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Pay per click campaigns live and die by data. An account may be a stinker, but with the right data you can transform any campaign. The essential element to getting this data is reports. Specifically, those available under the “Reports” tab in your Adwords account.
But which reports do you need to worry about, and which are just extra info? Read on. This 5 part series will uncover the reports that can take your campaigns from zero to hero.
(To run any of the discussed reports go to “Reports–> Reports–> Create New” in your Adwords account.)
The Impression Share Report
Basic Description
For any PPC advertiser, the biggest primary hurdle is getting your ad shown to visitors. The Impression Share Report will tell you quickly how successfully your ad is being show and how often. It does this by comparing the impressions your ads receive to the total possible impressions for your specified campaign or account. It will depict the result as a percentage. So, if the report tells you 60%, your ad is being shown to 60% of searchers. Thus, 60% is the “share” of impressions that is yours.
This report is great for taking a pulse of your PPC dominance. And while you should base your CPC on ROI goals, the Impression Share report is important in understanding market saturation, demand, your competition, and where you fit in. Plus the Impression Share Report is potentially the best resource to go to if you want to increase impressions and don’t know how.
Pulling the Impression Share Report
Go to the “Creat Report” link on your “Reports” page. From here, you have two choices: Campaign Report or Account Report. You can run Impression Share for each one and only these.
The Account Impressions Share is a summarized and aggregated Impression Share. It will tell you the share of impressions your ad showed for over your whole account, across every keyword. To me, this is much too high a level to get any real actionable data.
The Campaign Impressions Share is much more useful. This Impression Share will tell you the percentage of impressions each campaign received relative to the total possible impressions available to each campaign. Take note that the denominator in this equation (i.e. total impressions) is the total impressions at the campaign level, not the account. So you get exact Impression Share for each individual campaign.
To pull the report, select the “Campaign” radio button, select your date range (can be run as frequently as daily), select all or specific campaigns to run the report for, and then select the Advanced link. Although your needs may differ, see the below screen-shot for the options I usually include in the report to ensure I can get all the data I need and only run the report once.
Common Criteria to Run Impression Share at the Campaign Level
Now choose your delivery options and run the report. (I usually save this report as a template to make things easier in the future.)
Analyzing Impression Share Data & Taking Action
To make use of this data, you can diagnose why impression share is low or high by looking at the “Lost IS (Budget),” “Exact Match IS,” and/or “Lost IS (Rank)” data in your report. These will tell you if your budget (i.e. too low), your match type choices (i.e. too refined), or your ad positioning (i.e. too low) on the page, respectively, are causing you to miss out on impressions by limiting your account.
As I said above, just because the Impression Share report says your budget is too low, does not mean you should raise your budget. This decision should be made based on your ROI and ability to handle current volume. Additionally, one of the primary goals of every PPC campaign should be to bid on as many exact match keywords as possible, and limit broad match as much as possible. This is because exact match keywords allow you to control what your ads show for and are the most cost effective since they convert the best . To this end, take “Exact Match IS” data with a grain of salt. “Exact Match IS” tells you the % of impressions you miss because you are not using enough broad match. And since you want to limit broad match, a high “Exact Match IS” might actually be a good thing in the end.
Also realize overall Impression Share has an inverse relationship to Budget IS, Exact Match IS, and Rank IS. This means that all added together will always equal 100%. So if Impression Share is 60%, Rank IS is 20%, and Budget IS is 20%, you are receiving 60% of the total impressions and are losing the other 40% due to your budget and ad position equally. This scenario would also mean that you are losing 0% of impressions to match type.
While these data points are good, don’t forget about the other data in your report. Use some of your analytical reasoning to diagnose problems. Impressions Share may be quite high for a specific time period because there is low volume of impressions overall or less competition. And vice versa — Impression Share may be low because there is a sudden spike in impressions, maybe because of the holiday season or an event. Or there may be something simple affecting Impression Share, like a campaign that has mistakenly been paused. Impression Share is good at giving you clues about where to look to increase impressions.
Another plus of pulling this report regularly: It will make you aware of what’s going on in your industry, whether that be seasonality or when your competition uses ad scheduling, based on your impression share peaks and lulls.
When To Pull
I recommend pulling this report at a number of times: at the beginning of each day for the previous day’s results, at the beginning of the week, and then monthly. For very competitive niches, a couple times throughout the day is also required. This may seem like overkill, but keeping tabs on this very important metric will help you uncover hidden pockets of opportunity and industry search cycles that will help every area of your business. Keep a spreadsheet to track Impression Share in order to uncover trends more quickly.
Tips to Keep In Mind
Keep in mind that impressions are not exclusive. On a search results page, there can be anywhere from 0-11 ads, all of which share the same impression, or in other words, they share the same searcher. So when the report says 60%, it does not mean your competition only gets the last 40%. The report is telling you that out of all searches, your ad was shown to X number of them.
Also, the Impression Share report will not explain low impressions due to Quality Score. If all your ducks are in a row, your are bidding as high as you can, buying every impressions Google will give you, you may want to work on your account health through Quality Score to increase impressions.
That exhausts the Impression Share Report. Stay tuned for Part 2, The Search Query Report.
