The total number of times a piece of content or ad is displayed, regardless of whether the same person sees it multiple times.
Why it matters
Impressions measure total exposure volume, which is useful for pricing models like CPM, but on its own doesn't tell you how many distinct people were reached or how they responded — those require reach and engagement metrics respectively.
In a sentence
"We generated 2 million impressions on the campaign, reaching roughly 400,000 unique people — an average frequency of 5 views per person."
Related terms
- Often confused with: Reach (see above).
- Synonyms: Views (in some platform contexts).