Ad Agency Blog Series: Impressions, Reach, and Brand Awareness
Last time in the brand awareness series, we explored the customer journey and how that journey relates to overall brand awareness. This week, we are talking about reach and impressions. What each one of them means, how they relate to online advertising and conversion, and finally, what they do in terms of brand awareness. Let’s get started!
What are Impressions?
In online advertising, impressions are defined as the number of times your advertisements are displayed on a website, regardless of it someone interacted with that ad. Impressions are an important piece of online advertising because they help us track how many times ads are shown vs. how many people click or convert on them. Understanding how many people are seeing your ads vs. how many sales you are getting is a good indication of the success of an ad.
Adjust writes, “Knowing how many impressions an advertising campaign generates helps marketers generate a number of other marketing metrics too, such as Click-Through Rates (known as CTR).” On platforms like Google, impressions are a key metric that we watch on a daily basis. If an ad campaign isn’t getting any impressions or impressions have significantly slowed, it’s generally a sign that changes need to be made within ads, ad groups, or the campaign itself.
Additionally, on Facebook and Instagram, we are able to set a campaign objective to brand awareness, which optimizes for impressions if and when we feel that this is the most important objective.
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What’s Reach?
If impressions are the number of times that your ads are shown regardless of engagement, then reach is the number of individuals or unique people who saw your ad. Reach takes into account the fact that the same people in an audience can see an ad multiple times.
The better your ads are designed, and the more targeted your message is, the more likely people will convert on an ad. Once someone converts on an ad, we can minimize the times the same person sees an ad by creating rules within a campaign. Rules that say things like exclude people who have converted in the last 30 days. Ideally, everyone that sees an ad will convert the first time they see it or even take action on it, but that’s not often the case.
Our ad agency watches reach on a daily basis. It’s an especially important metric when it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising, and we have worked closely with clients who want to get their ads in front of the largest amount of unique users possible. Expanding where your ads show or adding interest groups to campaigns is a fantastic way to increase reach and ultimately increase conversions.
Where Does Brand Awareness Fit?
Both of the above metrics are essential parts of brand awareness. The better your impressions and reach, the greater chance your ads have of converting. After all, more eyes on an ad mean more potential customers.
As Google writes, “the Brand awareness & reach goal to increase traffic to your website or encourage customers to interact with your brand.” Getting people to interact with your ads and then your website is the first step in gaining better brand awareness and, eventually, customer loyalty. Brand awareness can often feel like a long game, but building a good base that eventually turns into longtime customers, is worth the effort.
