Glossary

Impressions

Impressions count how often your ad was displayed, regardless of whether anyone clicked or even consciously saw it. Every appearance on a search results page, feed, or placement counts once. Impressions are the top of the advertising funnel: without them, no clicks, no conversions.

How to read it

Use impressions to judge reach and delivery: a campaign with few impressions has a targeting, budget, or bid problem before anything else. Rising impressions with stable CTR mean healthy scaling.

Where it misleads

An impression does not mean attention: an ad scrolled past in 0.2 seconds counts the same as one studied for a minute. Never sell impressions as 'people reached'; that's what reach measures.

Related terms

Reach →

Reach counts the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once, as opposed to impressions, which count every display. Reach answers 'how many different people did we touch?', the core question of awareness campaigns, primarily reported on Meta.

CTR (Click-Through Rate) →

CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of ad impressions that resulted in a click. It measures how well your ad matches what the audience wanted in that moment. A high CTR means the message resonates; a low CTR means the ad, the audience, or the moment is off.

CPM (Cost per Mille) →

CPM (cost per mille) is the price for one thousand ad impressions. It's the standard buying unit for awareness and social campaigns, where you pay for visibility rather than clicks. CPM tells you how expensive it is to be seen by your audience.

Metrics explained are nice. Metrics watched are better.

HeyMetrix monitors all of these across Google and Meta, with alerts and a nightly AI briefing.

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