Don't Get the Wrong Impression About Impressions

“Impressions.”

The word is easy on the ear. It flows beautifully and sounds impressive when throwing it around in a report for those who don’t understand web metrics.

But don’t let it fool you. Impressions are not nearly as useful as they may sound to the untrained ear. In short, the number of impressions refers to the number of times a piece of content was delivered to users browsers (Reed College of Media, 2013.)

Think of it like when television networks tout the number of viewers for any given program. While the number may sound impressive, it doesn’t tell the whole story. If 1 million people are “viewing” the channel, what good is it to the company if half of those “viewers” are using the show as background noise, another quarter of them are paying more attention to their mobile device, a handful of them simply left the TV on when they left the room, and a handful are not even human entities, but instead bots of some sort? No good at all, that’s what.

Impressions are similar - a high impressions count does not equal high audience reach. What good is it to know the number of impressions if it isn’t correlated with customers actually taking the desired action? A high number of impressions means absolutely nothing if it doesn’t drive customers to act and, ultimately, generate revenue for the company (Tuschman, 2013.)

The marketing strategy should not just be to blast your site to anyone and everyone (Tuschman, 2013.) No, like any effective marketing objective, strategy or tactic, considering the true audience is key. It would be far better to have 100 impressions with a 50% conversion rate than it would be to have 1000 impressions with a 1.2% conversion rate. You don’t need all the people - you need the RIGHT people. In other words, the number of people you’ve impressed is far more important than the number of impressions you receive!

That’s where effective SEO comes in. The use of appropriate and specific keywords can help marketers reach a very specific audience with a very specific interest or problem to solve (Tuschman, 2013.) 

This isn’t to say that impressions are completely pointless - of course generating traffic to your site is important! After all, getting your site onto users’ browsers is mandatory to achieve any other intended goals.

Here’s a timely example. When dangerous wintery conditions keep people inside for great lengths of time, they tend to spend more time online, which means more impressions for all kinds of websites. While many potential customers use this extra time to merely window shop (which does not count as a conversion for retailers,) some actually act and take advantage of on-demand delivery services that can keep them from having to go out into the cold. And sometimes, that’s enough to get them hooked and change their habits over the long term (Pressman, 2015.)

Another example of the usefulness of impressions is when they’re used to determine the cost of a campaign (cost per thousand impressions) and the revenue made on a campaign (revenue per thousand impressions.) This makes it possible to compare the earnings rates for different sites regardless of their audience sizes  (Johnston, 2014.)

References:

Johnston, M. (2014.) What are average CPM rates in 2014? Monetize Pros. Retrieved Sunday, January 25 2015 from http://monetizepros.com/blog/2014/average-cpm-rates/#rpmvscpm

Pressman, A. (2015.) Winter storms encourage snuggling up inside, but not much online shopping. Yahoo Finance. Retrieved Tuesday, January 26, 2015 from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/winter-storm-boosts-craigslist-posts-more-than-online-shopping-174855634.html

Reed College of Media. (2013.) Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics. Retrieved Saturday, January 24, 2015.

Tuschman, J. (2013.) Local business owners, don’t be impression with impressions! Red Spot Interactive. Retrieved Monday, January 26 2015 from http://www.redspotinteractive.com/local-business-owners-dont-be-impressed-with-impressions/

Considering the Click Through Rate

In a marketing campaign, the “click-through rate” refers to the number of clicks for a specific link, divided by the number of times that specific link was viewed (Reed College of Media, 2013.) I argue that this metric is one of the most important metrics to track during a marketing campaign, because it is one of the most clear cut ways to determine if a business has achieved the goal of driving customers to a particular site. It measures the amount of traffic that any particular ad or campaign drives to the organization’s website (Stokes, 2014.)

Native mobile advertising

One real-world example of the use of click-through rate as an effective measurement tool is the ever-increasing usage of mobile native ads. Mobile native ads engage the user with an ad experience that seamlessly integrates with the app or site the user is visiting. These types of advertisements are becoming the preferred ad format for marketers, as they provide a 57% higher click through rate than other forms of online advertising. They also bring a 33% increase in ad engagement over time (Tanwani, 2015.)

But why are they so successful in improving the ability of a business to accomplish an intended goal? In my opinion, it’s because technology has continued to become effortlessly blended into our lives. Awkward, invasive, distracting popup ads have become increasingly annoying, and can lead to ad fatigue, which means no one is going to pay any attention to your ad.

Digital ads, just like offline ads, must stay relevant, fresh and current. Otherwise, ad fatigue sets in and the click through rate drops, giving online marketers a problem to solve (Vallaeys, 2014.) To fix it, they must change the ads. But not just ad copy- it goes beyond that. Remember the old saying “The medium is the message?” Well, that idea is at play here. Native advertising is used to blend in perfectly with the user’s chosen experience. The ad truly becomes part of the medium, and the message is delivered to the user in a natural way.

Nonprofit organization email campaigns

Another example of click-through rate at work in the marketing mix is when it is used to measure the success of an email campaign for a nonprofit organization. Those who take a data-driven approach to their email marketing typically have higher success rates for their newsletters than those who don’t (Love, 2015.)

But the click-through rate is just one part of a chain of events that must occur to accomplish the intended goal. First, the recipient of the email must successfully receive and open that email. Then, they must click the link in your email. (This is what is measured by click-through rate.) When the measurement of the click through rate is followed up with a measurement of the conversion rate, marketers can determine how effective their email campaign was. Discovering what people choose to click on can give marketers insights into fundraising efforts, planned giving programs and the effectiveness of their website. It also gives them perspective of what they can improve upon for next time (Love, 2015.)

So the click-through rate plays an important role in determining the success of email campaigns and the effectiveness of new forms of advertisements, like native ads. What are some ways the click-through rate can be improved?

1.) Improve the position of your ads.

Things seen immediately, as opposed to those the user has to scroll to see, are more likely to catch their attention.

2.) Keep ad copy and keyword phrases similar.
Optimized ad copy (copy that is similar to the words that the user searches for) can greatly increase your rankings in search results.

3.) Choose low-competition keyword phrases.
It’s better to use a larger number of specific search phrases than to just use a handful of common and broad terms.

(Stokes, 2014.)

References:

Love, J. (2015.) The top email KPIs for nonprofit communicators. Business 2 Community. Retrieved Monday, January 26 2015 from http://www.business2community.com/non-profit-marketing/top-email-kpis-nonprofit-communicators-01136868

Reed College of Media. (2013.) Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics. Retrieved Saturday, January 24, 2015.

Stokes, R. (2014.) 3 Steps to improve your ad’s click through rates. Entrepreneur. Retrieved Monday, January 26, 2015 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235827

Tanwani, 2015 http://e27.co/mobile-native-ads-can-get-57-higher-click-through-rate-vserv-20150121/

Vallaeys, 2014 http://searchengineland.com/4-reasons-why-your-ad-is-fatiguing-206706