Do PSAs count as impressions in the stats?

Can we use this as a way to tell how many PSAs are showing?

[Clark]

Question in the subject. Has anyone got confirmation from Google about this?

[Blue_Fin]

I strongly suspect that if you are only seeing PSAs on a page, they are not counting as Impressions because there is no ad code executed which is what the FAQs indicate has to happen for an Impression to be counted.

[richmondsteve]

I strongly suspect that if you are only seeing PSAs on a page, they are not counting as Impressions because there is no ad code executed which is what the FAQs indicate has to happen for an Impression to be counted.

I have verified that unpaid ads (PSAs) do in fact count as impressions. However, they do not count as clicks, which is intuitive since the target URLs are not on a Google domain like the paid ads.

I've posted this a number of times on this forum - I tested by limiting AdSense to a single page of a site which only showed unpaid ads and after several consecutive days of 4 figure impressions with 0 clicks it was clear.

[Blue_Fin]

Thank you, richmondsteve. If that is the case, then the Adsense FAQ is wrong since there is no ad code in a PSA.

[killroy]

Of course there is adcode, where else would the PSA come from? You place the javascript on your page, which displays the PSA (or hopefully targeted ads)

SN

[Clark]

Thank you Steve. That's what I thought. I personally believe that many of the fluctuations in CTR relate to how many PSAs are displayed.

[universetoday]

That's my feeling too. I've got other ads on my pages and my ad system counts about 10% more page impressions than what Google says. It has to be due to PSAs.

[killroy]

those 10% are actualy because of instances where google doesn't "see" the impression, like when the browser has no javascript or iframe capability.

SN

[Visi]

Have verified this before with % of pages served. PSA's do count as impressions...at least for us.

[Blue_Fin]

2. What is an impression?
We count an impression when our AdSense JavaScript is actually executed by a user's browser and ads are displayed.

I still maintain that this is not correct. A PSA is not an ad.

[hyperkik]

Google defines them as ads - "Public Service Ads":

Until we are able to crawl your pages, we may display public service ads for which you will not receive earnings.

[cornwall]

>>a PSA is not an ad

The definition of an advert from Websters does not exclude the advert from being free ;)

"...3. A public notice, especially a paid notice in some public
print; anything that advertises; as, a newspaper
containing many advertisements."

[richmondsteve]

Thank you Steve. That's what I thought. I personally believe that many of the fluctuations in CTR relate to how many PSAs are displayed.

Clark, for sites where a large percentage of impressions can be PSAs that's probably true. It was definitely true for one of my sites until I removed AdSense from hundreds of content pages which showed PSAs due to Google's algorythm considering content on those pages to be inappropriate (the site is about sex crimes).

Here's an August post where I discussed how I determined that PSAs count towards impressions. I also mention how it's probably technically possible for a reported CTR higher than 100%.

[webmasterworld.com...]

And here's an August post where I explained how "impressions" and "clicks" in AdSense reports are misleading and incorrect and my proposal for how Google should modify the reports.

[webmasterworld.com...]

BTW, I wish I had never had reason to discover that PSAs count as impressions. It's not uplifting to know that nearly all of your site's pages show PSAs due to what I consider to be a flaw in Google's algorythms (I don't want to get off-topic). But you shouldn't blindly trust that what I'm saying is true. Instead, take a very active page of yours, add some negative "trigger words" to guarantee PSAs are shown, remove AdSense from the rest of your site(s) and monitor the AdSense reports for a few days. <g>