Impression Share – Google IS Report

Have you ever wondered what kind of impression coverage (share of voice) you have on your Google AdWords campaigns? To help you get a better insight into your AdWords campaign`s share of voice, Google allows you run Impression Share reports both at the campaign and account levels.

Impression share is a metric that represents the percentage of impressions where your ads were shown out of the total available impressions in your market in the search network. But before I get into how to use this report, it is important to understand why impression share (IS) is an important metric.

Low impression share can mean missed opportunity.  If your ads do not show every time people search for the products/services you offer, you might miss on potential traffic or conversion. In addition, low impression share can mean you are overpaying for your clicks.

Here is how impression share report may look like:

Google AdWords Impression Share Report

Impression Share Exact Match reports the impression share of your campaigns when people search the exact match of the keywords in your campaigns.  Since broad and phrase match types can affect your impression share, Exact Match Impression Share can help you determine your share of voice just for the exact keyword phrases in your campaigns.

One of the reasons why your impression share is low can be because your ads do not show up on every occasion a broad match keyword should trigger your ad.  Exact Match Impression Share tells you how your keywords would perform if you had all the possible keywords in exact match.  This helps you understand if the match type is a possible cause for the low impression share.

How to Improve Impression Share?

Your impression share equals 100%. – Lost IS (Budget) – Lost IS (Rank).

The ‘Lost IS’ reflects a portion of the total impressions you were eligible and did not receive due to insufficient budget or poor Ad Rank (CPC x Quality Score).

To increase impression share for your campaign, your ads must appear either more often or in more places or both. Here are tips on improving the accounts overall quality score in order to achieve a higher impression share:

• Improve ad quality in order to improve CTR
• Increase the campaign budget – specially if you see Lost IS due to low budget
• Increase or decrease your bid based on the situation
• Adjust keyword match type if your exact match IS percentage is low
• Adjust geo-targeting

SEM Specialist

Filed Under: PPC Advertising • Search Engine Marketing • SEM