Google has updated how it counts impression metrics on AdSense.
Knowing that reporting is the most important feature within AdSense, Google wants to help publishers and partners to better understand and improve their performance metrics. The change is transitioning AdSense from a platform for served impressions to downloaded impressions.
Google explained that:
- Served impressions: Counted at the point that Google find an ad for an ad request on the server.
- Downloaded impressions: Counted for each ad request once at least one of the returned ads has begun to load on the user’s device.
According to Google, switching to counting impressions on download helps is meant to improve viewability rates, consistency across measurement providers, and aligns the impression metric better with advertiser value.
For example, if an an ad failed to download or if the user closed the tab before the ad arrived, AdSense won't count the ad as an impression. As a result, users might see a decrease in their impression counts, and corresponding improvements in their impression RPM, CTR, and other impression-based metrics.
However, publishers should not expect earnings to be “impacted by this change.”
Over the year, Google has been following The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC), in partnership with other industry bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). They periodically review and update industry standards for impression measurement. They are the ones that recommend guidelines to standardize how impressions are counted across formats and platforms.
And the transition from served impressions to downloaded impressions, is for Google to "remain consistent with these standards."