What You Know About Instagram Filter Impressions And What You Don't Know About Instagram Filter Impressions
“Don’t worry about the vanity numbers.”
Sounds like a simple statement. You think about it as a new Spark AR Creator and aspire to hit these really big numbers of impressions.
And if you’re a more experienced Creator once you hit those big numbers it feels good.
It validates your work.
It feeds your ego.
When we think of these impressions, we think of eyeballs – because essentially it’s the metric used to quantify the number of digital views or engagements of a piece of content.
The more impressions you’ve got, the more eyeballs have seen your Instagram filter, the better quality of a filter and a better Creator you are considered to be.
What a load of llama spit.
It’s entirely possible to be considered a good Creator yet not get those high numbers of Instagram filter impressions – just like it’s entirely possible to be successful in life without a college degree.
Make no mistake: the business world is not caring about your ego. The only people who may be saying impressions don’t matter are trying to encourage you, or don’t quite understand the benefits for a brand.
What is an impression in advertising?
Impressions are also referred to as an “ad view.” They are used in online advertising, which often pays on a per-impression basis.
In fact, most media websites generate their revenue based on charging businesses on their platform based on the impressions. A business places an ad online, the success is measured based on CPM, which is the cost per 1,000 website impressions.
CPMs vary depending on the advertising platform. Here are some numbers for social media platforms within the US:
Following this average, a brand would have to spend $7,921 to reach 1 Million Impressions.
CPM = 1000 impressions
1,000,000 impressions / CPM = 1000
$7.91 x 1000 = $7,910
Why not price your Spark AR Instagram filters based on this?
Now, CPM numbers vary by region, so go for it and search within the country where you are servicing clients with Spark AR as a service.
Try out the Calculator to Find Your Filter Impressions Worth
As a Spark AR Creator, you have the power to save businesses who advertise on Facebook & Instagram thousands of dollars in ad spend.
From a Facebook Ads stand-point, many businesses are using Facebook ads as a funnel to bring in sales or leads to where marketers are building audiences of people on the platforms to retarget with offers to do that. Here’s how a Facebook marketer might classify audiences:
Cold Audiences – Audiences that are not aware of a brand or never saw it before. Marketers may use different types of targeting to reach these people with ads or do many activities to reach them organically.
Warm Audiences – Audiences that have come in contact with the brand in some way. This is viewing (registering an impression) or even more engagement. These could be considered to purchase, or not but this is still moving an audience down the sales/marketing funnel.
Hot Audiences – Audiences that know the brand and have engaged with a brand within the last 30 days. These are more likely to make a purchase. We sometimes place hot audiences at the bottom of the sales/marketing funnel.
Here’s a graphic showing you a simplified version the audience pool:
Let’s say you’re trying to reach a cold audience where your result is getting the eyeballs of 1,000,000 people. Your cold audience moves toward a warm audience where the goal is to get them to engage with the page in some way. Filters do exactly that. A person who has never seen a brand may see a filter, either by a friend or influencer who is sharing it as a video in their Instagram Story. This registers as an impression moving them into a warm audience pool, down the funnel.
Then, they might choose to try the filter as well, moving them from a warm audience pool to a hot audience pool.
Without filters a brand would have to do this organically, which would be slower to move audiences through the audience pools. Or they would have to use Facebook Ads, retargeting each audience pool.
Remember how much it costs to get 1,000,000 people from a cold audience to impression?
$7,910 to build a pool of warm audiences to retarget.
If a Facebook Ads marketer wants to move those audiences to a hot audience, they will have to spend even more money to drive traffic to a website and convert a sale.
They might have to run ads to the website, then the customer only looks at a few pages and ads a product into the shopping cart and opens up another tab because they wanted to price shop but end up getting a notification to open up a message from a co-worker.
So later, the Facebook ad marketer will have to run ads to that person and other people who have items in the cart but haven’t made a purchase yet. And a person goes back to the site after clicking an ad, goes into their cart and starts the checkout process. Again, that same co-worker interrupts their online shopping and they open up the message.
Now, the Facebook ad marketer will have to run ads to that person with other people who have started checkout but never completed to finish the sale.
As you can see, there is quite a bit of money being spent here.
You can accelerate this process for a brand with Spark AR effects and help them save money or increase their return on the amount of money being spent on ads. This is called Return on Ad Spend, Facebook Ad marketers call this ROAS.
These brands save money on this in the short term but get great results with the filter & are motivated to:
Do another Filter Campaign (recurring revenue for you)
Scale their Ads, Spend More (more Ad Revenue paid to Facebook)
So if any other Creator tells you impressions don’t mean a thing and that it’s just a vanity metric, send them to this so they can understand the amazing power that you hold as a Creator.