Why Twitter's 3.3 Billion Oscars Impressions Aren't All That Impressive

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Kevin Spacey, from left, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Degeneres and Jared Leto join other celebrities for a "selfie" during the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday, March 2, 2014, in Los Angeles.

Image: John Sheare/Associated Press

By Todd Wasserman2014-05-01 21:15:28 UTC

During its first-quarter earnings call with analysts on Tuesday, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo threw around a jaw-dropping stat that demonstrated the network's reach: Within 48 of the Academy Awards on March 2, he said, there were some 3.3 billion impressions of tweets related to the event.

To put that figure in perspective, the world population hovers at around 7.16 billion (at the time of this writing). If there were no repeat impressions, then just less than half of humanity would have seen an Oscars-related tweet. This is quite an achievement, considering that the oft-repeated claim that the Oscars telecast reaches 1 billion people appears to be complete bunk.

See also: Twitter Is Not Doomed

Twitter broke down the number in a blog post on March 5:

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  There were 19.1 million tweets sent out about the Oscars during the show, by 5 million people.

  
  


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  Those 19.1 million tweets were then viewed 3.3 billion times within 48 hours.

  
  


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  More than 37 million people saw those tweets on Twitter.com and the company's mobile and desktop apps.

  
  

An impression is defined as any tweet you see, according to a Twitter rep, including tweets that are embedded in websites and on blogs.

So in all likelihood, most people saw a tweet more than once. Ellen DeGeneres's famous selfie, which has now been retweeted more than 3.4 million times, greatly helped move that 3.3 billion figure along. If you saw that selfie 10 times then, that counts as 10 impressions — even if you saw the tweet on Good Morning America or in USA Today.

Still, 3.3 billion seems like an awful high number.

Such is the inflationary nature of impression counts. In this world, a billion isn't all that cool. For instance, Google is said to serve 30 billion ad impressions per day, or 4.2 for every single human being.

No wonder some industry people have discounted the impression as a metric.

Count Facebook among them. While the company uses impressions to sell ads, Facebook has been trying to move away from the measurement. In 2011, it partnered with Nielsen to provide ratings for advertisers that — like TV ratings — go by viewers, rather than impressions.

Facebook also doesn't quote impressions figures for events. For instance, the company claimed 11.3 million people talked about the Oscars on Facebook for a total of 25.4 million combined posts, comments and Likes. Facebook also revealed to Mashable that some 567 million people saw Oscars-related content on Facebook during the broadcast.

How does that compare to Twitter? Since roughly 30% of Facebook's posts are public and the press still prefers Twitter's embeds to Facebook's, Facebook posts probably received less exposure. But, unlike a tweet, a Facebook post may be several paragraphs long or maybe a page full of comments.

All of which is to say that unique viewers, rather than impressions, is probably a more apt metric for such comparisons. With that thinking, it's likely that Facebook wasn't overly impressed with Twitter's 3.3 billion impressions.

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Topics: Advertising, Business, Facebook, Twitter