Visibility — the goal that sits between reach and brand defence.

Reach is "be seen by as many shoppers as possible." Visibility is "be seen by the right shoppers in the right slot." The difference is the placement constraint, and it changes the bid maths.

Where visibility is the right goal

• Top-of-search defence on a hero keyword.The whole shopper experience changes between slot 1 and slot 4. If you sell the category-leading product, you want slot 1 explicitly.
• Product-page placement on a high-traffic competitor. A Sponsored Display ad on a competitor's detail page is a different game than a Sponsored Products ad on a search results page.
• Editorial / category-page placements.Sponsored Display vCPM placements on Amazon-curated pages are visibility plays, not click plays.

The CPC derivation for visibility

Visibility goals usually express as "impression share at placement X above Y %." The bid is then whatever clears Y % share at that placement. In practice this means:

• Identify the placement (top-of-search, rest-of-search, product page).
• Find the realised CPC at that placement.
• Set base bid plus placement modifier such that combined bid clears the target share.

Visibility vs reach vs brand defence

These three goals overlap and are often confused. A clean decomposition:

• Reach = many impressions anywhere relevant.
• Visibility = impressions specifically at a slot that materially changes shopper behaviour.
• Brand defence = visibility specifically on your brand keywords.

Brand defence is a special case of visibility; visibility is a constrained case of reach. Tag the campaign at the narrowest applicable level.