Does impression count matter?

[KimmoA]

I was just laying in my bed, unable to sleep. Then I came to think of this: does Google favor you in any way for more impressions? I mean... it would kind of make sense, since people might see Nice-elephants.com in an ad, but not click it. In that sense, they get free impression ads.

I don't mean favor as in direct cash gain, but perhaps in some subtle way? I don't know...

MakesSense, I hope? ;)

[ken_b]

Fpr pay per clicks, more impressions might help in the sense that more impressions will most likely lead to more clicks. But at the same time more impressions sometimes lead to a lower click thru rate, which probably isn't helpful.

If pay per impression ads are running on your site, more impressions will generate more income.

[KimmoA]

"If pay per impression ads are running on your site, more impressions will generate more income."

Thank you, Mr. Obvious ;)

Well... Google doesn't do that at all (right?), but certainly what you say about more impressions = more clicks makes sense. I didn't even think about that.

But still...

[ronburk]

does Google favor you in any way for more impressions?

I bet the answer is complex :-).

The advertiser bids and campaign caps for a given topic represent the demand, and the available impressions represent the supply.

You offer a lot of impressions in an area where demand is slack, and I predict you'll get less targeted ads, lower CTR.

You offer a lot of impressions in an area where demand is large, and I predict you'll get a near-linear increase in income.

I can't think of where the reward for offering more impressions comes in, but I can see where the punishment for offering more impressions than people want to buy does :-)

[ken_b]

Well... Google doesn't do that at all (right?)

Doesn't do what, use pay per impressions ads? They do offer pay per impression (CPM) ads.

And because they offer both CPM and PPC, it's possible that increasing impressions can have conflicting impacts on a sites revenue. That's because you can have both pay per impression (CPM) and pay per per click ads running on your site at the same time.

It's pretty common for folks to mention that increasing impressions can result in a lower CTR, and there's plenty of speculation that a lower CTR can result in a lower earnings per click.

So while increasing impressions would help with CPM ads, it could hurt when it comes to PPC ads.

Of course, if a site gets enough additional clicks on PPC ads from increased impressions income could still go up, even if earnings per click goes down.

Mr Obvious :)

[KimmoA]

Well... this comes as a chock to me. I didn't know that Google AdSense had "pay per impression" ads. How much are those? $0.0000000001? Are they baked into the other ads?

AdSense has too weak styling and tweaking power.