The Marketing Budget Detail screen allows companies to allocate their Promo Budget among five different media channels. Projections of the upcoming round’s awareness display in a bar chart at the bottom of the screen.

Reach and Frequency: From a strategic marketing perspective, it is important to recognize that each segment responds differently to each media type. Relative strength is driven by two factors:

• Reach — The potential number of customers who would see the message;
• Frequency — The number of times a message is repeated.

In theory, every customer could eventually see your message if it were repeated with enough frequency. However, it would be prohibitively expensive to try and reach every occasional magazine reader. Using Print Media for the Traditional Segment as an example, placing an ad one time will reach 25% of all Traditional customers. Running the ad a second time will reach a somewhat different group of Traditional customers (still totaling 25% of all Traditional customers). However, there is an overlap between the first and second groups. Some customers see the ad twice, some for the first time. Each repetition catches a group of new customers, and exposes a group of former readers to the ad. It becomes increasingly difficult to get every potential customer to see the ad (Reach), but on the other hand, each time a customer sees the ad (Frequency), the more likely it is that the message will be remembered.

An impression is created each time a customer sees your message.