Reach vs. Impressions
By Rianna M. Hill
All metrics are not equal or interchangeable.
One of the most basic pieces of data to look at when checking the analytics for a Facebook post or Facebook ad is either reach vs impressions.
If you have worked on a Business Page, you are probably already familiar with reach. All posts on a business page will have listed underneath the number of people that post has reached.
In this case, this means that 104 individual people have had this post on their screen.
In a Facebook advertisement, reach and impressions are right next to each other. As you can see, the numbers don’t match up, these two metrics are different types of data. But what does reach vs impressions mean?
The last ad, for example, had 942 people reached serving 946 impressions. This means that 942 people had the ad on their screen a total of 946 times, this ad was shown more than once 4 times. This doesn’t necessarily mean 4 people saw it twice or that 1 person saw it 4 times, but it is some combination of that.
Breaking Down More Detail
In the totals ad example, a total of 12,547 people had these ads show up on their screen. However, if you added up all the numbers under reach, you would receive a different total, 13,216 people reached. This means 669 people have seen more than 1 of these ads.
However, if you see the total impressions, 18,010, then add up all impressions from the individual campaigns, you will also get 18,010. This is because impressions are all about how many times an ad has been on a screen.
In Summary
The most important takeaway here is that reach and impression are two different types of metrics. Understanding reach vs impression search will help you be a better advertiser, or at least understand what your reports mean!
Reach = how many individual people had the ad on their screen
Impressions = how many times the ad was on a screen
Happy Advertising!
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Reach v.s. Impressions, Originally Written November 14, 2017 for the “Mixing Batter” PDS blog by Rianna, updated & republished here by Rianna M. Hill to maintain the useful information to help others learn and grow their internet & social media marketing skills.
