We’ve just released a new Pro Add-On for AdSanity – Impressions. No, this new Add-On isn’t going to give your website Dana Carvey-like skills at impersonations. What it will do is allow you to set the expiration of your AdSanity ads based on the number of views.

Why Impressions?

In traditional digital advertising you’ll hear terms like CPC which stands for cost-per-click. These terms come out of the traditional methods for selling advertising units which are based around the number of views (impressions) that the ads filling. Often these ads are sold in the thousands. Over the years we’ve been asked to provide a similar methodology for users of AdSanity. We added the feature to our roadmap and are happy to deliver.

How Impressions Works

During ad creation you can simply opt to use Impressions or not for the ad you’re building. There are two options; a daily impression limit, or and all-time setting. Once an ad hits it’s established limit it will no longer display on the site. A daily limit will, of course, reset each day. What’s really useful is that you can still also set a date-based expiration for the ad so that you can control the ad as granularly as you need to.

If you’re reviewing your ads in the list view, you’ll see the ads with impression counts represented clearly. Additionally, when an ad has reached 80% of its impressions, you’ll see the row in the list turn yellow to indicate that it is approaching its limit. When the ad has reached its expiration and will no longer show on the site, the background color of the row will turn red.

Some Caveats

Development of Impressions was not without some hurdles. First, like all of our Add-Ons, Impressions requires that you have the latest version of AdSanity installed. We do keep a watchful eye on security and we recommend keeping AdSanity updated regardless, but Impressions ties closely with the tracking features of core AdSanity.

Also, AdSanity works best when using object caching. While we usually recommend our Google Analytics Tracking Integration Add-On if you or your host is using a static page caching system or plugin like Varnish or WP Super Cache, the Impressions add-on is not compatible with Google Analytics’ rate limiting policies, therefore the two plugins cannot be used together. This means you’re going to want to leverage the core AdSanity tracking if ad expiration by impressions is important to you.