What is an impression?

An impression is the occurrence of your ad being seen online in the form of advertising. For instance, if you purchase the keyword “organic chocolate” with Google AdWords and an advertisement for your company appears 1500 times on other websites that approved it as a sponsored link, then 1500 impressions will be recorded. A click-through rate (CTR) isn’t necessary for impressions to count.

In addition to CPC or cost per click advertising, there are more advanced types of advertising available such as CPI or cost-per-impression. In our example above, your ads can be seen when you first start a campaign and browse through potential relevant keywords. Although some bots can use malicious practices to alter this impression count, many browsers now have services in place

The standard practice of counting impressions is in debate with a revision being considered. The newly forming process distinguishes impressions into two categories: viewable and served. This distinction would allow online marketers to determine whether or not their banner was fully visible for one second.

When running a campaign, you want to track the impressions and the click-through rate. If your ads are getting frequent viewings, but rarely clicked on, then it might be time for an adjustment to your digital media strategy in order to produce more successful results.