One of the first things you see on your Appodeal Dashboard is impression count numbers. You’re probably wondering how these numbers are composed and why there might be discrepancy between numbers we display and numbers provided by each network separately. In this article we will give a brief overview of Appodeal’s logic behind impression count.
Why discrepancies occur
Impressions are the actual ad showing on a user’s device. An impression is counted every time an ad is displayed within an app. Remember that ad impressions should not be confused with clicks. Impressions tell developers how many times an ad was viewed by users, not how many times it was clicked.
While a general definition of impression is more or less clear, the criteria for counting impressions differs. Some networks count impressions before the creative is fully downloaded or viewed by a user. For example, AdMob counts impression when at least 1 pixel of an ad is visible on a device’s screen. Each network has their own algorithms of counting impressions and that inevitably leads to difference in numbers. Moreover, there are factors that always influence impression count: bad or lost Internet connection on user’s device, instances of app crash, etc.
Now speaking about Appodeal’s logic behind impression count, we count impressions on the SDK side and send this info to the server.
Appodeal doesn’t count an impression until the creative sends an impression request to our SDK and then is transferred to the server. Full-screen ad impressions (interstitials and rewarded videos) are counted by the number of callbacks we receive from networks’ SDK to our SDK. Banners (ordinary and mrec) and native ad impressions are counted when users view it on the device in full.
Some networks count all requests to each ad unit as impressions, so when you look at numbers they display, you see more impressions.
Appodeal doesn’t count requests to network ad units separately. There may be a lot of requests to network, but only the most profitable ad unit is selected and delivered to users. Other networks count impressions specifying certain conditions like “advertisement was on screen for 4 seconds”. In that case you might see fewer impression numbers. We’d say that on average 10-15% discrepancy is consistently observed between our impression numbers and other networks’ count. This is expected due to networks’ different count logic.
Metrics to understand your revenue better
eCPM is counted on our side as well; we don’t use other networks’ eCPM numbers. eCPM is a metric that helps determine how much (ad) revenue is generated per 1,000 ad impressions. It’s important to keep in mind that you should analyze your eCPM numbers in combination with other stats to understand how everything altogether affects your revenue. It happens that despite impressive impressions numbers, certain impressions turn out to be less valuable for advertisers (point in session, geolocation, etc.), which leads to lower eCPMs.
Appodeal’s main goal has always been to make sure publishers earn more money on ads. Therefore, the revenue is the most important parameter for us, and we built the metrics toolbox with that in mind. On our Dashboard you can easily track numbers that are most essential for understanding how your revenue is composed. Analyzing this basic data allows you to understand where the strong and weak spots in your strategy are. Impressions, Clicks, Fillrate, Revenue, and eCPM are conveniently laid out at the top of the page with visual charts and figures to support those numbers.
In order to get a good idea of how all these metrics interact, you need to closely look at them in correlation with each other. To get more information about how to read metrics, check out our blog post here.
If you have questions left about impression count or our Dashboard, check our FAQ or talk to our support team by emailing [email protected].
