Explain reach and frequency in media planning and why both are important.

• A. Reach is how often the audience is exposed; frequency is the percent of audience reached.
• B. Reach and frequency are the same concept.
• C. Reach is the percent of the audience exposed; frequency is how often; both matter for awareness and recall.
• D. Reach measures budget size; frequency measures time of day.

Answer: (C)

Understanding reach and frequency in media planning means knowing how many people you expose to a message and how often each person sees it, and why both matters for building awareness and recall.

Reach is the portion of the target audience that is exposed at least once during a planning period. It shows how broad your message spread is. Frequency is how many times, on average, those exposed individuals see the message. This matters for reinforcing the message so it sticks in memory.

The two work together: you often aim for a broad enough reach to introduce the brand to many people, while also ensuring enough frequency so the message is remembered and calls to action are prompted. A useful metric that combines them is GRPs, which is reach (as a percentage) multiplied by average frequency. For example, wide reach with moderate frequency can maximize awareness without over-saturating the audience; narrow reach with high frequency can be effective for highly targeted campaigns, but may miss broader brand impact.

The other options mix up the definitions or tie the concepts to unrelated ideas: one swaps what reach and frequency measure, another treats them as the same, and another attributes them to budget or time-of-day rather than exposure patterns. The correct view keeps reach as the proportion exposed and frequency as how often, and both together influence whether people remember and respond to the message.