How To Calculate Impression Discrepancy

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Impression Discrepancy

What is ad impression discrepancy?

Impression discrepancy can be a huge problem if you are working with an ad network and sending them large amounts of your digital inventory. impression discrepancy occurs when impressions are lost when you send an ad network impressions for them to fill with advertisements. The end result is a watered down eCPM and reduced revenue that you earn from the advertisers. The first step to resolve impression discrepancy is to learn how to calculate impression discrepancy.

Unfortunately digital advertising technology and website code is not always universal. Advertisements need to be called on by an ad server in 200 milliseconds, which is both a blessing and a curse. the industry accepted standard for discrepancy is 10%.

Reasons why impression impression discrepancy occurs:

  • Two reporting systems do not calculate impression discrepancy correctly due to different time zones in the report.
  • Ad blocking software such as AdSafe eliminates certain impressions, skewing the count.
  • Impression waterfall of multiple ad networks with passback tags lose impressions when ad servers fail to “talk” to each other.
  • Mobile impressions generally contribute to higher impression discrepancy percentages.
  • Ad network is not taking the impressions and are serving PSA’s or blanks that are not reflected in reporting.
  • IP mapping is not the same in the 3rd party ad serving technology.
  • Creatives that have large file sizes take too long to load and impressions are lost.
  • Javascript tag but the user does not have javascript turned on in their browser.
  • A cachebuster is not hardcoded in the ad tag. Cachebusters ensure that the creative is pulled from the adserver rather then the web page.

How to Calculate Impression discrepancy formula

How to calculate impression discrepancy
Calculate Impression Discrepancy: Your Imps – Their Imps Over Your Imps

Now that you know how to calculate impression discrepancy, crunch the numbers and find out how much revenue you are losing!