For any given keyword, Google never shows any advertiser’s ads 100 percent of the time. There could be various reasons for this; the most significant being that Google wants to displays other advertiser’s ads to see how they achieve the relevancy in search results.
Google gets to control whose ads they show and how often. The percentage of the time they choose to display your ads for any given keyword is called Impression share (IS), also known as exposure.
You may increase your Impression share and guarantee that more users will view your ads more often. Google provides reporting data that shows your precise impressions share and even insinuates as what you may need to do to advance the results.
How to find your Impression Share in AdWords®
To get this particular metric, go to “Column” drop down menu and click to customize columns. Then find “Competitive Metrics”, and add the following three columns to your dashboard:
“Impression Share”,
“Impression share lost due to Budget”
“Impression share due to Rank”
You can view this data at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level. However, “Impression share lost due to Budget” only shows at the campaign level, so we suggest starting there.
Your impression share numbers will be a percentage that indicates how close you are being seen 100 percent of the time. So, if your impression share is 50 percent, this indicates that you’re only being seen half of the time you could be.
“Impression share lost due to budget” is fairly simple to understand and fix. Let’s say your daily budget is $10 but there is actually $100 worth of clicks available out there. Your impression share in this case will never exceed 10 percent, and the reports will probably tell you that your impression share lost to budget is 90 percent
“Impression share lost due to Rank” is a bit more complex and encompasses a number of components In short, if Google doesn’t feel that your campaigns are of a high enough quality, they’ll limit your impression share even further.
How to Improve Impression Share
Impression share is an incredibly unpretentious way of seeing how often your ads are displaying but it’s also speedy measure of how Google distinguishes the quality of your campaign and the potential that exists to increase your profits.
There are two reasons why Google might limit your impressions (apart from the need to test the inventory of other advertisers)
1. Your Daily budget is too low. This is simple to diagnose and fix it. It’s possible to double or triple the impressions on a profitable account simple by increasing the daily budget; even raising it significantly above your current spend. However, you need to be cautious. Before you increase the budget, ask these questions to justify the performance. What can your marketing budget sustains? How profitable are your campaigns
2. Your Ad Rank is too low. You can improve this since it is under your control. Focus on these 3 areas of your campaigns
• Ad Extensions: Apply all sorts of extensions such as “Call Out, Sitelink, Call, Structured snippets (recently launched), Location Extensions, Review extensions etc. If you are not using any, start using them now
• Quality Score: If your keywords and Ads are not relevant or if there are poor, your impression share will suffer. If you are showing a Quality score of 5 or below, work on improving it.
• Maximum Bid. If you think you need to improve your Ad Rank, do so incrementally. Check your max bid every day if need be, and don’t raise it more than you can afford or sustain.
Competitor’s Impression Share
You can also spy on your competitors Impression share on your AdWords account too. There’s a feature called “Auction Insights”, which you will find in the keywords tab or in your Campaign Tab. Under Campaign , search for “Details” drop down box, and select “Auction Insights” ’
Conclusion:
Impression share is one of the fastest ways to reveal untapped profit potential in your AdWords Campaign. Tweak your Ad Extensions and Quality score before attempting to increase your daily budget or maximum bids.
This blog is written by Subhakanta. You can reach him subhakanta@adsonsearches
