Before I start...I sent and instant message and email to my AM today, but thought I would see if I could get a faster answer on here. Can someone explain to me the difference between impressions, clicks, and leads? I thought it was pretty self-explanatory, but looking at some stats from an affiliate network (Clickbooth) I started running an offer last night, it has me completely confused. This is the way I see it: Impressions - when something gets shown...an advertisers ad, banner, etc Clicks - when the visitor clicks on your affiliate link (banner, text link, etc) and goes through to the advertiser's site Leads - when they complete whatever action necessary to convert Now, according to stats with an offer I started running late last night I have 30 impressions, 198 clicks, and no leads. That gives me a 550% CTR. This led me to think that the stats were just off somehow because impressions would be larger than clicks, right? Then, I started thinking about it and first of all, my landing page has nothing directly linking to the advertiser (banner or ad). The link they click through on the landing page goes to another page on my site and redirects. So if they hit my landing page without clicking it shouldn't count as an impression, right? In addition, the offer I am running is only for US traffic. I have evidently had some international traffic because my reports show an "International Redirect" offer for the UK and Canada. I think Clickbooth will redirect international traffic to a valid offer for them so you don't miss out. That's great, but confusing. I am showing 6 total impressions and no clicks between those two international offers, which I am not directly linking to. This confuses me because wouldn't they have to click on my link to be redirected to that UK or Canadian offer for it show up on my reports? In that case it should also show up as a click. If they don't click, then the offer shouldn't show up on my report because there would never be a reason to send them to that offer. Seems to make sense to me. This almost makes me start thinking that overall, the impressions are actually clicks (which the stats would be totally off) and the clicks are actually completed leads. They just haven't been credited as leads so zero leads are showing. Otherwise, where the hell are these impressions from the UK/Canada coming from if they aren't clicking on my link? How am I coming up with impressions in the first place for any of the offers if I am not using a banner ad or something else? I hope that wasn't too confusing. Need any clarification let me know. Thanks for any assistance.
Yea, impressions logically should not be higher than clicks, obviously. But in some tracking platforms it sometimes happens for various reasons. Generally, the impressions stats is pretty useless, try going off clicks, it will be easier for you
I figured impressions were about useless in their stats, at least when being on a landing page versus banners on third party sites. I just didn't know how they came to those numbers. If that part is screwed up...what else is? It comes back to my other question. Obviously the clicks are also screwed up somewhere because those international redirects don't show any clicks, but they must have happened or they wouldn't have been redirected, right? It's nice to have the right information so you can make good decisions. Stuff like this just muddies it up.