What is the difference?
Impressions vs Sessions
Ad Impressions
Sessions
What is it?
Ad Impressions (IMPR) is a count of the total number of times digital advertisements display on someone’s screen within the publisher's network.
A Session, sometimes called a Visit, is the set of interactions, or web requests, made within a given time frame by a single user visiting a specific website. A single Session often contains multiple activities, such as page views, events, or transactions. In web analytics, a session is either capped by exiting the website or by a period of user inactivity.
Who is it for?
Categories
Formula
Example
Suppose you are trying to better understand the performance of an ad campaign that you are running on Google or Facebook. Impressions are a good leading indicator. You look into your ad account and see that you have been running 4 different ad variations within a campaign. Ad 1: 16,484 impressions Ad 2: 10,245 impressions Ad 3: 9,198 impressions Ad 4: 435 impressions This means that Ad 1 is receiving the most impressions, so has the highest likelihood of being clicked.
A small-scale online furniture retailer enjoys success selling furniture through their website. They hold an end-of-year sale and see a spike in interest, which results in their website having 5,000 sessions in one week and 4,500 sessions the next week. The website's Sessions count for those two weeks is 9,000.
Track this metric
Facebook Ads Ad Impressions
Google Analytics Ad Impressions
Google Ads Ad Impressions
LinkedIn Ads Ad Impressions
Twitter Ads Ad Impressions
Ad Impressions (Custom data source)
Google Analytics Sessions
HubSpot Sessions
Sessions (Custom data source)
Published and updated dates
Date created: Jan 15, 2019
Latest update: Feb 6, 2021
Date created: Jan 14, 2019
Latest update: Feb 5, 2021