Expert: John W. Watson - 12/30/2004

Question
Hi,

I hope you can help me.  I have my own online shopping mall with affiliates.  Something I can't figure out is the differance between a click and an impression. What is an impression?  If I am getting paid for impressions what am I getting paid for?

Thank you in advance foryour resposne.

Julie

Answer
Julie-

Great question!  In fact, I had to look it up to be sure I was right.  Here is what I came up with:

Impression -

An advertisement's appearance on an accessed Web page. For example, if the page you're on shows three ads, that's three impressions. Advertisers use impressions to measure the number of views their ads receive, and publishers often sell ad space according to impressions. (It can be tough to know, though, whether an impression really means a visitor saw the ad, since they could be browsing without graphics or might not have scrolled down far enough.) Impressions are tracked in a log maintained by a site server and are often sold on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis.

Click-

In the World Wide Web advertising industry, selection of a banner ad by a user. The effectiveness of Web advertisements are measured by their click-through rate - how often people who see the ad click on it.


It appears that the difference is an impression means the ad is "seen" whereas "click" means the user actually used the ad link.