Impression: what an advertiser is charged for
An impression is one delivery of an ad to one viewer. Where a format is charged on impressions, the advertiser pays for the delivery rather than for attention, so the full length is billed whether it was watched or not. As of 2026-09-12.
| Billing basis | What triggers a charge | What the advertiser carries |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | Delivery of the ad | The whole length, watched or not |
| Views by watch time | A stated stretch of playback | Only pieces that held attention |
| Clicks | A deliberate action | Only pieces that produced one |
Inclusion rule. Billing bases the formats on these sheets state. A basis used in a market these sheets do not read is not listed. Order. The basis that charges earliest first.
1Impression billing changes what a weak second costs
Where attention is what triggers the charge, a dull middle costs the advertiser nothing, because the viewers who leave stop being billable. Where delivery triggers it, every second is paid for.
For generated creative that lands directly on the join count. A mismatch between two separately generated shots is a second of picture the buyer paid to display, and on an impression-billed format there is no mechanism that limits the damage.
2It also decides how length should be chosen
On an impression basis a shorter piece is charged the same per delivery as a longer one, so extra length has to justify itself creatively rather than economically.
That is the opposite of how a watch-time threshold behaves, where extra length past the threshold is free to the advertiser and simply unpaid for. The two bases reward completely different instincts about running time.
3The word is not a measure of attention
An impression records that an ad was delivered. It does not record that it was seen, heard, or that the screen was in front of anybody. That is a well-known limitation of the unit and it is why watch-time definitions exist alongside it.
These sheets record which basis a format states and stop there. Whether a given basis represents value is a media question decided by an auction and an audience rather than by any published specification.
A vocabulary entry: the definition, plus how the specification pages on these sheets usually publish it. Table checked 2026-09-12. Nearby entries: Paid view, Aspect ratio.
4A generator's ad pipeline
For ad work around “Impression”, SceneMixer's pages explain how its ad projects are produced:
The shot seconds in the storyboard add up to the segment length, so editing them changes it.
SceneMixer, Fixing One Shot Without Redoing Everything — “Can I change the duration of a segment?” (read 2026-10-13)
16:9 landscape (SceneMixer's default) and 9:16 vertical (the usual short-drama frame), chosen per project.
SceneMixer, Seedance 2.0 in a Real Short-Drama Pipeline — “Which aspect ratios does the pipeline generate?” (read 2026-10-13)