Impressions refers to the number of times an advertisement, post, or other digital content appears to users on a platform. An impression is counted every time the content appears on a user's screen, regardless of whether the user interacts with it or not.
Usecases for impressions:
- Range: impressions provide an indication of how many times your content has potentially reached users, and helps gauge the reach of a campaign.
- Awareness: Many impressions can help increase brand awareness, as repeated viewing of an ad can make users more familiar with the brand, product or service.
- Analyze and Optimize: Tracking impressions can help marketers understand which campaigns are getting a lot of visibility, thus adjusting strategies to improve effectiveness.
Types of impressions:
- Organic impressions: These occur naturally when content appears in a user's news feeds, search results, or on web pages without paid promotion. For example, a social media post can gain organic exposure when it appears in the newsfeed of followers.
- Paid impressions: These are generated through paid marketing campaigns, such as ads on search engines, social media or other platforms. For example, a paid Google Ads campaign can lead to exposures when the ad appears in search results.
By themselves, impressions tell very little, but by analyzing impressions along with other metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and cost per click (CPC), marketers can get a better picture of campaign performance and basis for adjustments.
