This week we are going to talk about your ad reports and what all those crazy numbers and charts mean to you.

What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus. You’re watching Marketing Madness, the Blue Fish vlog!

Every month at Blue Fish, we send out reports to our ad clients about the results they saw from their advertising in the previous month. It can give them a good indicator of what’s working, what’s not, and how they can change aspects of their messaging to better respond to their customers’ needs.

But the question we receive more than any from these ad reports is: what the heck does any of this mean? How can we interpret these numbers and charts to give us a clear message? To answer that, you’ll need to understand some basic marketing terminology.

Starting at the top, impressions are the number of times your ad was shown to somebody in any way. If it shows up on your screen, that number rises to reflect that. A similar metric to that is called reach, which is the number of times your ad was shown to a new person. It doesn’t take into account people who were shown your ad multiple times and can be useful to see how widespread your ad’s scope is. Frequency is the average amount of times your ads are shown to a single person, which can be useful if you’re wanting to secure actions from specific types of people.

After people are served your ad, you want them to interact with it. When people click on your ad, it’s appropriately called a click. For some people we work with, this is the most important metric. It shows that someone was interested enough to see what the ad was offering. If you’re monitoring this metric, you should also look on Google Analytics and review your “bounce rate,” and see how many people leave your site upon clicking. It can give a good idea of the user experience once they reach your site.

Finally, the last metric of the ad funnel is called a conversion. A conversion has to be tracked separately from the ad. It’s a measure of people who A. Saw the ad, B. interacted with the ad, and C. did something you wanted them to do based on that ad. For an e-commerce business, this would be reaching a checkout page, and for a physical store or business, it might be someone who visits the business physically. Conversions can get super complex, and next week, we’ll be going more in-depth on how to optimize them. So be sure to tune in!

Well, that’s a wrap for this week! I want to thank you for checking in. Make sure to hit that like button. And if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!