Views, impressions, and clicks are key metrics every digital marketer needs. Learn how to use them to assess your campaigns.
Key takeaways:
- Views are calculated when somebody visits your content.
- Impressions are how often somebody sees your ad.
- Clicks are how often somebody clicks through the ad.
- Impressions lead to clicks, and clicks lead to views.
- Views, clicks, and impressions are all critical parts of getting leads and scoring sales.
- Calculate profit generation with profit per impression (PPI).
Content is the core of your digital marketing campaign and keeps your marketing flywheel spinning. But the only way to know it’s working is by keeping a handle on the metrics.
When you have a killer ad campaign going and want to know how it’s performing, you’re not going to make heads or tails of your data until you understand these key ad metrics: views, impressions, and clicks. Only then will you know how your approach needs to be tweaked.
Let’s walk through what these metrics are, what they mean for data collection, and how they impact your campaigns.
What are impressions, views, and clicks?
Before we get too deep, it’s important to know what these three digital marketing terms really mean. Here’s the quick and dirty explanation:
- Impressions
These are calculated when somebody sees your ad. Regardless of whether they interacted with it, an impression means your ad landed in front of a set of eyes.
- Clicks
This metric shows when somebody clicks on the ad.
- Views
These are calculated when somebody actually looks at your content after clicking through to it.
That’s it. It’s pretty simple. Next, find out how they’re all linked.
How impressions lead to clicks
An impression happens when an ad renders on somebody’s digital screen. You can use impressions as a first-line metric to see how often your pay-per-click ads are showing up in response to searches, for example, or how often your ad shows up on a third-party website.
Impressions come in two varieties:
- Served impressions
These happen any time someone loads your ad content. There’s a problem, however, because served impressions only tell you that the ad loaded, not whether somebody actually saw it.
- Viewable impressions
These exclude any counts where the user probably didn’t see the ad content. It’s not counted if an ad blocker was active, somebody scrolled before the ad loaded, or a broken plugin made it impossible to see the ad.
Viewable impressions are more accurate when tracking how many people see your ad, not just how many times the ad is loading or being served. The data is more actionable, enabling you to modify your ad if there’s a problem.
The goal of each impression is to turn it into a click. You want people to interact with your content, and that all starts when they are compelled to click through. That means it’s super important for your ads to have a strong and compelling call to action (CTA) so those impressions have a fighting chance.
How clicks lead to views
The goal is to have people view your content after they click through, whether that means watching a video or reading a landing page. Views are the number of times visitors engage with your content. Most of the time, views refer to video views, though they can also refer to page views.
The most important view metrics include:
- View rate
The number of views divided by the number of times your content is displayed
- Watch time
How many seconds viewers spend watching a video ad
- Average impression time
The number of seconds the average viewer spends actively viewing the content per impression
- Average cost per view (CPV)
The amount you pay when a viewer watches your video or engages with your content
You want people to actually engage with your content, no matter what it is. Tracking these viewing metrics helps you figure out if they’re actually doing that.
How to see your profit per impression
Pay-per-click campaigns are all about boosting your business’s profit by generating more views, clicks, and conversions at the best price you possibly can. The ultimate metric for your paid advertising campaign success is profit per impression (PPI).
With PPI, you can determine which ads to keep running and which ones to nix. That’s why it’s so valuable for your digital marketing strategy. Calculate PPI by dividing your overall profit by the number of impressions your campaign reeled in. (Get that overall profit metric by subtracting total cost from total sales value.)
Getting leads and scoring sales with better content
Ultimately, views score you leads, and leads score you sales. Or at least, that’s what you’re aiming for. But you can’t get those views without impressions and clicks. Impressions boost brand awareness by getting your product or service in front of more people. That means your ad content needs to be tailored to the people interested in your business – your ideal target customer. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Always ensure your content is relevant to your target audience.
- Impressions are a good measure of whether you are successful in putting your ad in front of an audience.
- Clicks are a good indicator of whether you’re succeeding at putting your ad in front of the right audience.
- If your content isn’t relevant to the ad, you can expect your views to stall. This puts a wrench in the whole campaign.
- Impressions, clicks, and views can tell you why your sales and leads are exploding, or why they’re lackluster.
Pro tip: It might be your content. If you aren’t seeing clicks, your ad CTA isn’t sharp or compelling enough. When your views are nil, the end content isn’t worth the viewer’s time. That’s why you must keep an eye on your PPC metrics and ensure that your campaign starts and ends with extraordinary content. Without kickass messaging, all those impressions will go absolutely nowhere.
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