Part One-Do you know the Google Ads Impression Share?

“These campaign results are great.”

I love hearing these words from my clients. Maybe it’s why I have been working with Google Ads for 13 years. And this sentence is often followed by a question:

“How much more can we spend?”

The answer depends on how many people search for the terms we advertise on. And, of course, the share of this volume we are already capturing with our campaigns. 

Luckily, a metric in the Google Ads account tells us precisely that.

It exists at the account, campaign, ad group, and even keyword level. I recommend using it at the campaign level to have the most insights available. 

You can add it to the tables in your Google Ads interface by clicking on “Columns” on the top right corner of the table, selecting “Customize Columns,” and then opening the dropdown “Competitive Metrics.” You can tick several boxes, but today we keep it simple. 

If it is Search campaigns you are looking at, choose “Search Impr. Share”. If it is Display campaigns, you choose “Display Impr. Share”. 

When assessing the campaign’s potential with these metrics, I recommend looking at the last seven days of data because a longer horizon will include too much noise. Shorten the timeframe if you have recently made significant changes to your campaign. Always exclude “today” in the data because that will be incomplete. 

Two other important side notes:

• When looking at the Impression Share for Display campaigns, you will often find that it shows as <10% (except for Retargeting campaigns without audience expansion). That is because the Google Display Network includes over 2 million websites, so there is always the potential to show more ads. 
• For your Search campaigns, the accuracy of this number depends on your match type strategy. The stricter you are (using mainly exact match), the more accurate it is. If you use broad match keywords, the edges of the pool of search queries your ads will show for will be fuzzy. Therefore it will also be more challenging for the system to make a reliable prediction.

In tomorrow’s post, I will explain what the more specific metrics: “Impression Share Lost (budget)” and “Impression Share Lost (rank),” mean and how you can use this information for more accurate growth predictions. Stay tuned!