In other words, the gross rating points measure the number of impacts or contacts that an advertising pattern exposed in any medium has for every one hundred people in the audience. This is measured on the target audience you are targeting. For that reason, its measure is always a raw term expressed as a percentage.
It is important to mention that gross rating points are usually represented by the acronym GRP. GRP is one of several measures that can be used to determine the reach of an advertising campaign.
The result obtained after measuring the GRP can be used to make important decisions about where, how and when to carry out an advertising campaign. This, with the purpose of achieving a greater scope and as a consequence a better result. For this reason, it is widely used in the planning process of advertising campaigns.
Important terms to understand gross rating points
To more easily understand how GRP measurement works and how it is applied, we must consider some important terms. This is because when GRP is measured, the range must be multiplied by the frequency.
- Audience: The audience is the group of people who come into contact with the media where the ads are broadcast in a specific period of time.
- Target or target group: It is the group of people to whom the communication message is specifically addressed. This group must fulfill some characteristics. These can be demographic, economic, social, among some of the many that can be mentioned.
- Rating points: This indicator is used to measure the percentage of the average audience to which the advertising message is exposed.
- Scope or coverage: It represents the percentage of the target or target group that is touched at least once by the advertising message.
- Frequency: It represents the number of times the target audience has been exposed to the communication message.

Important terms to understand
How is gross rating points calculated?
To exemplify, we are going to assume a very simple case, let us think that a campaign is broadcast that comes into contact with 10,000,000 people. These 10,000,000 people represent the audience of the message. Then, of that audience, 8,500,000 correspond to the target or objective group to which the campaign is directed. And, in addition, each ad has been viewed on average 5 times by each person in the target group or target. This quantity of 5 represents the frequency that was reached.
Therefore, the first thing we need to find is the scope of the message. To do this, we calculate it as follows:
Scope = Target or target audience / Audience * 100
Reach = 8,500,000/10,000,000*100=85%
Next, when we have already calculated the scope, we can find the GRP. To do this, the range or coverage is multiplied by the frequency. Continuing with the example we get:
GRP = Scope or coverage * Frequency
GRP = 0.85*5 = 4.25
Reference table to understand it better
To understand it better, let’s imagine that the campaign is appearing in four different programming slots and that it is made up of four ads. Breaking down the data in each case we find:

Consequently, the scope or coverage of this campaign was that 8,500,000 people were reached, which corresponds to 85% of the total audience, which is 10,000,000 people. Likewise, we can observe that the average frequency of views of the four ads (of each slot) is 5.
Also, you can get the average rating that results from dividing the total target reached by the number of ads (having one ad for each slot). In this case, it is the result of dividing the 8,500,000 by 4, which gives an average rating of 2,125,000.
Indeed, as we can see, the same ad can be viewed several times by the same person in the target group. For that reason, the number of impacts is higher than the target audience. Of course, to analyze the impact of a campaign, it is convenient to evaluate other variables such as the duration, the number of times it is broadcast and the geographical area it covers.

How is it calculated?
To conclude, we can say that all companies, when launching their advertising campaigns, try to reach the largest number of their target group. This, so that their brands and products are known and favorably positioned in the market. Therefore, the GRP is a very important measure to evaluate the impact of an advertising campaign. as well as to compare with other campaigns and be able to plan them more effectively.
* In the example table, the data in the last column on the right, the number of hits, is calculated by multiplying the second column, ratings, by the fourth column, the number of views per ad.