Impression

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What Does Impression Mean?

The word “impression” in IT can be used to refer to how many times a piece of social media content is seen by a user. This type of metric can be used for the purposes of marketing or affiliate marketing, or simply to measure the popularity or viral status of a particular post or object.

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Techopedia Explains Impression

In general, the word “impression” is replacing terms like “page views” which have been the norm for most of the history of the Web. When people talk about how many people have seen a Web page, they often talk about it in terms of page views. However, in the social media community, the word “impressions” has gained ground with the idea that it represents that relationship that people want to create on social media platforms – making an impression on the target audience. Impression may be seen as a better word for this than simply “page view” where there is no implication of engagement or interaction.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.