In the world of social media, reach and impressions are two essential metrics that often cause confusion. But this isn’t something to be blamed since there are always changes in the industry, and marketers need to keep up with everything.

However, it is important to understand some of the key elements that are used to measure performance on social media.

Reach vs Impressions

Reach - the total number of people who see your content

Impressions - the number of times your content is displayed

An impression means that the content was on-screen, and it doesn’t matter if it was clicked or not in order to count as an impression.

To be more precise, reach is the number of unique people who see your content. That could be the number of your followers, but honestly, this is not a fairy tale. Not all of them will see the posts that you publish, so your reach won’t be equal to the number of your followers.

In this way, reach is different from impressions since impressions may include multiple views of the post by the same people.

Keep in mind that the idea of engaging with the content is not important for reach and impressions. This means that the viewer doesn’t have to engage with a post to count as an impression or reach.

Facebook Reach & Impressions


Facebook offers data about reach as follows:

  • Organic Reach - the number of people who saw your content that comes from organic efforts
  • Paid Reach - the number of people who saw your content that comes from paid efforts (boosted posts or Facebook ads)

Take a look at how Socialinsider defines these metrics:

  • Total Page Reach - The number of people who had any of your page’s content (posts, stories, check-ins, ads, and more) entering their screen in the selected time period. This metric includes the organic reach and the paid reach. In other words, this metric includes the reach for all the posts (boosted posts and organic posts). Socialinsider estimates this metric. Facebook also estimates this metric, although with another formula.
  • Organic Reach - The number of people who had any of your page’s organic content (posts, stories, check-ins, ads, and more) entering their screen in the selected time period. This metric shows the reach for the organic posts. We estimate this metric.
  • Paid Reach - The number of people who had any of your page’s boosted content (posts, stories, check-ins, ads, and more) entering their screen in the selected time period. This metric shows the reach for the boosted posts. We estimate this metric.

Facebook estimates these metrics.

As for impressions, this is what Facebook provides:

  • Organic Impressions - the number of times your content was viewed via organic efforts.
  • Paid Impressions - the number of times your content was viewed via paid efforts (such as boosted posts or Facebook ads).

Socialinsider offers access to the following metrics:

  • Total impressions - The number of times any content from your page or about your page entered a person’s screen in the selected time period. This includes posts, stories, check-ins, ads, social information from people who interact with your page, and more. This metric includes the impressions for all the posts (boosted posts and organic posts).
  • Organic impressions - The number of times any organic content from your page or about your page entered a person’s screen in the selected time period. This includes posts, stories, check-ins, ads, social information from people who interact with your page, and more. This metric includes only the impressions for the organic posts.
  • Paid impressions -  The number of times any paid content from your page or about your page entered a person’s screen in the selected time period. This includes posts, stories, check-ins, ads, social information from people who interact with your page, and more. This metric includes only the impressions for the boosted posts.