Reach and frequency
How many people see a campaign and how many times each of them sees it.
Two figures competing for the same budget. Broad reach with low frequency fails to make the message stick; high frequency on a narrow audience starts to irritate after a few exposures.
Brand campaigns typically aim for an effective frequency of three to five contacts. The exact figure varies with message complexity and existing brand awareness.
See alsoPost-buy analysis · OOH — out-of-home
Post-buy analysis
A comparison of what the media plan promised against what actually ran.
It checks which spots ran, at what times, and with what actual reach. Deviations from plan are settled through compensation from the media owner.
Agencies often skip this step because it adds nothing to revenue. It is, however, the only place where you verify the client got what they paid for.
See alsoReach and frequency · OOH — out-of-home
OOH — out-of-home
Advertising formats in public space, from billboards to street furniture.
Short for out-of-home. It covers billboards, citylights, transit formats and digital screens. Its strengths are reach and visibility; its weaknesses are targeting precision and measurability.
Frequency decides with OOH. One site for a month is wasted spend; twenty sites over three weeks has a measurable effect on branded search.
See alsoReach and frequency · Post-buy analysis
CPM — cost per millecost per mille
The price an advertiser pays for one thousand ad impressions.
The basic unit in which media space is traded. An impression does not mean anyone noticed the ad, which is why digital adds viewability — whether the placement entered the browser window at all.
Comparing CPM across channels is treacherous. A thousand impressions on television, on a billboard and in a mobile app are three contacts of very different intensity, and the same number means something different in each.
See alsoGRP — gross rating point · Reach and frequency · OOH — out-of-home
GRP — gross rating pointgross rating point
The total reach of a campaign expressed as a percentage of the target group.
One hundred GRPs means the campaign reached the target group once over in total — say fifty percent of people twice, or a hundred percent once. The number alone therefore does not say how many people saw the ad.
That is exactly why a plan is never built on GRPs alone. Alongside them you track net reach — how many distinct people the campaign met at least once — and average frequency.
See alsoCPM — cost per mille · Reach and frequency · Post-buy analysis
Programmatic buying
Automated buying of ad space through an auction held while the page loads.
Instead of negotiating with a specific outlet, you buy an audience across thousands of sites. The system evaluates in real time how valuable a given user is to the advertiser and bids accordingly.
Its weakness is transparency. Several intermediaries sit between advertiser and publisher and each takes a cut, so noticeably less of the budget reaches the publisher than was spent. That is why a plan should also include direct buys with the outlets you actually want.
See alsoCPM — cost per mille · Attribution · Share of voice
Share of voice
A brand’s share of total advertising activity within its category.
It is measured in money or in reach. It is useful compared against market share: a brand with a smaller voice than its share usually loses share over time, and the reverse also holds.
The figure is meaningful only relative to competitors, never on its own. In a thinly contested category a fraction of a budget buys a loud voice that elsewhere would go unnoticed.
See alsoGRP — gross rating point · Positioning · CPM — cost per mille