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Let's say you've just launched an ad campaign or published some content, and you want to see how it's progressing. When you open your analytics you will notice that two terms stand out: ''impressions'' and ''reach''. You see they are reach i impressions two different things, but you don't fully understand what the difference is.

What exactly is the difference between ''reach'' and ''impressions''? Which one to pay more attention to? And what do these terms mean for your marketing?

The difference between the terms reach and impression

Reach i impressions have different meanings for different platforms. What Facebook called ''impressions'' Twitter called ''reach'' e.g. But in essence, they denote two concepts.

Reach (eng. reach) refers to the total number of people who saw your ad or post. If 100 people saw your ad, that means it is reach 100.

Impression (eng. impression, impression) refers to how many times your ad or post is displayed on a screen (computer, phone or any device that accesses the Internet). Let's say that your ad from the previous example appeared on the screens 300 times. This means that the number of impressions is - 300.

Let's look at how the main platforms define these 2 terms, to understand how each metric works.

Facebook reach vs impressions

Facebook defines reach like: The number of people who saw your ad at least once. According to this definition reach measures the total number of unique users who saw your post / ad.

Reach is divided into 3 categories: limited, paid and viral.

Organic reach refers to the number of unique people who have seen your post organically (for free) on Facebook News Feed-u.

Paid reach is the number of people on Facebook-who saw the post being paid. It is often directly influenced by various factors such as Ad bid, budget and target audience.

Viral reach is the number of people who saw your post because one of their friends interacted with it.

Impression from the other side Facebook defines like, "how many times has your ad been on the screens?" For example, if the same user sees your post three times on their wall, it would count as three impressions. 

Neither"reach"Ni"impressions”Does not mean that someone clicked on your ad or had any interaction with it.

Facebook it also says that it is not necessary for the video to start in order to count the impression. In other words, an impression measures how many times your post has been seen.

So how do we know if they are ''reach'' or ''impressions'' Really real? To answer this question, Facebook shares impressions in two categories: '' served '' and '' viewed ''.

When an ad is "served", it means that the ad was simply paid for and that the system decided to deliver the ad somewhere (at the top of someone's News Feed-a, in the advertising box on the side, etc.…)

"Served" ads do not have to appear on the screen (they can stay "under the fold", as Facebook names).

'' Viewed " impressed on the other hand, it counts if the user sees the advertisement on the screen. If the user does not scroll to see the ad, or moves from the page before loading, then the ad does not count as "viewed".

Instagram reach vs impressions

Instagram treats reach i impressions almost the same as Facebook. Reach refers to the total number of unique accounts that saw your post or story on a certain day. As you can already conclude reach is very important when it comes to brand awareness.

Impression represents the total number of times your post has been shown and story-I'm a user. Like the code Facebook-and here each display is counted as an impression to the user. (So ​​a post shown three times to the same user will count as three impressions). So these are the two basic metrics you want to follow when evaluating your performance Instagram strategies.

What is the best thing to follow?

Reach (reach) i impressions (impressions) refer to two specific activities, so deciding which metric will be more important depends on what your goals are. Let's start with why you should focus on impressions.

Why focus on impressions?

You can track impressions if you want to avoid overloading users with ads, which can lead to counter-effects. Nobody likes to be bored! If you want to avoid that, it may be better to focus on reach, not on impressions.

Impressions are also useful when we want to track ads in moment-to-moment basics. If you run your ad and immediately get little or no impressions, it could be a sign that something is wrong with your ad.

Why focus on reach?

Reach respectively reach it can also help us see if something is wrong with the ad. If the ad has reached a lot of people, but you haven't had any conversions, it may mean that you should review the content of the ad.

If your content, on the other hand, has great reach this means that it is successful and finds its way to many new users, which means that it will most likely be shared and interacted.

Why follow both reach and impression?

Reach i impressions they say different things about the effect of advertisements and content. More often than not, you'll need to use both metrics together to discover the effectiveness of a campaign or ad.

Understand your "efficient frequency"

Comparing impressions and reach is deceptive, because impressions will always be equal to or greater than reach. Every user in your Reach will see your content at least once, and many will see it several times. How many times?

To detect this, we divide the total number of impressions by the total number of reach to get the average number of impressions per user. (Some call it "ad frequency", or "average impressions per user").

So how many average impressions per user is good?

Many brand awareness studies suggest that users must see an ad several times before they begin to gain brand awareness. Advertisers call this an "effective frequency" - how many times someone has seen an ad before reacting to it.

Herbert E. Krugman (General Electric's) stated that three commercials are enough to make someone aware of your brand. As early as 1885, London businessman Thomas Smith stated that it was necessary twenty.

By all accounts, the effective frequency of your business will be closely related to your industry and product. If you want to get a sense of how many impressions are reasonable, try to get some insight into how much your competition is targeting.

Don't bother with commercials

Discovering the effective frequency is also important because it tells us how many times users see the ad before it starts to annoy them.

How many impressions per user is too much will depend on your goals on social media. If you want to slowly build brand awareness, a provocative campaign, which cannot be ignored, may not be the best way to go.

But if you have a time-sensitive promotion and want as many people as possible to see you, a large number of impressions per user could be a good goal.

What to follow besides reach and impressions?

Reach i impressions I can tell you a lot about what results your content achieves. But it's important to remember that they don't tell you anything about whether someone actually clicked or interacted with your content.

If you want to measure your ROI on social media, and are focused on short- and medium-term returns on investment, focusing on conversion is key. At the end of the day, site traffic, generated leads, email sign-ups, conversions, and revenue are much more concrete measures of campaign success.

If you want to draw a line between advertising cost and ROI, match reach and impression metrics with conversion and revenue. Make sure to connect reach with much more concrete actions, such as signup-s and revenues.

One way is to share the revenue with the total users we have reached to get the "average revenue per user reached".

This can help you better understand how the cost of advertising and your efforts to increase reach result in a concrete return on investment (ROI).

For more useful and educational texts on digital marketing - visit our blog.

Save your time and choose Digitizer. Digitizer authentic storytelling-om in an interesting and tempting way evokes your business to users of social networks! Let's travel together to new successes! Contact us today!

Made by Nemanja Nedeljkovic - Senior Account Manager @Digitizer

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