A Guide to Understanding Reach vs Impressions in Marketing
You may have noticed when checking your analytics, the words “reach” and “impressions.” But what do these terms actually mean? Read on for an in-depth explanation of reach vs impressions.
What do Reach and Impression Mean in My Analytics?
Reach:
The total number of people that have seen your content, regardless of whether they clicked. For example, if 50 people saw your ad, then your ad has a reach of 50.
Impressions:
The total number of times that your content is displayed on someone’s feed. For example, if your ad appeared on those 50 people’s screens a total of 200 times, then your ad has 200 impressions.
Social Media Reach vs Impressions
Although the basic concepts behind reach and impressions are generally the same, there can be slight differences across each social media platform.
According to Facebook’s Business Center, reach is defined as the number of people who saw your ads at least once. This differs from their definition of impressions, which consists of multiple views of your ads by the same potential people. Additionally, Facebook splits reach into three categories: organic, paid, and viral.
- Organic Reach: the total number of unique viewers that found your content organically (for free).
- Paid Reach: the total number of unique viewers that found your content through paid advertising.
- Viral Reach: the total number of unique viewers that found your content due to their Facebook friends interacting with it.
Instagram defines reach and impressions almost the exact same way that Facebook does. Instagram refers to reach as the total number of unique viewers that have seen a post or story and impressions refer to the amount of times a unique viewers saw that post or story.
Twitter differs from both Facebook and Instagram due to its lack of a reach feature. Impressions are the only tracked analytic available on Twitter’s platform and it deals with the amount of times a user views a tweet. This impression can come from their feed, search results, or as a direct message.
Why are Reach and Impressions Analytics Important?
Keeping track of your ads’ reach and impressions can provide marketers with valuable information about how successful an ad campaign is. Tracking reach and impressions can provide intel about how often your ads are showing up in people’s feeds as well as how broad your reach is. By tracking this, marketers can determine if their ads are successfully making their way to potential new users. Then they can adjust as necessary.
If your brand is looking to track reach and impression analytics, don’t hesitate to reach out to the digital strategists at Kraus Marketing! Contact us today to get started!