When marketers send messages on digital platforms, they want to know how many people actually see the message, so they often pay in terms of the number of “impressions” a message receives.
A “served impression” is when potential viewers access a webpage or social media stream where the ad is shown (or “served”), but they may never have had a chance to see the ad. Maybe it wasn’t in the viewable browser space or the webpage was hidden in an unseen browser tab.
A “viewable impression” is when at least 50% of the ad appears in the viewable space of the browser for at least one continuous second, so the ad could have been viewed, but it doesn’t mean it actually was viewed, mainly because of all the other information that appears on the screen at the same time.
Finally, a “viewed impression” is when a viewer actually looks at the message the marketer’s trying to deliver. While this can be tested using eye-tracking technology, our current digital devices do not allow marketers to distinguish between “viewable” and “viewed” impressions.
Sadly, most of the common analytics tools report impressions as being “views” or “viewed” even though they’re only “viewable” or just “served.”
Marketers need to understand that just because you’ve delivered the message, doesn’t mean that it was received or processed by the recipient.
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Note: The “viewed impression” specifics listed above are from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines that can be found here:
