Do you know what Reach is?

We at VOCAST want you to make the most of your press work, so we have made a guide to how you best understand and use our reach, which is given in the various media and journalists.

What is Reach?

Reach in VOCAST must be understood as the reach of media and journalists. Reach should therefore be seen as an estimate of how many different individuals the individual media or individual journalist may potentially reach.

The algorithm in VOCAST

The total reach is calculated using an algorithm based on the numbers given under a media or journalist. Therefore, the total reach can not be calculated by simply adding storage numbers, reading numbers and users together. The algorithm must ensure that the same person is not counted twice. A reader for a nationwide media can also follow the media’s social media and, in addition, check news on the media website. We want this person to count only once in the total reach.

Story number, readership, users, pageviews, social media

Updating media contacts is one of VOCAST’s biggest priorities. On the relevant media it appears whether the different figures are stated annually / quarterly / monthly / weekly / daily. This is consistent with the media release rate. Eg. most local newspapers are published weekly. Therefore, the period specified for local viewers’ storage and reading numbers is also weekly.

• Stage number indicates how many printed copies are published by a media. This does not count in the total reach, since the number does not reflect how many media actually reach.
• Readership is an estimate of how many people read the physical version of a media.
• Users are an indication of the media’s unique online users. The number is an expression of how many different people visit the individual website. If the same person enters the same website more than once in a month, the person counts only once in the statistics and it is independent of how many pages the person has seen on the site. However, the same person may risk being spoken several times if he or she both uses his computer and his phone to check news. Users are always counted monthly.
• Pageviews indicate how many pages are viewed on the media website. Each time a person visits a new page on the site, it counts as one pageview. Thus, if the person moves from the front page to the latest news articles and beyond on an article, it counts as three pageviews. The number of pageviews is given for the total number of pageviews across users and pages. Pageviews are always given monthly, but it does not count in the total reach.
• Social media Journalists and media are additionally updated with the number of followers on their social media, if they are on social media. However, journalists may not have this information publicly available, so we can not count the number in the total reach.

Be aware…

We also update online for edits that are not online actions if the media has a news site and that we can find these numbers. We do, because these editors do not necessarily provide news to the media’s print edition.

There is a tendency for more media to no longer provide stock figures. If you can not see the storage number of the media profile, this is the reason. In addition, we see that some of the nationwide media do not want to be part of TNS Gallup’s measurement of online traffic. It makes it difficult for us to update online for these media. We try to make it as clear as possible in the profile text of the media, if that is the case.

The journalist’s profile will not only reveal a personal reach. The media reach will also be on the profile so you have the opportunity to see how wide a range the journalist has overall.

How to use reach

As mentioned, reach is an estimate. The number therefore does not indicate the exact number of people the medium reaches. It works as an estimate of the maximum number of people the medium can reach. This does not mean that every story brought by the media necessarily reaches the number that the medium indicates. The total reach can be used to get a sense of media size, and it can be used to compare the size of different media.

Therefore, it is not necessarily always best to go for a media, solely because the estimated range is large. Most often, it is worth choosing a medium where the content area matches what your broadcast is about.