Reach

Reach is the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once. If one person sees the same ad five times, that counts as one person reached but five impressions. Reach tells you how wide your audience is, while impressions tell you how much exposure you bought in total.

Reach, impressions and frequency

The three metrics are linked:

Frequency = impressions ÷ reach

Worked example (made-up numbers): a campaign generates 120,000 impressions and reaches 40,000 people. Frequency = 120,000 ÷ 40,000 = 3.0.

How reach is estimated

Platforms try to count people rather than devices or browsers, but the figure is still an estimate. Meta's reach numbers are based on its own measurement methods, which can involve sampling and modelling, and one person using several accounts may be counted more than once. Treat reach as a directional figure.

Why it matters

• Awareness and launches: if you need many people to hear about a product, reach is often the primary goal.
• Audience saturation: if reach stops growing while spend continues, the same people are seeing your ads more often, which can lead to ad fatigue.
• Creative planning: a campaign with large reach needs enough creative variety to stay fresh.

Reach in the Ad Library

For ads delivered in the EU, the Meta Ad Library shows estimated reach, as required by the Digital Services Act. This gives researchers a rough sense of how widely a competitor's ad was shown, although reach is not the same as results.