Impression

An impression is one served instance of an ad. For Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, an impression is counted when the ad is rendered in the search results or detail page. For Sponsored Display and DSP, viewable impressions (≥50% of pixels in view for ≥1 second per the MRC standard) are counted separately from served impressions.

The funnel arithmetic

Every Amazon ad metric is downstream of impressions:

Impressions → Clicks → Detail Page Views → Add-to-Carts → Orders
            CTR        (pass-through)      cart rate      CVR

When sales fall, the diagnostic always starts at the top. Lost orders almost always trace to either fewer impressions, lower CTR, or lower CVR — usually one of the three.

Where impressions disappear

• Out of budget. Campaign exhausted its daily budget before peak hours.
• Suppressed listing. Listing went out of stock or lost the Buy Box.
• Lost impression share to a competitor. New advertiser entered the auction with a higher bid.
• Keyword fell out of the top placements. Lower placements get fewer impressions; placement modifier needs to compensate.

The Impression Share report tells you which of these is the cause.

Viewable impressions and vCPM

Display formats are billed on viewable CPM (vCPM) — €X per 1,000 viewable impressions. Served impressions that scroll off-screen before the threshold do not bill and do not count for attribution.

Common mistakes

• Optimising for impression volume alone. Impressions without clicks are wasted opportunity; impressions that come from broad-matching to irrelevant queries actively harm the campaign's relevance score.
• Confusing served and viewable. vCPM × 1,000 ≠ served impressions on display reports.
• Ignoring impression collapse signals. A sudden 40% drop in impressions overnight is almost always a budget cap, an out-of-stock event, or a Buy Box loss — investigate before changing bids.