughly 800,000 people, so the campaign touched half of it. Next month's decision is not "more impressions" but "widen reach or deepen frequency", two different budgets that the impression number alone could not separate.
Frequently asked questions
- Reach or impressions, which should I optimise?
- Reach when new-audience exposure is the goal, frequency-weighted delivery when the message needs repetition to land. Impressions alone are the budget's exhaust, not a goal: decide how many people, how many times, and let those two numbers pick the buying mode.
- How much reach do I need for a campaign to work?
- Meaningful penetration of the audience that could actually buy, which means sizing that audience first. Reaching 5 percent of a well-defined market repeatedly beats touching 40 percent of a vague one once, especially for considered purchases.
Related terms
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