What is Impression share?
Impression share is a metric in Google Ads that indicates the percentage of impressions your ads received out of the total number of impressions they were eligible to receive. It provides insights into how effectively your ads are being shown to your target audience.
Considerations regarding impression share in a Google Ads campaign include:
- Reach and Visibility: A higher impression share indicates that your ads are being shown more frequently, increasing your reach and visibility among your target audience.
- Competition and Market Share: Impression share can help you understand how well you’re competing against other advertisers in your industry. If your impression share is low, it could suggest that your competitors are dominating the ad space for relevant keywords or placements.
- Ad Rank and Ad Position: A higher impression share often correlates with higher ad positions. If your impression share is low, it may mean that your ads are not appearing as prominently in search results, potentially affecting your click-through rate and overall campaign performance.
- Budget and Bidding: Impression share can be influenced by your campaign budget and bidding strategy. Increasing your budget or adjusting your bidding strategy may help improve your impression share if it’s currently limited due to budget constraints.
- Targeting and Ad Relevance: Ensure that your targeting settings are appropriately configured to reach your intended audience. Additionally, focus on creating relevant ad copy and utilizing keywords that accurately reflect the services you offer. Improving targeting and ad relevance can positively impact your impression share.
- Seasonality and Trends: Impression share may vary based on seasonal factors or fluctuations in search behavior. Monitor changes in impression share over time and consider adjusting your campaign strategies accordingly.
It’s important to note that impression share is not always the sole indicator of campaign success. Other metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on investment (ROI) should also be considered to evaluate the overall effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign.
Regularly monitoring and optimizing your campaigns based on impression share data can help improve your ad performance and increase your visibility among your target audience.
How to calculate impression share by Google ads?
To calculate impression share in Google Ads, you can use the following formula:
Impression Share = (Total Impressions / Total Eligible Impressions) * 100
Here’s how you can break down the formula:
- Total Impressions: This refers to the total number of times your ads were shown to users within the selected time period and targeting settings.
- Total Eligible Impressions: This represents the estimated number of impressions your ads were eligible to receive, assuming your ads were eligible to appear for all the auctions they entered. It takes into account factors like ad rank, targeting options, and campaign settings.
To view the impression share data in your Google Ads account, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click on the “Campaigns” tab.
- Navigate to the “Columns” dropdown menu and select “Modify columns.”
- In the “Select metrics” section, search for “Impression share” and check the box next to it.
- Click on “Apply” to save the changes.
Now, you should be able to see the impression share metric in your campaign reports, which will give you insights into the percentage of eligible impressions your ads received.
Note that impression share data may not be available for all campaigns or ad groups, especially if they have low activity or a limited number of impressions. It’s important to ensure that your campaigns have sufficient data to generate meaningful impression share metrics.
What is a good Google Ads impression share?
The definition of a “good” impression share can vary depending on your specific campaign goals, industry, competition, and budget. However, generally speaking, a higher impression share is considered favorable as it indicates that your ads are being shown more often to your target audience.
In highly competitive industries or for popular keywords, achieving a very high impression share can be challenging, especially if you have budget limitations or face strong competition. Therefore, it’s important to set realistic expectations based on your campaign objectives and the competitive landscape.
To gauge the effectiveness of your impression share, consider the following factors:
- Industry Benchmark: Compare your impression share with industry benchmarks or averages to get a sense of how you’re performing relative to your competitors. However, keep in mind that benchmarks can vary by industry and location.
- Campaign Goals: Evaluate whether your impression share aligns with your campaign objectives. If your goal is to maximize reach and visibility, a higher impression share is desirable. However, if you have specific performance goals like maximizing conversions or controlling costs, you may prioritize other metrics over impression share.
- Competitive Analysis: Assess the impression share of your competitors to gain insights into the competitive landscape. If your impression share is significantly lower than your key competitors, it may indicate a need to refine your campaign strategy or increase your budget to remain competitive.
- Budget Constraints: If your budget is limited, it can impact your impression share. Depending on your goals, you may need to optimize your targeting, keywords, and bidding strategies to maximize the impact of your budget and achieve a reasonable impression share.
Remember that impression share is just one metric among many that can indicate the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign. It’s essential to evaluate impression share in conjunction with other key performance indicators (KPIs) like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per conversion, and return on investment (ROI) to get a comprehensive view of your campaign’s success.
Ultimately, the “good” impression share will depend on your specific circumstances and goals. According to the Google ads community recommended answer, 100% should be considered as the best impression share number but it is rare. So if you are getting 95%, don’t bother trying to get the extra 5%.
10 Ways to increases increase impression share
- Increase budget: Allocate more budget to your ad campaigns to increase the number of impressions you can afford. Higher bids can help you win more auctions and increase your impression share.
- Improve quality score: Optimize your ads and landing pages to improve quality scores. Higher quality scores result in better ad positions and increased impression share.
- Expand keyword coverage: Identify new relevant keywords to expand your targeting. Use keyword research tools to uncover additional keyword opportunities that can increase your reach and impression share.
- Refine targeting options: Review and adjust your targeting options to ensure your ads are reaching the right audience. Narrow down your targeting to focus on specific demographics, locations, or interests that align with your target market.
- Increase ad position: Aim for higher ad positions, as ads in top positions tend to receive more impressions. Improve your Quality Score, increase your bid, or optimize your ad copy to achieve better ad placements.
- Optimize ad scheduling: Analyze your ad performance data to determine the most effective times and days to display your ads. Adjust your ad scheduling to maximize impression share during peak periods.
- Expand ad formats: Utilize different ad formats available on your advertising platform. Experiment with text ads, image ads, video ads, or interactive ads to capture the attention of different users and increase your impression share.
- Improve ad relevance: Craft compelling ad copy that directly relates to the keywords you’re targeting. Ensure your ads are highly relevant to users’ search queries to improve your ad’s visibility and increase impression share.
- Utilize ad extensions: Take advantage of ad extensions offered by your advertising platform. Extensions like sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets can increase the size and visibility of your ads, thereby improving impression share.
- Monitor and optimize: Regularly monitor your ad campaigns and analyze the data to identify areas for improvement. Test different strategies, keywords, and ad variations to optimize your campaigns and increase impression share over time.
If you want to increase impression share for your existing Google ad campaign. Contact me today!