What is reach?
Reach is the number of unique people who saw your content or campaign at least once. Impressions count exposures; reach counts humans. A million impressions can be one million people once or fifty thousand people twenty times, and the difference is the whole story.
Why it matters
Growth comes from being known by more of the market, and reach is the raw material of being known. Brands grow by reaching light buyers and non buyers, the people who are not thinking about you yet, not by re serving the loyal core. A plan that maximises conversions but never extends reach is harvesting a field it has stopped planting.
Reach and frequency, together
Reach without frequency does not stick: one exposure rarely builds memory. Frequency without reach bores a small audience at rising cost. Media planning is the discipline of balancing the two inside the budget, enough people, enough times, no waste.
How to use it
- Deduplicate across channels: platform reach numbers overlap; the real question is unique reach across the plan.
- Qualify it: reach within the target beats raw totals.
- Pair it with lift: reach is the input; brand lift and incremental sales are the proof it worked.
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