Why Impression Marketing Is Important?
Apr 05, 2020 ● 2 min read
In the world of digital marketing, the term “impressions” is tossed around frequently. However, what does it mean? Moreover, what is then impression marketing, and does it merit any serious investment or consideration?
Impressions vs Impression Marketing
Let’s say you are watching a YouTube video and suddenly it is interrupted by a video ad, or the ad plays prior to a video starting that would be an impression.
The same applies if the ad pops-up as a card, or is displayed as a banner or drops across the whole screen while you are on a particular website. These are all examples of impressions.
In other words, impressions are any form of ads or digital media that appear on a user screen while he or she is on a certain website. These are calculated regardless of whether the user has actually paid attention to the ad, or clicked to learn more.
Impression marketing
Basically it is when you pay online platforms to display your ads to their users, and as you already know there are sites with more aggressive ad campaigns and those with ad-lite experience.
A great thing about marketing impressions is that you can get a better overview of the exact number of impressions. Furthermore, these exclude the scenarios when the ad content was not visible, like if the user had an ad-blocking extension, broken plug-in, ad being barely visible due to screen resolution, user scrolling past the ad before it could load, etc.
With Whatagraph it is a super easy to do. Live reports option will give you a huge advantage. Below is an example of visualization of live report.
Difference between Reach and Impression
Another term that often appears in digital marketing discussions is a reach. Reach is often compared to impressions in order to measure impression marketing effectiveness.
To elaborate, reach is the number of users who have actually seen the content of the ad, as opposed to the impressions that are the number of times the ad was displayed.
In other words, if your impressions marketing has a 70-100% reach rating, it can indicate that you are advertising on relevant sites.
Should You Invest in Impressions Marketing
It can be difficult to justify an investment without a solid ROI margin, luckily impression marketing can offer more insight than just hard sales numbers.
- Based on reach rating you can ascertain if you are targeting the right websites;
- Based on CTP (click-through rate) you can see if a call to action or value proposition is effective;
- Based on the sales number you can track the revenue impact of the current impressions marketing campaign.
The number of Ads on the frequently visited websites speaks volumes on its effectiveness, and it is currently regarded as useful data when it comes to digital marketing.
It can boost your brand awareness and data analysis can be used to adequately modify your content approach, as well as isolate the most relevant demographics.
Impressions FAQ
How are impressions measured?
As a number of times, a website has loaded the ad and it was visible to a user during a single visit. A user with the same IP who enters the site multiple times will count as an additional impression.
What is the viewability rate?
In order for an impression to count it needs to be on a screen for one second with 50% visibility. If only half of the ads are visible on a single page then that page or site has a 50% viewability rate.
What is the difference between impressions and clicks?
Impressions only denote the number of times the ad content was displayed, clicks are the number of users who interacted with the ad by clicking the call-to-action button.
Wendy is a data-oriented marketing geek who loves to read detective fiction or try new baking recipes. She writes articles on the latest industry updates or trends.
