About a week ago a friend asked me for a piece of information that should probably interest many others as well. He wanted to know how for rewarded video ads – how many impressions are first impressions vs. second impressions vs. third and so forth. In other words, he wanted to know how big of a deal first impressions are.
Impressions can be analyzed according to their sequence
To understand his quesion, we first need to understand the basics of user interaction with ads. When it comes to linear ad formats such as interstitials, video and rewarded video a user can only watch one at a time. This means that ad impressions have sequence and can be put in order. The first impression a user watches in a given day is considered the most fresh advertising experience he will get and typically yields more for the publisher while providing more value for the advertiser. A user might watch more impressions, a 2nd impression, a 3rd impression and so on. Checking the distribution of ads according to their sequecne means checking how many impressions are first impressions vs. second impressions vs. 3rd and so on and what percentage of the total volume each sequence position gets.
Results – the first 2 impressions give 46% of the volume
The results we found are presented in the chart below. We aggreagated data across all the apps using SOOMLA TRACEBACK and combined the results to a single chart. We excluded apps with less than 100,000 monthly impressiosn. The chart below represents the average with equal weights. In other words, the patterns of apps with high volume and the patterns of apps with smaller volume are equally represented.
The full data can also be viewed in this table. We also included the minimal and maximal numbers accross all apps.
| Impression | Min | Avg | Max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13.6% | 29.1% | 48.3% | |
| 2 | 13.3% | 17.4% | 22.5% | |
| 3 | 11.6% | 12.6% | 13.8% | |
| 4 | 6.9% | 9.5% | 11.4% | |
| 5 | 4.2% | 7.9% | 9.8% | |
| 6 | 2.5% | 6.3% | 9.3% | |
| 7 | 1.6% | 5.3% | 8.9% | |
| 8 | 1.0% | 4.5% | 7.9% | |
| 9 | 0.6% | 4.0% | 7.7% | |
| 10 | 0.4% | 3.5% | 7.2% |
First impressions matter
We already talked about the importance of first impressions from an eCPM standpoint in this article and also in this one. According to the data presented here, firstl impressions in rewarded video also matter because they represents a big chunk of the volume.
