Before You Buy Reach, Check Who You Are Actually Reaching
A media proposal that promises reach tells you how many times something will be delivered. It rarely tells you how many of those deliveries land with people who could influence a purchase in your market. Before you buy, check four things together: the exact inventory you are paying for, the geography, industry and company fit of its audience, the buying-group roles it reaches, and how strong the evidence behind each answer is.
What Is This About?
This is the second instalment of our Wednesday series on building B2B thought leadership in Europe. The first instalment on building a thought leadership programme that lasts treated distribution as part of the programme. This one covers the moment distribution gets bought: a marketing lead holding two or three media proposals and deciding which audience information changes the answer.
It matters because headline numbers travel well and definitions do not: a network total, a single show and a newsletter slot can all be called "reach" while measuring different units. The technical standard most podcast publishers cite, the IAB Tech Lab Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines, released version 2.3 in September 2026. It counts downloads, audience and ad delivery from server logs; it does not turn any of them into a confirmed listener with a job title.
The question belongs to our pillar on podcast advertising and partnerships in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and to the wider work on media, podcasts and platform strategy. Below: the four checks, a worked case where neither publisher can prove its audience overlap, and a supplier questionnaire you can send this week.
Executive Summary
Relevant reach is a joint question: the share of an audience that matches your market, your industry, your company profile and your buying-group roles at the same time. Publishers usually report those dimensions one by one, and separate percentages cannot simply be multiplied, because nobody knows how they overlap. When only separate figures exist, simple arithmetic still gives you a range rather than a point, and that range is often wide enough to change the decision. That last step is our reading, not a published industry method; the standards we cite define units and evaluation stages and do not rank publishers.
Key Takeaways
Name the inventory first. A network's monthly total is not the forecast for the one show, issue or segment you are buying.
Percentages do not multiply. 70% in Europe and 60% at enterprises does not mean 42% European enterprise; without joint data the true share could sit anywhere between 30% and 60%.
Units are not people. Downloads, impressions, opens and ad deliveries each count something different, and adding them across channels produces gross events, not unique buyers.
The buying group is wider than the persona. In one large US survey, most hidden decision-makers in functions such as finance and procurement reported little sales contact, so a narrow role filter can miss real influence.
Incomplete evidence calls for ranges and a pilot. When no supplier can show the intersection, buy small, measure relevant response and scale only on evidence.
FAQ: The Short Answers
What is relevant reach in B2B media buying?
It is the part of a measured audience that fits your market, industry, company profile and buying roles at the same time. How much smaller than the headline number it is depends on joint audience data that many publishers do not have.
What should I ask a publisher before buying?
Ask what exactly you are buying, over which period and in which unit, how the audience data was collected, whether its dimensions were measured together, and what is unknown.
Can I combine audience percentages from a media kit?
Not by multiplication. Multiplying assumes the dimensions are independent, which audiences rarely are. With two marginal shares you can calculate a lower and an upper bound; the lower bound is the two shares added together minus 100%, and the upper bound is the smaller share.
Is a download the same as a listener?
No. Under the IAB Tech Lab guidelines, downloads and ad deliveries are counted from server logs, and audience figures are estimates built from those logs over a stated period. Neither confirms that a person played the episode or the ad, let alone who that person works for.
Isn't it smarter to buy the biggest audience and let targeting sort it out?
Sometimes, yes. A large audience can reach future buyers and influencers who do not match today's persona. But if the joint fit is unknown, you cannot tell broad future demand from paying for people outside your category.
The Four Checks Before You Buy Reach
The Inventory: What Exactly Are You Paying For?
Media kits lead with the largest number available, such as a network's monthly downloads or a combined social following. The proposal you sign usually covers something narrower: one episode, three newsletter issues or a country segment over four weeks.
What to ask. Which show, issue or placement is included, over which dates, and what that specific inventory delivered in a comparable recent period. Ask for the unit: downloads, impressions, opens, sessions or ad deliveries.
What the answer can establish. The volume of the thing you are buying, measured in one defined unit. That is the only number that belongs in a cost comparison.
What it cannot. A network or annual aggregate cannot forecast one placement, and totals that add audio, video, newsletter and social figures without deduplication describe gross events. The IAB Tech Lab guidelines exist precisely because a download, an audience estimate and an ad delivery are different measurements.
Geography, Industry and Company: Who Is Actually There?
Most media kits report these three filters as separate charts. Each is useful on its own terms and misleading when read as a description of your buyer.
What to ask. Where the audience is located and how that was measured, which industries and company sizes are represented, and whether the source is a listener survey, registration data, platform analytics or inference. Ask for the sample size and the date.
What the answer can establish. A rough profile on each dimension. Analytics from Google can show where sessions come from; a registration form shows which companies signed up.
What it cannot. Location is not budget responsibility. A reader in London may run sales for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and a German reader may have no German budget. If your objective is entering that market, our handbook on growing in Europe explains why capable B2B companies still struggle there.
The Buying Group: Whose Opinion Moves the Decision?
B2B purchases involve users, technical evaluators, budget owners, procurement, legal and finance, each with a different evidence need, and rarely just the persona on the media plan.
What to ask. Whether the publisher has any role or seniority data, how it was collected, and whether it covers functions beyond marketing and the founder or chief executive.
What the answer can establish. Whether the audience includes the roles your deal depends on. In the 2025 Edelman–LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, a survey of 1,934 US executives fielded in March and April 2025, 55% of hidden decision-makers said they use thought leadership when vetting vendors and 71% said they have relatively little or no interaction with sales.
What it cannot. That survey describes US respondents and stated behaviour. It is a reason to ask about finance, procurement and operations readers, not a benchmark for any European outlet. If your buyers are founders and investors, our buyer's guide to reaching European startup decision-makers lists questions to ask any startup media partner, including us.
The Overlap: Can Anyone Show the Intersection?
This is where most proposals go quiet. Relevant reach needs joint data: the same respondents or records classified on every dimension.
What to ask. Whether geography, industry, company size and role can be cross-tabulated from one source, and how many records sit in each cell. If they cannot, ask the supplier to say so plainly.
What the answer can establish. With joint data, a defensible estimate. Without it, a range. For two dimensions the lowest possible overlap is the two shares added together minus 100%, and the highest is the smaller of the two. With three or four filters the lower bound often drops to zero, which is an honest statement that the audience may contain none of your target group.
What it cannot. Multiplying marginals gives a single tidy number that only holds if the dimensions are unrelated. They rarely are: enterprise readers may cluster in one country, founders in another.
A Worked Case: Two Proposals, No Proven Overlap
This example is illustrative; publishers and numbers are invented. A software company wants finance and operations leaders at companies with 200 or more employees in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Publisher A offers one sponsored episode on a business podcast. The network reports 120,000 monthly downloads; the show averages 18,000 per episode in its first 30 days. A listener survey of 240 respondents reports 55% in the target countries, 35% at companies with 200 or more employees and 30% in finance or operations roles. No cross-tabulation exists.
Publisher B offers three issues of a newsletter with 9,000 subscribers. From registration data it can show that about 1,100 subscribers are at companies of 200 or more employees in the target countries. It has no role data, and registration details were self-reported at sign-up with no refresh date.
Reading A. The relevant unit is 18,000 downloads per episode, not 120,000. With three separate shares, the lowest possible joint share is zero and the highest is 30%. Relevant deliveries could therefore be anywhere from none to roughly 5,400, and those are downloads, not confirmed listeners.
Reading B. The joint figure for geography and company size is stronger evidence, but it is an undated sign-up snapshot with nothing on role or open rates.
The decision. Neither proposal establishes the intersection. The buyer runs a small pilot with both, agrees in advance what counts as relevant response (replies from target accounts, sign-ups from the right company sizes, self-reported source in sales calls) and compares cost per relevant response after eight weeks.
The Supplier Audience Questionnaire
Send the questions below before you negotiate price. Rate each answer's confidence: high for measured, dated, joint data; medium for measured but separate, old or small-sample data; low for modelled, inferred or unstated figures.
Inventory. Which placement, dates and unit does the price cover, and what did that placement deliver in a comparable recent period?
Measurement method. Is the figure from server logs, platform analytics, a survey or a model, and which standard does it follow?
Geography. How is location measured, and can you separate where people sit from which market they serve?
Industry and company size. What is the source, sample size and date of these figures?
Roles. Which functions and seniority levels are represented, and how was that collected?
Overlap. Can you cross-tabulate these dimensions from one source? If not, say so.
Reporting. What will you report after the placement, in which units, and when?
To see what a defensible expert contribution looks like once the audience question is settled, look through our B2B thought leadership examples. If you are weighing podcast inventory specifically, our guide on how to buy podcast advertising in Germany and Europe covers formats, pricing logic and contracts.
What Connects the Four Checks?
The frameworks are explicit about their scope. The AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework separates inputs, activities, outputs, out-takes, outcomes and impact, and asks evaluators to start from organisational objectives. The IAB Tech Lab guidelines define how podcast delivery is counted. Neither claims to say which publisher a buyer should choose.
Our interpretation, clearly separate from that:
Every check is a unit question. Inventory, geography, roles and overlap all fail the same way, when a number measured in one unit is read as if it described another.
Honest gaps are a signal. A supplier that marks fields as unknown gives you something to plan around; a supplier that fills every cell may be modelling more than it measures.
Ranges beat false precision. A wide range tells you to pilot before committing.
Relevant reach is not the biggest number in the media kit. It is the smallest number you can defend.
What Has and Hasn't Been Established?
Established: Downloads, audience estimates and ad deliveries are separate podcast measurements, and evaluation separates outputs from outcomes.
Not established: What share of any publisher's audience matches your buying group, or whether broad or specialist media wins.
Future buyers versus today's persona. In a paper for LinkedIn's B2B Institute, Professor John Dawes estimates that up to 95% of business buyers are not in the market at a given time, and he calls that figure a heuristic rather than a precise rule. Reaching later buyers can be useful even when they do not match today's persona; it does not make an audience outside your category relevant.
Applies to us as well. The same questions apply to Startuprad.io's own audience figures. We would rather answer them with stated gaps than with numbers we cannot defend.
What to Watch Next
Video under the same rules. Version 2.3 of the IAB Tech Lab guidelines covers audio and video podcasts distributed through open RSS feeds and replaces the word "listener" with "podcast consumer". Expect audio and video figures to be quoted side by side, and check that they use the same unit.
Client-confirmed plays. IAB Tech Lab notes that most podcast applications do not yet provide client-side playback confirmation. Ask suppliers which play data, if any, they can actually report.
Joint audience data. Watch for publishers that can cross-tabulate market, company size and role from one source. That is the evidence this article argues for.
Pilot discipline. Agree what relevant response means before a pilot starts.
Next in this series. On 18 November we compare big publications and specialist media fairly, using normalised inventory and the same units. Before then, our answers to commercial questions on prices, formats and fit show where we stand on several items in the questionnaire above.
Reach Buyers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland Without Guessing Who Is There
Planning a campaign for founders, investors, operators or corporate buyers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland? Start with the audience questions, not the package.
Our partnership page sets out formats, prices and the audience behind them, so you can run the same checks on us.
About the Author
Joern "Joe" Menninger is the founder of Startuprad.io, an English-language startup and venture capital media platform covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with more than 1,700 podcast episodes across the franchise. Joern Menninger on LinkedIn
For a structured overview of Startuprad.io's coverage, see the Startuprad.io machine-readable index.
Created with the assistance of AI.
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