Measurement Fundamentals 4: Reach and Frequency

Geopath Ratings offers clients an opportunity that they’ve never had before with Out of Home advertising: the ability to measure the reach and frequency of individual units or entire campaigns.

When an advertiser wants to know how many different people will see the piece of inventory and how often, the metrics are reach and frequency.

REACH: The percentage of unique persons in a particular market exposed at least once to an OOH unit(s) over a specific period of time. 

EFFECTIVE REACH: The number or percentage of a target audience that is exposed to an OOH unit(s) at a set level of effective frequency. A common effective frequency level is “3+” meaning that that the effective reach is equal to the number or percentage of people reached who were exposed to the message at least three times.

FREQUENCY: The average number of times that an individual reached is exposed to the OOH unit(s) in a specific period of time.

FREQUENCY (TRANSIT): The quantity of service on a route, usually described in terms of the number of buses per hour or the elapsed time between consecutive buses. The latter measure is also called the headway. The term high frequency denotes many buses per hour, or small headways.

SETTING REACH & FREQUENCY GOALS

     Reach & Frequency are staples of measurement in the advertising industry each valued when analyzing how many people are exposed to a message and how many times these people are exposed. With regards to out of home, the reach of a unit(s) tells you how many individuals in a market contributed to the impressions of that unit(s) within a certain time frame. Frequency shows how many times, on average, these individuals saw that unit(s) in the same time frame. Reach and frequency change over a period of weeks. As a unit(s) is passed reach and frequency continue to grow until, eventually, the growth of reach tapers off and no more new people in the selected market are reached by the ad(s). At this point, only the frequency of this unit(s) grows. Understanding the dynamics of how Reach & Frequency grow and work are huge first steps towards selecting and evaluating the particulars of out of home and multimedia campaigns that is now possible with Geopath.

MAXIMIZING REACH

     Media specialists often set goals emphasizing reach to maximize the number of people exposed to a message. This is the most reliable way to spread ad dollars among as many people as possible while still insuring adequate frequency in ad campaigns. Maximizing reach is often considered an effective strategy to use when announcing a new product, service, sale, seasonal event, etc. after a brand is already established within a market or if the level of local competition with that brand is relatively low.

BENEFITS OF HIGH FREQUENCY

     There are several situations in which high frequency is valued by advertisers. For example, if the client’s business is supported by the neighborhood it is in, there is reduced benefit in reaching people that may be too far away to consistently use their products or services. In these cases, a high frequency campaign with units based around store fronts is often sought out. Another situation in which frequency is particularly important is when a brand is looking to establish itself locally and needs to reach people many times to have a lasting impact. Also, if local competition is heavy, touching an advertiser’s potential customers with higher frequency is a reliable way to insure their brand rises above the messages of others and wins the competitive game of recency. Out of home companies have been selling the potential reach and frequency benefits of out of home for years but, without proper metrics, these claims could only be trusted as far as the person making them. Setting customized reach and frequency goals that fit a clients’ needs has proven itself as an ideal way to show precisely how a campaign is working for their bottomline.