An impression (in the context of
online advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
) is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable. Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account.
Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.
Because of the possibility of
click fraud
Click, Klick and Klik may refer to:
Airlines
* Click Airways, a UAE airline
* Clickair, a Spanish airline
* MexicanaClick, a Mexican airline
Art, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Klick (fictional species), an alien race in th ...
,
robotic
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...
activity is usually filtered and excluded,
and a more technical definition is given for accounting purposed by the
IAB, a standards and watchdog industry group: "Impression" is a measurement of responses from a
Web server
A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initia ...
to a
page request from the user
browser, which is filtered from
robotic
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...
activity and
error codes, and is recorded at a point as close as possible to opportunity to see the page by the user.
Purpose
Counting impressions is the method by which most
Web advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
is accounted and paid for, and the cost is quoted in
CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or
CPI (cost per impression). (Contrast
CPC, which is the cost per click and not impression-based).
Construction
A movement is underway to move from the current standard of served impressions, to a new standard of
viewable impressions.
[Mane, Sherill. ''Measuring Return From Interactive Advertising.'' MASB Summer Board Meeting and Summit, August 2012.][http://www.iab.net/mmms iab. ''Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS).'' Cited 13 March 2013.] The
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB),
Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the
American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) have joined forces in an initiative called 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense), with the purpose of better defining the value of display media.
[http://www.rosetta.com/about/thought-leadership/Display-Advertising-Trends-Standardizing-Viewable-Impressions.html Rosetta. ''Display Advertising Trends: Standardizing Viewable Impressions.'' Cited 13 March 2013.]
* Served impressions are the current standard. They are recorded by ad servers, and are counted whether or not the ad itself is fully loaded and in a space viewable to the end-user.
*
Viewable impressions are defined as those that are at least 50% visible to the user for at least one second.
See also
*
Cost per impression
Cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are terms used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. They refer to the cost of traditional advertising or ...
*
Cost per click (CPC)/Pay per click (PPC)
*
Cost per order
*
Cost per mille (CPM)
*
Effective cost per mille (eCPM)
*
Cost per action (CPA)
*
Effective cost per action (eCPA)
*
Click-through rate (CTR)
*
Internet marketing
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
*
Performance-based advertising
References
External links
Advertising Terminology on the InternetCommon Language in Marketing Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Impression (Online Media)
Online advertising
Internet terminology