Units and metrics
Reach
Last updated by The PanelCompare editorial team
Why does reach matter to a buyer?
The reach-versus-impressions distinction is genuine and useful when the audience is real: reach tells you how many people, impressions tells you how many times, and the ratio tells you about frequency. Buying both destroys the information rather than improving it, because the ratio between two purchased numbers describes the supplier’s delivery pattern and nothing about an audience.
It is also the hardest Instagram rate to obtain publicly. Major panels list the row and price it only behind login, so the published band is extrapolated from adjacent impressions and profile-visit tiers and should be treated as low confidence (PanelCompare domain research, 2026-09-06). Where a price index cannot see a rate, saying so is more useful than filling the gap.
How does reach show up in a price list?
It sits marginally above impressions in the same category — an observed band of roughly $0.20–$3.00 per thousand against $0.10–$1.50 for impressions — because unique accounts are a slightly scarcer resource than repeat renders.
Like impressions it moves analytics rather than outcomes, and neither number appears anywhere a visitor or a brand can see it without you showing them a screenshot.
Think this definition is wrong?
Terminology in this market is set by the panels that use it, and it moves. If a panel uses reach to mean something other than what is written here, send us the listing and we will either correct the definition or record the variant. The process is on the about page.