Marketing jargon is real, there are hundreds of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) out there which can be confusing for today’s marketer.

Here we are trying to make sure we cover most marketing and performance marketing specific KPIs. For some of the KPIs we will list out formulas, how they are calculated and the marketing science behind them.

Impressions is the number of times an ad has been seen by a human, an account, a device (mobile, tablet, computer etc.), a robot, or a game character (if you are in metaverse of course).

Example: You see a crypto app download ad on X (previously twitter) 3 times. Your friend sees the same ad once daily for two weeks. That’s a total of 17 Impressions with a Reach of 2 accounts.

Impression is arguably one of the most important KPIs in marketing. This is mostly measured for ATL (Above the Line) marketing efforts. Here’s how you can calculate impressions with the given CPM (cost per mille) and ad spend.

Impr = [Ad Spend / CPM] x 1,000

There are additional KPIs under the impressions umbrella and these KPIs change as we further define them. All closely related to impressions but more specific to the platforms, content, ad types etc. Here we list some of them.

• Organic Impressions

• Paid Impressions

• Page Impressions

• Ad Impressions

• Viewable Impressions

• Post Impressions

• Search Impressions

• CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions)

Impression Metrics Specific to Google Ads

• Impressions Share

• Message Impressions

• Phone Impressions

• Impressions Top %

• Impressions Absolute Top %

• Search top IS

• Search Exact Match IS

• Search abs. top IS

• Search lost IS (rank)

• Search lost IS top (rank)

• Search lost IS abs. top (rank)

Impression Metrics Specific to META Ads (Previously Facebook Ads)

• Gross impressions (includes invalid impressions from non-human traffic)

• Auto-refresh impressions

• Instant experience impressions

• In-app ad impressions

Impression Metrics Specific to Snapchat Ads

• Attachment Impressions

• Earned Impressions

• Gross Impressions

• Measured Impressions

• Viewable Impressions

• Non Viewable Impressions