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Check impression share to see how often your ad didn't show
If your ads aren't showing as often as they could (due to budget or Ad Rank), you could be missing out on potential sales. One way to see the traffic you're missing is to check your impression share (IS) data.
Your impression share is the number of impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible for. Here are a couple helpful impression share metrics:
- Search Lost IS (rank) tells you how often your ad didn't show due to Ad Rank. If this number is high, it means there were many times your ad was eligible to show on the Search Network, but didn't because its Ad Rank was too low. In this case, try improving your ad quality or increasing your bid.
- Search Lost IS (budget) tells you how often your ad didn't show on the Search Network due to insufficient budget. If you want to capture more impressions, try raising your budget.
Keeping track of your impression share helps you understand how you stack up against other businesses. And by seeing where you're missing out on potential traffic, you can spot opportunities to get more impressions and clicks that could lead to sales.
Find out how to view impression share data.
Use Auction insights to compare performance against other advertisers
Assessing your competitive landscape is a key part of capturing more sales. The more informed you are about other sites in the auction, the better equipped you'll be to optimize your campaign.
The Auction insights report lets you compare your performance with other businesses who are participating in the same auctions. For example, based on the impressions you’re eligible for, you can see how often another site's ads are appearing above yours, or whether one of their ads appears more often than yours on an important keyword.
Here's what this report tells you about other advertisers in the auction:
- Impression share tells you how often an advertiser's ad showed as a proportion of the auctions in which you were also competing.
- Overlap rate tells you how often an advertiser's ad showed when your ad also showed.
- Position above rate tells you how often an advertiser's ad was shown in a higher position on the page than yours was.
- Top of page rate tells you how often an advertiser's ad appeared at the top of the page above the search results.
By showing you where you're succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities, Auction insights data can help you make strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting.
Find the Auction insights report in your account.
Use Attribution reports to see what people search before purchasing
By the time they make a purchase, a customer may have seen or clicked more than one of your ads. But since conversions are attributed to the last ad clicked before the purchase, it's helpful to know how many other ads of yours preceded that click.
Attribution data gives you a sense of how users search for your products beyond just the last click. Here's some of what Attribution reports can tell you:
- Conversion Paths shows you customer search patterns—the most common paths your customers take to complete a conversion. It provides this information based on the ads that were shown or clicked, or both, before a conversion took place.
- First clicks shows you what keywords introduce customers to your site, while last clicks helps you see what keywords completed the conversion.
- Assisted conversions shows you how many conversions a keyword assisted. Keywords that assist a high number of conversions can play an important role early in the buying cycle—they're driving visitors who are still researching your site.
With these Attribution reports, you can get a fuller picture of the ads your customers see during their buying process. And you can identify keywords that are helping to drive sales for you, even if they weren't the ones that "earned" the conversion.
Find out how to see Attribution data in your account.
