What Are GRPs and How Are They Used in Media Planning?

The standard formula is GRPs = Reach (%) × Average Frequency. It can also be built from the bottom up: total impressions divided by the target population, multiplied by 100. Geopath, which sets audience measurement for US out-of-home media, defines GRPs as "the total number of in-market impressions" delivered by a schedule, "expressed as a percentage of a market population," where "one rating point represents impressions equal to 1% of the market population."

Because GRPs count gross impressions, not unique people, the same total can describe very different plans:

That is why GRPs alone do not tell you whether a plan worked. They measure total weight. Reach and frequency tell you how that weight was spread. A plan that piles 300 GRPs onto the same viewers is heavy but narrow, the same problem frequency capping addresses in digital media.

A GRP is usually measured against a broad base, such as all adults or all TV households. A target rating point (TRP) applies the same arithmetic to a defined target audience only, such as adults 25-54 or IT decision-makers. The two can differ sharply: a daytime schedule may deliver 200 GRPs against all adults but far fewer TRPs against business decision-makers, because much of its weight lands outside the target. Plan and buy in TRPs when the brief has a defined buyer; use GRPs when you need a common measure of total weight across schedules or markets.

Linear TV. Planners set a GRP or TRP goal per week or flight, and broadcasters price against cost per point (CPP): the cost of one rating point in a given market and daypart. The rating points themselves come from each market's measurement currency. In the US, the Media Rating Council accredited Nielsen's Big Data + Panel national TV measurement in January 2025, combining its people panel with set-top box and smart TV data across 45 million households and 75 million devices, and Nielsen endorsed it as currency for the 2025 upfront.

Out-of-home. OOH packages are also quoted in GRPs against a market population. Geopath notes that outdoor frequency "is typically measured over a four week period," so OOH reach and frequency are usually read over a four-week flight rather than the weekly view common in TV.

Streaming. As viewing moves to connected TV and BVOD, more video is bought on impressions. The conversion back to rating points is simple arithmetic, which is why GRPs remain a useful common unit when linear and streaming sit in the same video plan.

The term does not travel uniformly. In the UK, broadcast TV is measured by Barb and reported in TVRs: the Barb glossary published by Thinkbox states that "one TVR is numerically equivalent to one per cent of a target audience" and counts an impact as "one member of the target audience viewing one commercial." Barb also counts a viewer as reached only after at least three consecutive minutes of viewing. Other markets use their own panels, population universes, and reach rules, so rating points from two countries are only comparable once the audience definition and universe are normalized.

That was the measurement problem in Criterion Global's international expansion work for GoDaddy. TV carried the launch in the UK, with ITV, Channel 5, and Premier League matches on Sky Sports, and in India, with Zee, STAR, and cricket. To measure across both markets, our analytics team converted each market's TVRs to a common GRP basis, which gave consistent fulfillment reporting and a single offline-to-online measurement standard across markets and currencies. By 2021, GoDaddy had over 1 million customers in India and 85% brand awareness.

Setting GRP targets by market is a budget question before it is a buying question: how much weight each market needs before the spend registers at all. That is what the Criterion Global Budget Blueprint℠ is built to answer, and it is how our TV media buying, out-of-home advertising, and international media planning and buying teams set weight market by market.