How are impressions counted with ad links?

[Trisha]

I just added ad links to my site a few days ago, and today my impressions are way up, but not the clicks. I was wondering if people have to click on one of the links to see the actually ads first to count as an impression or just the page with the links?

If they have to click a link for it to count then it seems many people are doing it without realizing what they are doing and then are not clicking the ads. I wasn't quite sure if it was ok for me to click on a link to see the ads or not, so I have no idea if there are many there or if they look like they are very good. Either way though, it looks like I may need to take those off the site.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Hi Trisha -

I believe the following AdSense support page will answer your question :)

[google.com...]

Cheers,

ASA

[webnoob]

im always skeptical about this:

".. the extra impressions will result in a lower reported CPM and clickthrough rate."

if it reports a "lower CPM" does that actually mean using adlinks u get a lower overall CPM?

gives me the impression that by using adlinks i get a lower CPM on the pages that have both adlink and ads.

[Trisha]

yes, thanks - that answers my question!

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Effective CPM is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $500 from 50,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $250/50, or $5.00

When a user clicks on a link unit topic, it results in two page impressions (one for the link unit as it shows on your web page, and one for the ads on the subsequent page).

Clicks to link units increase the denominator in the equation above, thus lowering the CPM figure.

This means you shouldn't worry if you notice a decrease in your CPM statistics after adding link units, because this may correspond with an increase in overall earnings.