Reach, frequency, impressions: the three factors behind high-performing ads

Within the digital marketing landscape, particularly social media advertising, three critical performance indicators (KPIs) consistently garner attention: reach, frequency, and impressions. Inadequacies in any of these metrics can potentially impede the success of marketing initiatives.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of these KPIs and equip readers with the knowledge to effectively track and optimize them for a more impactful digital marketing strategy.

Understanding Reach, Frequency, and Impressions:

• Reach: This metric quantifies the number of unique individuals who have been exposed to a marketing message at least once. It essentially reflects the breadth of audience exposure achieved by a campaign.
• Frequency: In contrast to reach, frequency signifies the average number of times a particular individual encounters a marketing message. It provides insight into the depth of exposure for the target audience.
• Impressions: This metric represents the total number of times a marketing message is displayed, irrespective of whether it is seen by the same individual multiple times or by unique viewers. It essentially reflects the overall visibility of a campaign.

Consider a scenario where a campaign exhibits a reach of 100 and impressions of 200. This translates to an average frequency of two, implying that each individual within the reached audience viewed the message twice.

How can I improve my reach, frequency and impressions?

To optimize reach

Create different ads to suit different ‘slices’ of your audience. For example, you can have a remarketing campaign for audiences who have already seen your products, and a general campaign for each of your customer avatars. Each campaign should have its own ad with unique copy and visuals. To see results, they need to be fair-sized audiences with a decent budget – so start with one and expand if needed.

To optimize frequency

As a rule, we like the frequency to be between 2 and 5. Any less and your message doesn’t sink in – any more and it becomes oversaturated and repetitive.

Optimizing frequency for paid ads mostly comes from budget optimization. If you pay more money, you can get in front of your audience more often. To reduce your frequency, simply reduce the budget. If you don’t have the budget but you’d still like to increase the frequency, you can try reducing your audience size.

To optimize impressions

Impressions are usually more up-to-date figures, so you can look at them everyday to get a sense of how your campaign is performing. For example, if your ad has been running for a day or two and has few to no impressions, it means there could be something wrong with your campaign – your audience might be too small, or your ad might be getting penalised because of its copy or imagery.

To know more, connect with our experts at www.creativemediahouse.com.