An Ignored Data Point: Why Impression Share Holds the Key to Google Ads Optimization
I’ll be honest. I was nearly a decade into my paid search experience before I truly understood the power of Impression Share in troubleshooting and improving campaigns. Granted, I don’t think Impression Share wasn’t even “a thing” when I first got my AdWords Certification, but, it was introduced long before I learned how to harness it.
So, what is impression share? Impression share is the number of impressions (ad views) you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Relate it to a pie. There are a finite number of pieces in a pie, with many people competing for them. How much of the pie did you end up with?
Obviously, the goal for your most relevant and profitable campaigns is 100% impression share. We want our highest-performing ads in front of our best audience as often as possible, right? Many times, hyper-localized businesses with a relatively unique product/service can reach 100% impression share, simply because they can count their competitors on one hand. However, in most instances that’s pretty unrealistic, especially for national or global brands. We have to learn to share. :)
But, for our BEST keywords in our BEST campaign, we should try to get as close to 100% as possible using a few levers. First let’s find out where you lie.
In your Campaign report (you may need to customize columns)
Low Impression Share with High Lost Impression Share (Budget) - You haven’t applied enough budget to this campaign. If this is indeed your best Campaign, can you shift budget from somewhere else OR narrow down the target keywords or audience to only the highest performing?
Low Impression Share with High Lost Impression Share (Rank) - You are losing out to competitors not because you don’t have the budget, but because their AD RANK is higher. More on that next.
High Impression Share - Congrats.
Scenario 1 is pretty straightforward to fix: get more money or narrow your bullseye to what you can afford.
Scenario number 2 is a bit more complicated because it is caused by a low Ad Rank. What exactly is Ad Rank? Ad Rank is a ranking Google gives you (but doesn’t show you) based on Quality Score and Bid. So, how do we improve Ad Rank?
Improve your Quality Score (QS). At the keyword level, Quality Score is compiled by taking into account your Ad Relevance and Landing Page Relevance. By looking at these 3 metrics for each priority keyword, you can determine IF you need to improve your ad copy, your landing page copy, both, or neither.
Keyword level report. You might need to modify your columns to see these metrics.
2. If your QS is at a 6 or above for all the keywords in your Campaign, but you have a low Impression Share due to Ad Rank, the next step is to increase your keyword bids on the KEYWORDS that have a low search impression share. Try increases of 5-10% to start, to see how that effects your IS.
TO RECAP:
Impression Share can be manipulated by two levers: Ad Rank and Campaign Budget. Use data at the Campaign level to discover where to put your focus.
2. Ad Rank problems signify either low Quality Scores, low Bids, or both. Take a look at your Keyword-level data to discover if you have a Quality Score (QS) problem. If your QS is high, then you simply need to increase your bids.
3. If you do have Quality Score problems, use your keyword-level data to determine if you’ve got low Ad Relevance, low Landing Page Relevance, or both. Most often, simply adjusting the language used in both areas to better serve the user’s specific query will help you boost Relevance metrics.
