Reach (advertising)

Last updated

In advertising and media analysis, reach (or cumulative audience, cumulative reach, net audience, net reach, net unduplicated audience, or unduplicated audience) refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. [1] Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance, "TV households", "men", or "those aged 25–35").

Contents

Definition

For any given viewer, they have been "reached" by the work if they have viewed it at all (or a specified amount) during the specified period. Multiple viewings by a single member of the audience in the cited period do not increase reach; however, media people use the term effective reach to describe the quality of exposure. Effective reach and reach are two different measurements for a target audience who receive a given message or ad.

Since reach is a time-dependent summary of aggregate audience behavior, reach figures are meaningless without a period associated with them: an example of a valid reach figure would be to state that "[example website] had a one-day reach of 1565 per million on 21 March 2004" (though unique users, an equivalent measure, would be a more typical metric for a website).

Reach of television channels is often expressed in the form of "x minute weekly reach" – that is, the number (or percentage) of viewers who watched the channel for at least x minutes in a given week.

Calculation

The following formula is used to calculate the reach of a marketing campaign,

where

Reach can be expressed as a number of people in a population exposed to an advertisement, or as a percent of the population. [1]

For example, in the UK, BARB defines the reach of a television channel as the percentage of the population in private households who view a channel for more than 3 minutes in a given day or week. [2] Similarly, for radio, RAJAR defines the weekly reach of a radio station as the number of people who tune into a radio station for at least 5 minutes (within at least one 15-minute period) in a given week. [3]

Purpose

Reach is an important measure for the BBC, which is funded by a mandatory licence fee. It seeks to maximise its reach to ensure all licence fee payers are receiving value. In addition to reach, frequency of exposure is another important statistics used in advertising management. When reach is multiplied by average frequency, a composite measure called gross rating points (GRPs) is obtained. Reach can be calculated indirectly as: reach = GRPs / average frequency. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frequency</span> Number of occurrences or cycles per unit time

Frequency, most often measured in hertz, is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as temporal frequency for clarity and to distinguish it from spatial frequency. Ordinary frequency is related to angular frequency by a factor of 2π. The period is the interval of time between events, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency: f = 1/T.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gini coefficient</span> Measure of inequality of a distribution

In economics, the Gini coefficient, also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality, the wealth inequality, or the consumption inequality within a nation or a social group. It was developed by Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Probability distribution</span> Mathematical function for the probability a given outcome occurs in an experiment

In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incidence (epidemiology)</span> Chance over time of a medical condition

In epidemiology, incidence is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time period, it is better expressed as a proportion or a rate with a denominator.

Television broadcasts in the United Kingdom began in 1932, however, regular broadcasts would only begin four years later. Television began as a public service which was free of advertising, which followed the first demonstration of a transmitted moving image in 1926. Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most material viewed.

Barb Audiences Ltd is a British organisation that compiles audience measurement and television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was created in 1981 to replace two previous systems whereby ITV ratings were compiled by JICTAR, whilst the BBC did their own audience research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advertising management</span> Part of the advertising industry

Advertising management is how a company carefully plans and controls its advertising to reach its ideal customers and convince them to buy. It's part of a bigger marketing plan, and since it can be costly, it's important to manage it well. This process also helps pick the right types of advertising before a product even launches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advertising campaign</span> Advertisements based on a theme

An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ideas, beliefs, and concepts into one large media base. Advertising campaigns utilize diverse media channels over a particular time frame and target identified audiences.

In advertising, a gross rating point (GRP) measures the size of an audience that an advertisement impacts. GRPs help answer how often "must someone see it before they can readily recall it" and "how many times" does it take before the desired outcome occurs.

Audience measurement calculates how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic. The term is sometimes used with regard to practices that help broadcasters and advertisers determine who is listening, rather than how many people are listening. In some parts of the world, the resulting numbers are referred to as audience share; in other places, the broader term market share is used. This broader meaning is also known as audience research. Measurements are broken down by media market, which corresponds to large and small metropolitan areas.

Advertising adstock or advertising carry-over is the prolonged or lagged effect of advertising on consumer purchase behavior. Adstock is an important component of marketing-mix models. The term "adstock" was coined by Simon Broadbent. Adstock is a model of how the response to advertising builds and decays in consumer markets. Advertising tries to expand consumption in two ways; it both reminds and teaches. It reminds in-the-market consumers in order to influence their immediate brand choice and teaches them to increase brand awareness and salience, which makes it easier for future advertising to influence brand choice. Adstock is the mathematical manifestation of this behavioral process.

In statistics, the frequency or absolute frequency of an event is the number of times the observation has occurred/recorded in an experiment or study. These frequencies are often depicted graphically or in tabular form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advertising media selection</span>

Advertising media selection is the process of choosing the most efficient media for an advertising campaign. To evaluate media efficiency, planners consider a range of factors including: the required coverage and number of exposures in a target audience; the relative cost of the media advertising and the media environment. Media planning may also involve buying media space. Media planners require an intricate understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the main media options. The media industry is dynamic - new advertising media options are constantly emerging. Digital and social media are changing the way that consumers use media and are also influencing how consumers acquire product information.

A target rating point is a metric used in marketing and advertising to compare target audience impressions of a campaign or advertisement through a communication medium relative to the target audience population size. In the particular case of television, a device is attached to the TV set in a few thousand viewers' houses to measure impressions. These numbers are treated as a sample from the overall TV owners in different geographical and demographic sectors. Using a device, a special code is telecasted during the programme, which records the time and the programme that a viewer watches on a particular day. The average is taken for a 30-day period, which gives the viewership status for the particular channel. This has an average limit between 0-3.0.

Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is statistical analysis such as multivariate regressions on sales and marketing time series data to estimate the impact of various marketing tactics on sales and then forecast the impact of future sets of tactics. It is often used to optimize advertising mix and promotional tactics with respect to sales revenue or profit.

Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consideration in consumer behavior, advertising management, and brand management. The consumer's ability to recognize or recall a brand is central to purchasing decision-making. Purchasing cannot proceed unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name, but they must be able to recall enough distinguishing features for purchasing to proceed. Creating brand awareness is the main step in advertising a new product or bringing back the older brand in light.

Media planning is generally outsourced and entails sourcing and selecting optimal media platforms for a client's brand or product to use. The goal of media planning is to determine the best combination of media to achieve the clients objectives.

In marketing, attribution, also known as multi-touch attribution, is the identification of a set of user actions that contribute to a desired outcome, and then the assignment of a value to each of these events. Marketing attribution provides a level of understanding of what combination of events in what particular order influence individuals to engage in a desired behavior, typically referred to as a conversion.

Media weight is a term used in advertising to refer to the size of the audience reached by an advertising campaign. Media weight is determined by the number and placement of advertisements in media such as television commercials, online ads, or billboards.

In marketing and advertising, frequency refers to the number of times a target audience is exposed to a particular message or advertisement within a given time frame. This concept is a fundamental element of marketing communication strategies, aiming to enhance brand recall, create awareness, and influence consumer behavior through repeated exposure.

References

  1. 1 2 "Reach | Universal Marketing Dictionary". 24 May 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  2. BARB. "BARB Definitions". Archived from the original on 24 October 2006. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
  3. RAJAR. "Glossary of Terms". Archived from the original on 25 September 2006. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
  4. "Local Marketing Vault". Thursday, 5 November 2020