Trillions of digital ad impressions. Billions of online users. The math doesn’t add up. Impressions are counted even when no one actually sees the ad. Platforms bank on marketers not asking questions. Are we really reaching people, or just burning budgets?
Great post! We've been shouting this from the rooftops as much as we can over at Viewsub (https://viewsub.substack.com/) - which is a new online ad model designed to get rid of this type of metric and remove engagement inflation from advertising. The deeper you go into this, the worse it all gets. I recently tried to understand how Google could claim a 30% view rate for TrueView ads on YouTube. The short answer is it's near impossible unless you have some people watching ads almost as a full time job! It's just crazy!
I don't know how you feel about Crypto, but I am starting to think that these media impressions have not tangible values. I recently ask a vendor how they measure impressions, and he essentially just ran it on AI, copy, pasted and sent me the email.
While generally agreeing with the post, I can't get how did the ~2 trillion impressions per shown in the table for the major networks, add up to >1300 trillion (43*30) impressions a month.
it was some real back of the napkin math, but I don't think I am required to provide REAL numbers on a figure that is essentially bullsh*t from the jump. Google tells everyone right now that officially, potential impressions are theoretically limitless. Appreciate you checking it out and commenting
Great post! We've been shouting this from the rooftops as much as we can over at Viewsub (https://viewsub.substack.com/) - which is a new online ad model designed to get rid of this type of metric and remove engagement inflation from advertising. The deeper you go into this, the worse it all gets. I recently tried to understand how Google could claim a 30% view rate for TrueView ads on YouTube. The short answer is it's near impossible unless you have some people watching ads almost as a full time job! It's just crazy!
Yeah, basically the whole tech stack is build to enable abuse. Check my post: https://www.mindover.marketing/p/how-advertising-media-borrows-its
I don't know how you feel about Crypto, but I am starting to think that these media impressions have not tangible values. I recently ask a vendor how they measure impressions, and he essentially just ran it on AI, copy, pasted and sent me the email.
While generally agreeing with the post, I can't get how did the ~2 trillion impressions per shown in the table for the major networks, add up to >1300 trillion (43*30) impressions a month.
it was some real back of the napkin math, but I don't think I am required to provide REAL numbers on a figure that is essentially bullsh*t from the jump. Google tells everyone right now that officially, potential impressions are theoretically limitless. Appreciate you checking it out and commenting