Impressions are Too High

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Impressions are "Too High".

A troubleshooting guide to help when the number of impressions recorded in the Revive Adserver statistics don't align with the number of impressions expected.

 


Symptoms

The number of impressions recorded in Revive Adserver are (much) higher than the number of page views for the website you're running ads on.

Troubleshooting Process

Step 1: Check Expectations

Before you start to dig into the issue, it's worth double checking that your expectation on the number of impressions you're expecting to see recorded in Revive Adserver are correct.

  • Are you certain that the number of page views you're basing your expectations on are correct? Are you using a historical average number of page views per day, week or month, or are you basing your expectations on a the actual number of page views that correspond with the same time range you're looking at in Revive Adserver?
  • Are you taking into account that there may be multiple banners per page on your site, which will result in more impressions that page views?
  • Does the system you are using for page views analytics count every single time the page is loaded as a view? Or does the system count multiple page loads in any given "session" as only one view?

Once you've double checked that the number of impressions you're expecting to see recorded in Revive Adserver is correct, then move on to the next step.

Step 3: Check for Impressions Against Expired Campaigns

Revive Adserver needs to keep the details of your past campaigns and banners in the database, to allow you to view the details of past delivery statistics.

However, this means that it is possible that due to caches, agents (such as spiders) may continue to access the impression logging URL of banners, even after the campaigns the banners are in have ended, and Revive Adserver will continue to record the impressions against these banners.

Revive Adserver does offer a feature to prevent impressions being recorded against expired campaigns - consider enabling this feature, if not already enabled.

Step 3: Consider Location of the Analytics Tag

Review the location of the page analytics tag, if that's how your page views are recorded.

Is the analytics tag at the end of the page? If so, there's a good chance that a significant number of your site's visitors are not waiting for pages to fully load before they click away (either to another page on your site, or they go somewhere else). Revive Adserver may have recorded one (or many) banner impressions, but if the analytics tag at the bottom of the page hasn't loaded up, then this may result in a difference in page views vs. impressions.

You may need to consider upgrading your servers or hosting.