WTF is cheap reach?

This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms. More from the series →

“Cheap” and “reach” are typically favored terms among advertisers. But taken together, they spell the next potential target for the digital ad industry to weed out.

“Cheap reach” refers to a subset of digital ad inventory that may be often overlooked — literally — and may be a necessary new taxonomy to prevent legitimate publishers from getting caught up in the crackdown on made-for-advertising sites. In the video below, Digiday media editor Kayleigh Barber helps to break down what cheap reach is, why this inventory category was created and why advertisers are not yet scrambling to excise it from their ad buys.

More in Media Buying

Ad Tech Briefing: Accountability in adland’s agentic era?

Contractual clarity and guardrails are non-negotiable when the machines take over running ad camppigns.

Amazon positions live sports portfolio as leverage to pry open upfront dollars

Amazon touted its combination of commerce targeting data and NBA and NFL inventory as a solution to marketer wariness during upfront negotiations.

Why Duluth trusts AI agents with bidding, but not brand storytelling

This article is part of a series covering our Programmatic Marketing Summit. More from the series → There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to agentic media buying. There are those who want to be at the so-called cutting edge, embedding AI agents in things like the process of buying ads […]