How far will your media budget actually go?
Enter your budget, CPM, target audience, and expected reach. Get impressions, reach, frequency, GRPs, and cost per rating point, instantly, no login.
Your plan
What that buys you
Reading these numbers: impressions are budget ÷ CPM × 1,000. Reach is your target audience × the reach % you expect, that’s the one assumption here, not something impressions alone can tell you. Frequency is impressions ÷ reach, how many times the average reached person sees the ad. GRPs are reach % × frequency, and CPP is budget ÷ GRPs.
Base the reach % on the platform, format, and flight length you’re planning against; it’s a planning assumption, the same one every media plan makes before it runs. Once the campaign is live, swap in the platform’s own reported reach here to get your real frequency.
For planning and sanity-checks only. Actual delivery, reach, and frequency vary by platform, format, and audience overlap.
What is reach and what is frequency?
Those two scenarios call for completely different decisions. The first is a reach problem: plenty of people, no repetition, nothing sticks. The second is a saturation problem: the same small group is being worn out while everyone else never hears from you.
How do you calculate reach and frequency?
| You know | You want | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions and reach | Frequency | Impressions divided by reach |
| Impressions and frequency | Reach | Impressions divided by frequency |
| Reach and frequency | Impressions | Reach multiplied by frequency |
| Budget and CPM | Impressions | Budget divided by CPM, multiplied by 1,000 |
A worked example. You have $10,000 and your CPM is $4. That buys 2.5 million impressions. If you want an average frequency of 4, you will reach 625,000 people. If you decide 4 is too high and drop the target to 3, the same money reaches roughly 833,000 people instead. Nothing about the budget changed. Only the decision about repetition did.
How do you calculate ad frequency?
Ad frequency is total impressions divided by reach. If a campaign delivered 2,000,000 impressions and reached 500,000 unique people, average frequency is 4.0, meaning the average person saw the ad four times. Every major ad platform reports both numbers, so you can check frequency on a live campaign without any tool.
Two things that formula hides. First, frequency is an average. A reported 4.0 usually means a small group saw the ad fifteen times while a large group saw it once, so look at the frequency distribution where your platform offers one. Second, frequency is counted per platform. Someone who sees your ad four times on Meta and three times on YouTube has a real frequency of seven, and no single dashboard will show you that.
For the full comparison, including how the reach curve flattens and when to prioritise one over the other, see reach vs frequency explained.
What frequency should you aim for?
- New brand or new product. Aim higher, towards 4 to 6. Unfamiliar messages need more repetition to land.
- Known brand, simple message. 2 to 3 is often enough. You are reminding, not teaching.
- Complex or considered purchase. Higher frequency over a longer window, because the decision itself takes weeks.
- Short promotional burst. Higher frequency compressed into days is acceptable, because the window closes.
Average frequency also hides a lot. A campaign averaging 4 often means a small group saw it 15 times and a large group saw it once. Where the platform allows it, a frequency cap protects the top end and pushes the spend back out towards new people.
How do you read the output of this calculator?
Enter any two of the three values and the third is calculated. If the frequency that comes back is far above your target, your audience is too narrow for the budget: widen the targeting or cut the spend. If reach is high but frequency is below 2, the budget is spread too thin to make an impression: narrow the audience or extend the flight.
For the full explanation of how these two trade against each other in a media plan, see the guide on media planning terms, which defines reach, frequency, CPM, GRP and the rest in plain language.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between reach and impressions?
Reach counts people. Impressions count views. One person who saw your ad five times is one reach and five impressions. Reach can never exceed your addressable audience, impressions can grow without limit.
What is effective frequency?
Effective frequency is the number of exposures needed before the message actually does its job. It varies by category and message complexity, which is why the 3 to 5 range is a starting point rather than a rule.
Is a high frequency always bad?
No. High frequency is a problem when it comes at the cost of reach, or when it continues past the point of diminishing returns. In a short sale window, or for a complex product, high frequency is deliberate.
How do you lower frequency without losing reach?
Widen the audience, set a frequency cap, or extend the campaign over more days. Cutting budget lowers frequency too, but it lowers total delivery with it.
Does this work for organic social as well as paid?
The arithmetic is identical, but organic reach is not something you control, so you can measure frequency after the fact rather than plan to it.
What is a good CPM?
It depends entirely on platform, country and audience. Use your own recent campaigns as the benchmark rather than a published average, because the range across formats is wide enough to make averages misleading.
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