The truth about Reach in media reporting

Reach. It’s one of the most commonly cited metrics in media reporting and one of the most misunderstood.

We see the big numbers, we celebrate them, and we put those numbers into reports that get sent straight to the C-suite. Because surely if your brand appeared in a publication with millions of readers, millions of people must have seen it… right?

Well, not quite.

The truth is that Reach is a projection, not a performance metric. It estimates how many people could have seen a piece of content, not how many actually did. And in an industry where accuracy, credibility and value are under the microscope more than ever, understanding that difference is crucial.

This article takes a closer look at what Reach really means in earned media reporting: how it’s calculated, why it’s useful, where it falls apart, and how to use it responsibly so you can communicate the real value of your media coverage.

What is Reach, really?

Reach is pretty straightforward in theory. It’s the number of people a media item could potentially reach. The possible audience your story is exposed to.

Potential being the keyword. Reach is not a count of the number of visitors that a media item actually reached, only the potential based on the audience size of a news outlet.

Let’s take news.com.au as an example. According to IAB-endorsed Ipsos iris rankings of the top 10 media outlets in August 2025, news.com.au had a monthly audience of 12.6 million. So if your brand appears on news.com.au, the Reach for that article is often recorded as 12.6 million.

Sounds impressive but let’s be real. 12.6 million people did not see your story. And of those who did, most didn’t even scroll past the headline, let alone read your name.

So if Reach doesn’t measure actual exposure, why do we use it? Because despite its limitations, it still gives us a starting point.

How Reach is calculated and obtained

Tracking traffic to your own website is simple. Tools like Google Analytics give you direct visibility into exactly how many people visited which pages.

Tracking a site you don’t own? Completely different story.

You can’t log into a publisher’s analytics to see article-level traffic. That data sits with media owners and is rarely shared publicly.

So, Reach relies on either:

1. Audience numbers published by media outlets themselves or,
2. Third-party audience measurement systems (e.g., Ipsos iris in Australia).

Now you can imagine the disparity when relying on self-reported data which is why industry endorsed measurement systems have become much more popular. However, these are not without their own faults.

Ipsos iris, for example, uses a nationally representative digital panel of around 4,000 people and approximately 8,000 devices. Their behaviour is tracked and scaled to estimate online audience size — including Reach.

Is this reliable? Do all media outlets follow the same reporting schedule or use the same variables to track visitors (think unique vs total)? Do third parties collect data from the same source or can you rely on the representation they use? I’ll let you be the judge of how reliable it might be.

What Reach is good for

Despite its flaws, Reach isn’t pointless:

• It gives you a sense of the scale of coverage. It can be used to indicate the influence or authority of a publication, giving your story more leverage compared to smaller, lesser known outlets.
• Stakeholders understand it. Whether to prove that your campaign is successful or show off the value of earned media, Reach can be easily understood and accepted by almost anyone.
• It’s often the only exposure metric available. Unless a media outlet openly shares the traffic to every individual article, it is impossible to track the actual view or visitor count. Reach is the next best thing with the assumption that higher reach indicates higher viewership of articles.
• It helps feed more intelligent measurement models. For example, Medianet’s REAL Impact Score uses Reach as one of the components to calculate and score the potential impact of a single media item, but it does not rely solely on Reach.

Where Reach struggles

By now we’ve already covered some of the limitations, but let’s explore them in more detail:

• Reach can vary in how it is defined, calculated and reported, depending on the publisher or measurement system — so comparability and consistency can be issues.
• It is an ‘indicator’ of traffic, but not a true measure of success. Imagine standing in the middle of Sydney with a population of around 5.5 million and shouting “I’m here!”. 5.5 million people are not going to hear you shout, but maybe the 100 people around you will. Reach faces the same challenge, except it is your media article shouting to be heard.
• Reach can devalue smaller, more targeted and niche publications. Due to their smaller audience sizes, niche publications appear to have less value if you rely solely on Reach, even though they might have strong engagement with a highly relevant audience.

So how should you use it?

Reach is useful, but only when you understand what it is and what it isn’t.

Use Reach as a context setter, not a performance metric. It should help you understand the potential impact of earned media:

e.g.

“How big is the audience of the outlet my story landed in?”

…but not:

“How many people read my article?”

When using Reach, here are a few principles to keep in mind:

Compare like-for-like

If you’re comparing results across outlets, make sure the Reach values come from the same measurement source and methodology. This ensures consistent reporting and more accurate comparisons.

Look beyond big numbers

A story in a niche industry publication may deliver far greater visibility with the people who actually matter. Small Reach ≠ small impact.

Never use Reach on its own

Partner it with stronger indicators like:

• Article prominence (front page vs buried deep)
• Headline mentions vs body-only mentions
• Social engagement and recirculation
• Sentiment and messaging pickup
• Referral traffic to your website
• Real-world actions (conversions, inquiries, behaviour shifts)

Remember what you’re measuring

Reach tells you the opportunity for exposure. Not proof. Not engagement. Not influence. It’s the ceiling, not the score. So don’t get stuck on the big numbers.

The bottom line

Reach isn’t a bad metric. It’s just an incomplete one.

Used responsibly, Reach helps you communicate the scale of your earned media footprint and set fair expectations with stakeholders. But relying on it alone is like judging a book by how many copies were printed, not how many people actually read it, loved it, or changed their behaviour because of it.

If what you care about is the real impact of your media coverage, you need more than potential. You need evidence.

And that’s where modern impact metrics such as Medianet’s REAL Impact Score step in.

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Read more about Medianet's REAL Impact Score: The credible way to measure the impact of your media coverage