Understanding Ad Impressions And Its Importance
Ads are everywhere. Especially, in this day and age of digital marketing, ads have taken to the digital medium. Anywhere you go, they are clamoring for your attention and your money. Ads can be annoying, but indeed a crucial part of success for any business. Measuring the success of your ad campaigns can at first seem almost bewildering.
From launching a new product or service to simply trying to get your brand out into the world, ad campaigns can help you reach more of the right people. If you have ever tried your hand at running a digital marketing campaign, you must learn about the importance of advertising metrics. And one such important metric to keep tabs on is your ad impressions metrics.
What Is An Ad Impression?
Ad impression simply defines the number of people who saw your ad but did not interact with it. An impression occurs when a user opens an app or website and sees an ad. Impressions are not action-based, merely showing the potential user base your ads are reaching. It is an important factor to keep in mind while creating paid ad campaigns.
How Are Ad Impressions Calculated:
Ad Impressions generally come in two forms: served impressions and viewable impressions. Here are the details:
Served Impressions:
Served impressions represent the number of times a web application loaded your content, regardless of whether or not your ad was visible on the user’s screen. If the ad network delivered your ad, but the user did not scroll far enough to see it, the platform would still count the impression.
Viewable Impressions:
Viewable impressions represent the number of times your ad was visible on the user’s screen. Depending on the platform, an impression may represent any instance when the ad was fully or partially visible. Most platforms consider ads as viewable if at least 50% of the content is rendered on the screen.
Why Are Impressions Important?
Impressions are important because they provide a simple representation of how many people are seeing ads within a particular channel. Calculating the number of impressions a campaign generates is also one of the simplest ways to ascertain how far an advertising channel reaches.
Knowing how many impressions an advertising campaign generates helps marketers generate several other marketing metrics too. These metrics are used to calculate a campaign’s effectiveness, but require an accurate impression count to be successfully measured. It is also essential for advertisers to know how many impressions a CPM advert generates to understand campaign cost.
What are Google Ad Impressions?
Google counts an impression every time your ad appears on users' screens, whether it shows up on a Google search results page, Google Maps, the Google Display Network, or somewhere else. Google also counts impressions even if just part of your ad is visible.
An impression is a proxy metric for how many people see your ad. Of course, impressions just measure whether it appears, not whether a person notices your ad on the page. Every time your ad appears, it counts as one impression. Google counts an impression every time your ad appears, whether it shows up on a Google search results page, Google Maps, the Google Display Network, or somewhere else.
What are Facebook Ad Impressions?
Facebook Ad impressions are defined as the number of times your ad was viewed on a user’s Facebook or Instagram timeline or the Audience Network.
This is an important metric for social media marketers to track because it tells if your ad was compelling. If your impressions and reach are close in comparison, it means your ad caught the attention of your audience.
Summing It All Up:
Metrics are important to measure the success of your paid ads. They show the relevance and effectiveness of your ads. The most basic metric out of many is the Impressions. Though being a vanity metric on its own it is important to keep track of impressions to figure out many important metrics. The total number of impressions equates to the total number of times your ad has been served. Ad impressions give you a good idea of how your ad is doing in general terms.