The concept of impressions is not new, as it has been around since the early days of advertising. However, with the rise of digital advertising, impressions have become a more critical metric than ever.
What is an ad impression?
An ad impression is a metric used in digital or programmatic advertising. It refers to an instance in which an advertisement appears on a user's screen, usually within a mobile app, web page, or digital environment.
The most amazing thing about an ad impression is that it is counted every time an ad is displayed in a user's browser, regardless of whether the user interacts or engages with the ad.
An ad impression represents an opportunity for the advertiser to reach their target customers. Moreover, these are essential metrics that shopify website design advertisers or marketers should use as digital marketing metrics can help them track the reach and visibility of their advertising campaigns.
What are social media impressions?
Social impressions are the number of times your content, whether a post, ad, or story, is displayed on someone's screen.
On platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or X (formerly Twitter), every time your content appears in someone's feed, it counts as an impression.
For example, if you post a photo on Instagram, every time it appears in someone's feed, that's an impression. Similarly, a tweet that appears on a follower's timeline or a Facebook ad that shows up in a user's news feed counts as an impression.
How do ad impressions work?
Ad impressions work by tracking an ad on a mobile app or website. If you're an advertiser or marketer, tracking your ads can help you estimate the visibility and reach of your ads. You can do this tracking through tracking technologies and ad delivery.
Ad serving is the delivery of virtual advertisements to users via an ad server. This ad serving technology is crucial for you if you are an advertiser as it is very useful for tracking, managing and optimizing your ad campaigns on websites.
They may also use tracking technologies to monitor user behavior. These tracking technologies are a useful data tracking tool in conjunction with online advertising campaigns. These technologies include pixels, tags, and cookies, which allow advertisers to estimate the effectiveness of their ads.
Examples and types of ad impressions
Ad impressions can manifest in a variety of ways across different digital platforms. Below are some common examples of impressions to illustrate how they work in real-world scenarios:
Social media ad impressions
When you scroll through your Facebook or Instagram feed and see sponsored posts, each occurrence of these posts counts as an ad impression. For example, if an ad for a clothing brand appears in your feed, that counts as an impression for the brand.
The same goes for regular posts and stories in your feed – each one counts as one impression.
Search Engine Ads
These are the ads that appear when you perform a search on Google or Bing. Each time an ad appears in the search results, it is counted as one impression. For example, searching for “best running shoes” could show ads from multiple sports brands, and each ad shown counts as one impression.
Banner ads on websites
Often seen on news sites, blogs or forums, these are display ads that appear on web pages.
Each time the web page with the banner ad is loaded, the ad generates an impression.
For example, a banner ad for a new smartphone on a tech review site contributes to the ad's impression count every time someone visits that page.
Video ad impressions
These are found on platforms like YouTube or within streaming services. A video ad that plays before the start of a video or during breaks contributes to the impression count every time it is shown to a viewer.
In-app ad impressions
Ads displayed within mobile apps and games, whether banners, video ads, or interstitial ads (full-page ads that appear at natural transition points within the app), also count as impressions.
Each time your ad is displayed on a user's screen, it counts as an impression.
In-app ad impressions are the main part of the formula for the eCPM metric, which measures how much money app developers make by displaying ads.