When you're managing ad campaigns, it's tempting to focus on the more glamorous metrics—click-through rates, conversions, and ROI. After all, these figures directly show how well your ads are doing and are often the go-to indicators of success.
However, there’s one important metric that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves: ad impressions.
In this article, we’re going to further explain why ad impressions are often overlooked and how you can make sure they’re working in your favour.
What Are Ad Impressions?
First things first—what exactly is an ad impression?
To put it simply, an impression is counted each time your ad is displayed on a user's screen. It doesn’t matter if the user clicks on it or scrolls past; as long as it appears, it's considered an impression. This metric is the digital equivalent of a billboard's "eyeballs" count—how many people potentially saw your message.
Why Are Ad Impressions Often Overlooked?
The reason why is that ad impressions can seem passive compared to more action-oriented metrics. Clicks and conversions are clear indicators that a user is responding to your ad, making it easy to see if they’re working.
Impressions, on the other hand, are more about potential—how many people could have seen your ad. Since impressions don't immediately translate to direct actions, they can be viewed as less significant, especially for marketers focused on immediate results.
But it's important to remember that impressions are the building blocks for all those other metrics—they help pave the way for clicks, conversions, and, ultimately, sales.
Why Do Ad Impressions Matter?
Now, you must be wondering, "If impressions don’t guarantee clicks or conversions, why should I care?"
Well, impressions are the foundation of awareness.
Without impressions, your ads won't reach anyone. They're the first step in your customer's journey.
Here are more reasons why they matter:
Brand Awareness: Impressions are key to making your brand known. The more times people see your ad, the more familiar they become with your brand. Over time, this familiarity can lead to trust, which tends to help with conversions down the line.
Audience Reach: Impressions give you insight into how far your ad is spreading. If you're running a campaign targeting a specific demographic, impressions help you understand whether your ads are reaching enough people within that target group.
Campaign Health Check: Monitoring impressions can help you identify if something is off with your campaign. For instance, if impressions are shallow, it might indicate issues with your ad placements or budget settings.
Cost Efficiency: Impressions also tie directly to your ad spend, especially in CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) campaigns. You need to ensure you're not overspending and that your ads are being shown to the right audience.
How to Keep an Eye on Your Ad Impressions
Now that we’ve established why impressions are important, let’s talk about how to monitor them.
Set Benchmarks: Before diving into the numbers, establish a benchmark for what constitutes a successful number of impressions based on your campaign goals.
Are you trying to build brand awareness? Then, a higher number of impressions might be your focus. Looking for more targeted reach? A more modest number, coupled with high engagement, is your sweet spot.
Use Analytics Tools: Most digital advertising platforms, like Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager, and others, provide all the data you need on impressions. Continuously checking these dashboards will give you a better understanding of how your ads are performing.
Compare Across Campaigns: Don’t just look at impressions in isolation. Compare them across different campaigns or ad sets. As you do this, you’ll understand what’s working and what’s not. For example, if one ad has significantly higher impressions but low engagement, you may need to change the creative or target audience.
Monitor Ad Frequency: Impressions alone aren’t the whole story—frequency matters too. Frequency is the average number of times a single user sees your ad. Too high, and you risk ad fatigue, where users become annoyed or indifferent to your message. Keeping an eye on frequency alongside impressions can help you strike the right balance.
Adjust as Needed: If you notice your impressions are lower than expected, it might be time to adjust your strategy. This could mean increasing your budget, changing your targeting options, or revisiting your ad creative.
On the other hand, if impressions are high but conversions are low, it’s a signal that while people are seeing your ad, it’s not clicking enough to drive action—so re-working the content might be necessary.
Final Words
Ad impressions might not have the immediate "wow" factor that other metrics do, but they are an essential piece of the digital marketing puzzle.
So next time you review your campaign performance, don’t overlook those impression numbers!
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
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