Impression Share Questions

Lost IS due to Rank?

[Oshburg]

I am trying to further understand the Impression Share metric and I have a few questions. Recently I ran a campaign report to check Impression Share. This report showed that we had lost IS due to rank of 33.87%. The quality score for all the key phrases in this campaign are all great with the exception of a handfull (maybe 5%). The average position for the campaign is 2.

So the question is how are we losing 33.87% IS due to rank?

Let me know if any other information would be helpful in answering the lost IS question.

[BDuns]

maybe your budget is preventing your ads from showing on any and all searches, because adwords doesn't want to deplete it before the month is over?

[Oshburg]

That's what I initially thought. But when running an impression share report it tells you where the loss in impression share comes from either

1) Lost IS (Rank)
2) Lost IS (Budget)

The report shows 0% loss from budget

[tomasvdb]

Remember that 'Rank' is dynamic and the result you see in your report is just an average. During the day there may be many ads that outrank you.

Since your ads are in position 2 (again an average), there's not that much that you can do to increase your impression share without increasing your CPCs (remember your maxcpc partially determines your rank) although you can always try to increase your quality score (the other factor which determines rank).

to summarize: if you want your rank to be 100%, you have to make sure your rank is higher than that of your competitors everytime your ad enters the auction. The only way to ensure that is to have a very good QS and a very high maxcpc.

[Oshburg]

Correct me if I am not understanding this....

So If I want to have no lost IS due to rank, then basically I have to make sure I am in the #1 position all the time?

[SanDiego Art]

You mentioned that the average for your CAMPAIGN was 2, but you could have had individual terms outside the top 3, which when run on the "search network" might not show. This could explain the "IS Lost" due to rank.

[Oshburg]

The search network only shows the top 3 ads?

[SanDiego Art]

One of the bullet points on this page:

[adwords.google.com...]

Some sites and products in the Google Network show as few as the top 3 ads per page. The higher your average ad position, the more exposure you'll get.