Reach
unique reachReach tells you how many distinct people an ad or a post reached at least once. Unlike impressions, reach counts each person only once regardless of how many times they saw it.
Good to know
Reach is the primary metric of an awareness campaign: when the goal is making the brand familiar, what counts is the number of people reached in the right audience, not the total of views. Together with frequency it tells who saw and how often.
Broad reach in the wrong audience is waste, so reach is always judged against the target group: what share of the people we want did we reach? Platform numbers are estimates and do not add up across channels, because the same person uses several services.
IN PRACTICE
Using reach in planning
Coverage of the audience
The number that matters is the reached share of your targets: 60 % coverage of your own group beats a million of mixed audience.
Reach and frequency buying
In awareness campaigns, delivery can be bought directly on a reach goal with a frequency cap, spreading budget instead of piling it.
Growth tracking in social
The organic reach trend shows content spreading beyond the follower bubble better than follower count does.
PITFALLS
Two reach mistakes
Reach bought without an audience
The cheapest reach comes from a broad mixed crowd. People reached without hitting the right ones is an empty number.
Channel reaches summed up
The same person is on Meta, TikTok and YouTube. The sum can overstate true coverage as much as twofold.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between reach and impressions?+
Reach counts distinct people once, impressions every display. 50,000 impressions can be 10,000 people five times.
What is good reach?+
A relative question: what matters is coverage of your audience and the price per person reached. A campaign gets a coverage goal, say 50–70 % of the core group.
Why is organic reach declining?+
Platforms prioritise paid and competition for attention tightens. The decline is industry-wide; the antidote is better content and paid support for the best posts.
How is reach grown most cheaply?+
Widen the audience definition, use cheaper placements such as Reels, and let a working creative run. High engagement lowers the price of reach.
What does unique reach mean in reports?+
The platform’s estimate of distinct people across devices and browsers. A modelled figure: right magnitude, not an exact count.
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Maintained by the VSCY editorial team · Updated 6 Aug 2026 · Part of the marketing glossary (99 terms)
