Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 20 - Impression Share & Auction Insights
When we talk about Google Ads, we usually talk about bottom-of-funnel metrics like Conversions or ROAS or Conversion rate.
So what about Impression Share? What is it and do you need to pay attention to it?
Let's talk about it.
I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for other brands at Google, and now I work for you. This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 20, Impression Share and Auction Insights.
Our first question comes from Who's Jess on TikTok. And they ask, what is Impression Share? And why do I need to increase my budget?
Impression Share just means that of all the times you could have shown an ad, how often did you show an ad?
So let's say that based on your keywords and targeting and everything, you are eligible to show an ad, show an impression, on 100 different searches. But you only did show an ad, get an impression, on 11 of those searches. That would be an 11% Impression Share.
Now, when you add the Impression Share column to your reports, there are another two “explainer” columns you can add, and those are Search Lost Impression Share (Budget) and Search Lost Impression Share (Rank), with Impression Share abbreviated to IS.
So what those mean, well, Search Lost Impression Share due to budget means the reason you didn't get an impression is because you didn't have enough money to do so.
Remember, you don't pay for impressions, you pay for clicks. But if you're out of budget, Google's going to stop showing your ads because, of course, you wouldn't then be able to pay if you did get a click.
And then losing Impression Share due to Rank means your ad rank. If we remember our Google Ads 101, ad rank is a function of price and quality. Losing Impression Share due to rank means your bids were too low to show an ad, or the quality of your ads was too low to show an ad.
To increase your Impression Share, you kind of have two avenues to pursue, the numerator or the denominator. The numerator is how often you show an ad. If you want to show an ad more, you need to increase your serving potential by increasing your budget or increasing your rank, which could mean increasing your bids or increasing your ad quality.
Now, the other part is how often you were eligible to show, the denominator. So to increase your Impression Share, you can actually decrease your eligible impressions. Put in a more simple way, if your Impression Share is really low, don't try to show ads in so many places; try to show ads in fewer places, and then your Impression Share will increase.
And so one of the ways to decrease your eligible impressions is to advertise in fewer locations. For example, a city rather than a state, or a couple of states instead of a whole country.
To advertise on fewer keywords, maybe you should pause some ad groups, or have fewer keywords in those ad groups. I recommend about 5 to 15 keywords per ad group.
You can use something like Audience Targeting, adding audiences on Targeting mode to your Search or Shopping campaign, so that you're only eligible to show an ad if the searcher is also on your audience list.
Now, a lot of the things I've mentioned here, I have talked about in previous episodes. So for more about ad quality, you're going to want to check out Episode 11 of Inside Google Ads. For more about bidding, I talked about that in Episode 1 and Episode 15. Fun fact, bidding is probably the topic I get the most questions about. And then more about budgets, I talked about that in Episode 7 and Episode 16.
One more previous episode that will be helpful to you here is Episode 18. That was just two weeks ago. We talked about metrics that matter, and I explained how Impression Share is an important diagnostic tool.
So your Impression Share itself is not the thing that's going to determine how your ads perform. But looking at your Impression Share, looking at if you're losing out due to budget, due to rank, it's a really great investigation point to start with to help you then improve ad performance.
Our next question today comes from SAQ on TikTok and they say, thanks for the great vids. (Thanks for watching). I wanted to know about the Auction Insights report. Is it accurate? Because that shows my ranking in daily ads and can I use that to optimize my ads?
A lot to unpack there. So let's start at the beginning.
The Auction Insights Report is something you can see in Search. You can see it in Shopping campaigns as well, for those ads that show on the Search network. You can see it for a PMax campaign as well, for those impressions that show up on Search and Shopping.
So Auction Insights will give you information about what other websites you're competing against, who else is showing up at the same time as you, who else is in the same auctions. That's why it's Auction Insights.
You must meet minimum thresholds to see data there, so if your Impression Share is less than 10%, you're not going to see your Auction Insights. And Auction Insights shows your Impression Share, it shows your competitor's Impression Share on your pool of eligible keywords, and some other metrics we're going to talk about now.
But before I do that, just a common misconception is that your Auction Insights Report shows market share. And that is not the case because for your impressions, you're seeing your Impression Share. For your competitors' Auction Insights, it's their Impression Share on your keywords with your targeting.
So if Impression Share is how often you served divided by how often you were eligible to serve, your competitor Impression Share that you see in Auction Insights is how often they served still divided by when you were eligible to serve, okay? So it's not market share.
Now, in addition to Impression Share, you're going to see five other things in your Auction Insights. So let's explain those clear and simple.
First is the overlap rate. And that means how often did they show an ad when you showed an ad.
Next is your outranking share. That's how often your ad showed above theirs or showed when theirs didn't. So how often you did better than them, basically.
The position above rate is the opposite of outranking share. I know, these names are not so helpful! So it's how often their ad showed above yours or showed when yours didn't.
So outranking is you showing higher, doing better, and position above is them showing higher or doing better.
Finally, your top of page rate is how often your ad or their ad showed above organic results. And then absolute top of page rate is how often your ad or their ad was not just above organic, but the first ad shown.
So SAQ asks, can I use the Auction Insights to optimize my ads?
Yes.
It puts your Impression Share in context and it lets you know, for example, if you're losing Impression Share due to rank because there are a lot of competitors and that's what's driving up bids in the auction. Or maybe there's not a lot of competitors and it's actually your quality that's too low. That's the issue there.
I wouldn't obsess over it. I know because it's competitor data we can see in Google Ads, it's really easy to obsess over it. Maybe check it once a month, keep a pulse on it, see if new entrants are coming in.
And another helpful way to use Auction Insights for optimization is if you see people there who are not your competitors, then that means one of you is making a mistake. You may need to check your search terms to see if you started to serve on terms that aren't super relevant and that's why suddenly you're seeing them in your report. Or maybe they're the ones who are messing up and their keyword targeting is too broad, that’s something to keep in mind there as well with your Auction Insights Report.
If you'd like to meet one-on-one to go through your Google Ads together, look at all the different metrics we're talking about and improve performance, my June calendar is completely booked, but I do have some availability left in July.
You can book a call with me via my website, Jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L.ca. And the direct link for that is in the episode description.
Our final question today comes from Wooden Art on TikTok. And they ask, if my Impression Share is 20% and my competitor is 10%, will their Auction Insights show the same thing?
The answer is no, because they likely have a different, overlapping set of keywords.
You'll show up in their Auction Insights if they have enough data to see their Auction Insights, and they'll show up in your Auction Insights, but your Auction Insights are always in the context of your targeting, of the impressions on which you were eligible to show.
So because of that, your competitors' Auction Insights will be different because the pool of available impressions to them, the times when they were eligible to show, is not going to line up perfectly with the times that you were eligible to show.
Think of it like if there's a small local business that sells purses, and then a department store that sells clothes, shoes, fragrances, and purses. The local business will see the department store in their Auction Insights, maybe. But the department store probably won't see the small business there unless they're specifically looking at their purses campaign or the purses ad group. And even then, there may be other larger competitors who will show up first. They may be advertising on completely different keywords like brands or style names.
So for many, many, many reasons, your Auction Insights is not going to be an exhaustive list of competitors. It's just showing people who are showing up at the same time that you are eligible to show up on Google.
Impression Share is one of the first metrics I look at on a coaching call or when I'm auditing Google Ads accounts because there's a lot of useful information packed in there about budgets, bidding, targeting, quality, and competition.
So yes, it matters, but it's not something to optimize for.
Low Impression Share isn't bad. I personally don't like to see a campaign-level Impression Share of less than 10%, just because that's a lot of effort to put in to not even show an ad 10% of the time. But that is personal preference, not a rule of thumb.
All right, it's time for our Episode 20 Insider Challenge.
Let’s say that you agree with my premise, that you want your Impression Share to be at least 10% at the campaign level. You're looking at your account and you see that your Impression Share is less than 10%. And most of it, interestingly, is not being lost due to budget. It's being lost due to rank.
Now, there are many, many things you could do here, but let's make this a challenge. What is the first thing you would want to look at to try to increase your Impression Share? What's the second? And then what's the third?
You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode’s challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving.
Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.
Our last episode's challenge was this. Your client is a small business who's getting started with Google Ads. Do you run a Brand campaign or not? Why or why not? What do you consider?
Usually, I will run a Brand campaign.
To make that decision, of course budget is a consideration. If there's a small budget and all we can afford is running a Brand campaign, I don't know, in most cases that's not going to be worth it - let's just not invest in ads right now.
But other considerations are competition and ambiguity.
If competitors are advertising on our brand already, of course, I'm going to want to get in there and defend it, drive up their costs and drive them out of the auction by advertising on my brand and defending my brand.
And then ambiguity. If a small business's website doesn't come up organically and own the SERP with an organic result, a Google Business Profile, social media profiles, etc., then I'm going to want to run a Brand campaign. I want no ambiguity when someone types that brand name into Google, so I would launch a Brand campaign.
One of the new features Google announced at Google Marketing Live is a Brand Profile, a way to set up the way your brand shows up on Google when people are searching for you in a much richer result way. That is promising and that may change my answer to this question going forward, but for now, if we're not completely dominating the SERP organically, and we can afford to do something beyond Brand Search as well and/or there are competitors advertising on our brand, then yes, I would recommend a Brand campaign for small businesses.
What do you think? Would you consider the same things or something different?
Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.