What are reach and frequency?
A campaign with a million impressions could mean a million people saw an ad once, or a hundred thousand people saw it ten times. Reach and frequency tell those two campaigns apart.
Broadcast planning combined them into gross rating points (GRPs): reach as a percentage of the target audience, multiplied by average frequency. A campaign that reaches 40% of its audience three times on average delivers 120 GRPs.
How do reach and frequency work together?
| Term | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | Different people exposed at least once | 4 million people, or 40% of the target |
| Average frequency | Exposures per person reached | Three times each |
| Impressions | Reach × frequency | 12 million |
| GRPs | Reach % × frequency | 120 |
| Effective frequency | The exposures needed for an ad to work | Often debated, and best tested for each brand |
| Frequency cap | The most times one person can see an ad in a period | Three a week |
A reach curve shows how reach grows with spend. Early money reaches new people cheaply. Later money mostly reaches people who've already seen the ad, so reach flattens while frequency climbs.
What is an example of reach and frequency?
Same budget, two plans
A brand launching a new product has $500,000 for a month. Plan A spends it on one social platform, reaching 2 million people about eight times each. Plan B splits it across three platforms, reaching 4.5 million people about three times each.
For a launch, where the goal is for as many people as possible to learn the product exists, Plan B is usually stronger. For a retargeting push to people who already know the brand, more frequency can be worth it.
Reach vs. frequency
| Reach | Frequency | |
|---|---|---|
| Question | How many people saw it? | How often did each of them see it? |
| Prioritize when | Launching, building awareness, or growing | Messages need repetition, or the audience is small |
| Risk of too much | Thin exposure that isn't remembered | Wasted spend and creative fatigue |
Why do reach and frequency matter?
Most growth comes from reaching new buyers, and most waste comes from showing the same ad to the same people too often. Balancing the two is one of the basic levers in media planning.
- Smarter budgets. Reach curves show where extra spend stops finding new people.
- Healthier creative. Watching frequency helps catch creative fatigue before it gets expensive.
- Honest totals. Each platform reports its own reach, and the same person counts on every platform, so cross-platform reach is usually lower than the sum.
How does Alli do this?
Alli by PMG's Audience Planner shows estimated reach for a persona side by side across platforms, with reach curves that forecast how a segment is likely to scale before budget is committed, so teams can check whether an audience is big enough on the platforms they're weighing.
Alli Media Planner then puts search, social, and programmatic in one governed plan, with planned spend next to actual performance by channel, market, and time period.
Explore Alli Audience PlannerReach and frequency FAQ
What is a good frequency for an ad?
It depends on the brand, message, channel, and creative. Many teams start with a few exposures a week and test from there, watching for signs of creative fatigue as frequency rises.
What are gross rating points?
GRPs measure total exposure: the percentage of the target audience reached, multiplied by average frequency. Reaching 50% of the audience twice is 100 GRPs.
What is effective frequency?
The number of exposures needed for an ad to have its intended effect. There's no universal number, so it's best found by testing for each brand and campaign.
Why is cross-platform reach hard to measure?
Each platform counts the people it reached, and the same person may be counted on several platforms. Removing that overlap needs shared identity data or modeling.
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