Facebook Reach and Impressions Data within Unmetric

Ranjani Raghupathi
July 12, 2016 • 3 min read
Updated on May 5, 2017
We’ve just rolled out a brand new feature on the Unmetric Analyze platform. Users will now be able to see the Reach and Impressions on any brand Facebook Post at any given time.
We’ve broken down the number of Reach and Impressions for a brand’s Posts collectively as well as for individual brand Posts within the Unmetric Analyze platform. The numbers for Reach and Impressions will be displayed along with other engagement metrics for Posts published starting July 1, 2016, onwards.
Here’s how we define the metrics:
- Reach: This refers to the number of unique people who viewed a piece of social media content.
- Impressions: This refers to the number of times a piece of social media content is viewed. If the same person has viewed a piece two times, the impressions will be counted as 2.
Before we tell you how you can use the feature, here’s a little background to why this is a game-changer.
Falling Facebook Reach numbers has been keeping social media managers up for years now. When Marshall Manson of Social@Ogilvy published a whitepaper in 2014 that showed how Reach hit rock bottom, for some it was an eye opener, for others it was proof of what they already suspected. Manson even went on to say we should all expect Reach to hit zero. That’s not surprising given that’s how all media platforms in the past transitioned to high revenue business models.
With social media managers panicking, Facebook acknowledged and addressed the issue. Since then, we’ve seen marketers get smarter with both organic and paid Facebook marketing. We’ve even learned to (almost) measure ROI.
Reach might be falling, but it’s crucial to a keep a tab on it nevertheless. While engagement only shows you a fraction of the people that interact with a Post, the bigger picture lies in how many people actually see your Post. There are numerous other people who see your Post, but don’t interact with it. These people are equally important because it tells you the number of eyes on a brand’s Post. Social networks give you the data on Reach and Impressions for your own brand, but you never know how well your competitors are doing. Here is why Reach is one of the most important metrics you need to track.
Why you need to track your competition’s Reach and Impressions:
Digital media has brought forth a plethora of metrics that marketers are still trying to comprehend. Among all the noise, the one metric that has been measured from the earliest days of advertising and is also the best understood is Reach. Whether marketers were placing an ad on TV or Radio, the one thing that has driven advertising decisions is Reach a.k.a number of people that will be exposed to your content. Translate that to online advertising and that’s what digital marketers have termed Impressions a.k.a the number of people to whom an ad is displayed.
Knowing your competitors’ Reach/Impressions allows you to benchmark your own brand’s performance. Combine that with data on Promoted Post detection, you’ll be able to parse through any brand’s Facebook strategy.
Unmetric’s newest feature gives you the data on the number of Impressions each Facebook Post has received.
How the feature works:
We track over 55,000 brands here at Unmetric. Given our large dataset, we were able to analyze thousands of Posts from brands across industries and community sizes to identify patterns. With exploratory research on engagement metrics, we’ve created a machine learning algorithm that predicts Reach/Impressions for a Post at any given time.
How to find this data within Unmetric:
You don’t need to take any action to get this data, whether you’re an existing or new client, you’ll find the Reach and Impressions in the Analyze Platform right now. You can find it under Analyze > Posts > Brand > Engagement or Analyze > Campaigns > Posts.
Need to access metrics on competitors’ Facebook Reach and Impressions? Sign up for a free three-day trial of Unmetric Analyze here. We’ll get you started instantly and also give you access to data on Promoted Post Detection, Campaign Intelligence and even let you download monthly performance reports.
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