|
Understanding Reach and Frequency
At Fred Riger Advertising Agency, the terms “reach”
and “frequency” are used more than any others when
it comes to planning media. Reach and frequency are the means
by which we develop an advertising schedule that is both effective
and efficient. Are you getting the most for your dollars?
What is reach?
Reach is simply the percentage of persons in a target population
that is exposed to an advertising schedule at least once.
It can also be expressed as “cume” and “unduplicated
audience.”
What are ratings, and how do they affect reach?
A rating refers to the percentage of a target population
that is actually watching a TV program or listening to a radio
station. For instance, if Murder She Wrote has a rating
of 15.0 for Women 25-54, it means that fifteen percent of
that target population is watching that particular program
(as opposed to, just say, a 9.0 rating for Men 14-49).
The rating for a TV/radio program can also be called its
reach. Using the same example of Murder She Wrote --
if its rating is 15.0, it reaches fifteen percent of the audience.
When we add several groups of ratings together, we get Gross
Rating Points, or GRPs. We are then able to determine how
much of our target audience we are reaching with the total
number of GRPs in our schedule.
What is frequency?
Frequency simply measures the number of times a person sees
your message in a given advertising schedule. One person may
see your commercial three times over your advertising flight.
That would be a frequency of three.
That's not all.
Ratings aren't the only factor in determining reach and frequency.
“Daypart,” which refers to the time of day a program
is aired, also affects how we determine reach and frequency.
For instance, we can look at Murder She Wrote again
and compare it to a Sunday NFL Football game. Both may have
a 15.0 rating. However, Murder She Wrote is on Sunday
night at 8:00 PM -- a prime viewing hour. NFL Football, on
the other hand, is on Sunday afternoon. Both have the same
rating, but because of their dayparts, we know that a commercial
message in each program will deliver a very different reach
and frequency. A schedule that has 100.0 GRPs in primetime
viewing may reach 55 percent of the target audience 1.7 times,
while 100.0 GRPs in daytime programming would reach only 40
percent of our target audience, but the frequency would be
2.4.
To maximize reach and frequency in an advertising schedule
for the best possible cost, we can handpick the programs on
TV and the dayparts on radio that will achieve that goal.
We are able to choose from several different scenarios that
will strive to reach the maximum target audience most often,
at the least cost.
-- TOP -- Media
Home -- Knowledge Base Home
--
|
