What is reach in advertising and marketing?
Reach is the number of unique people or accounts who saw your ad at least once. Here are the formulas, how Meta counts reach, a worked AED example, and why reach from different campaigns and platforms doesn't add up.
Reach is the number of unique people, or accounts, who saw an ad or campaign at least once during a set period. Unlike impressions, which count every time an ad is shown, reach counts each person once. Impressions divided by reach gives frequency, the average number of times each person saw the ad.
How is reach measured?
| Metric | Formula |
|---|---|
| Reach | Impressions ÷ frequency |
| Reach rate | Reach ÷ target audience size × 100 |
| Cost per 1,000 reached | Spend ÷ reach × 1,000 |
Ad platforms count reach with their own identifiers. Meta reports it in Accounts Center accounts rather than people since its January 2023 terminology update, which said the numbers stayed the same and only the name changed. Jon Loomer quotes the definition as "the number of Accounts Center accounts that saw your ads at least once" and notes that linked Facebook and Instagram profiles count as one.
Reach example
An illustrative UAE campaign targets an audience of 2,000,000 adults:
- Reach: 800,000, a reach rate of 40%.
- Impressions: 3,200,000, so frequency is 4.0.
- CPM: AED 20, so spend is AED 64,000.
- Cost per 1,000 people reached: AED 80.
Raising reach to 50% usually costs more per extra person, because the easiest people to reach have already seen the ad.
Pitfalls
- Reach does not add up: the same person can be reached by two campaigns or two platforms, so totals overstate unique reach.
- Periods matter: a month's reach is less than the sum of each day's reach.
- Seen is not noticed: reach says the ad was delivered, not that it was remembered.
Related terms
See ad frequency, CPM and share of voice.
How Grower helps
Grower's channels leaderboard ranks every connected channel by ROAS, conversions, cost, CPA, impressions and CTR, and its performance spotlight shows your best channel, most converting campaign, best CPA and highest spend.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between reach and impressions?
Impressions count every time an ad is displayed, including repeat views by the same person. Reach counts each person or account once, however many times they saw the ad. If 1,000 people each see an ad three times, reach is 1,000 and impressions are 3,000. Impressions are always equal to or higher than reach.
Can you add reach across campaigns or platforms?
Not accurately. The same person can see ads from several campaigns, and from Meta, Snapchat and TikTok, so adding their reach counts that person more than once. The sum is an upper limit. Within one platform, pull reach for the whole selection at once rather than adding rows, and remember that no ad platform sees its overlap with the others.
What is a good reach percentage?
It depends on the goal. A launch or seasonal campaign may aim to reach most of its target audience, while a performance campaign may deliberately focus on a smaller, high-intent group. Set the target reach rate from your plan, then watch the cost per extra 1,000 people, which usually rises as reach grows.
Plan how much reach your budget can buy with the marketing budget calculator, or book a Grower demo to compare channels side by side.