Forum Moderators: DixonJones
"Impression" is typically used for serving ads but it means one load of an ad/image/page.
Chip-
When talking about web pages, the word "impression" usually isn't applied - "page view" is used instead. Still, if somebody sees your web page, they would be technically correct in calling it an impression of your web page. But that would be a somewhat uncommon use of the word.
"Hit" technically means exactly what Chip says, any request for any kind of file. So, when an ad gets viewed, it's called an impression .... but the file(s) that make up the ad are getting requested by the page's HTML, so there are technically hits happening to the ad files. But calling a view of an ad a "hit" to the ad is uncommon.
So when somebody clicks on the ad and lands on your site, that's called a clickthrough, a view of your landing page, and a hit to your landing page.
But "hit" is a little confusing in that context. When somebody views a page, they're actually making a collection of hits, not just one hit - one hit to the HTML file, which in turn requests one hit to the CSS file if any, one hit to each of the graphics on the page, and so forth.
In web traffic analytics reporting tools, "hit" is used correctly and means "request for a file."
In online ad serving reporting tools, "impression" is usually the term used.
But in common use, a lot of people use "hit" when they really mean a "page view" and some people even mean "visit". So they get pretty excited when they see huge numbers of "hits" in a web traffic report, thinking that that's how many visits they had, or page views.
Have we successfully confused you further?
Your night makes my daytime clear. hehe. Thanks guys.
