Reach – an important metric in media planning
Reach is differentiated between gross reach (sum of individual reach) and net reach (overlaps are excluded). Gross reach indicates how many potential buyers have come into contact with an advertising medium; in this case, it is also referred to as the number of measured contacts. People reached multiple times are counted multiple times. For example, if your advertising medium reaches 1,000 users, and each user comes into contact with your medium three times, the gross reach is 3,000. The GRP (Gross Rating Point) is identical to gross reach in %. It is calculated as follows: reach in % multiplied by the average contacts. Net reach, on the other hand, indicates how many users were actually reached by your advertising medium. In our case, the net reach is 1,000.
Qualitative Gross and Net Reach
Reach is also differentiated between qualitative gross and net reach. For example, if you place an offer for soy milk in a women’s magazine, not every reader will be addressed. If the magazine has 60,000 subscribers, and every tenth reader is a consumer of soy milk, the gross reach will not be 60,000, but only 6,000.
The Cumulative Reach
An insightful aspect of reach analysis is also cumulative reach, which takes into account internal overlaps in different editions of a medium. It examines how reach behaves after multiple placements in a medium, i.e., how much it increases. If a medium primarily has a large core readership, few new readers will be reached with multiple placements within a publishing interval, and the net reach will increase only slightly. However, if the medium has irregular readers, new readers can be gained with each publishing interval, and the net reach increases significantly with multiple placements. News channels are considered to have high cumulative media, while subscription newspapers are considered to have low cumulative media. Cumulative reach is therefore of interest when the number of listeners, readers, or users fluctuates greatly.
Measurement of Reach using Tracking Systems
Measuring reach can provide much more precise values in online marketing than in print media. In print advertising, you only know how many subscribers the magazine has or how many copies of the magazine were actually sold. However, this does not provide any insight into whether the ad was definitely read. In online marketing, using various tracking systems, it is possible to make specific statements about how long a visitor was on your website and which other pages they viewed. In online marketing, reach is reported in terms of Unique Users or Ad Impressions.
Media Planning
One of the tasks in media planning is to select the right advertising carriers during media selection. The media planner should be familiar with the different metrics of the media. Terms such as reach, Cost Per Thousand (CPT), target audience affinity, thousand circulation price, etc. must be familiar to them so that they can tell you which media are best for your products, taking into account your advertising budget.
Your contact person for target audience analysis and reach
Our target audience specialist Heike Oeckinghaus will be happy to assist you with your next media planning and show you the most efficient way for you (oeckinghaus@trebbau.com, Tel.: 0221/37646–391).