A Search Ads 360 bid strategy's performance against a position target, whether that target is part of a CPA goal or a standalone goal. A value of zero indicates that all keywords managed by the strategy are, for bid strategies with a position goal, displaying at the specified target position. For other types of bid strategies with a position constraint, the ads are displaying within the bid strategy's target range.
If you see a non-zero number, then you have keywords in the bid strategy that fall outside your target during the report's time range:
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Negative values indicate that you're exceeding the position target or the upper bound of position constraint.
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Positive values indicate that ads are falling below the position target or the lower bound of a position constraint.
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The further away from zero, the greater the number of impacted impressions or keywords during the report's time range.
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Do one of the following:
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Navigate to an advertiser. Then in the left navigation panel, click Bid strategies.
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Navigate to an advertiser or lower scope. Then click the Keywords tab.
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Navigate to a Shopping campaign or an ad group in a Shopping campaign. Then click the Targets▼ tab and click Product groups.
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Above the performance summary graph, click the Columns button.
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In the Search for columns box, type the column name.
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Click + next to the column name to add the column to the Selected columns list.
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Click Apply.
How this value is calculated
This is not Average position - Target position, which could be misleading. Instead, Search Ads 360 computes the position error for each keyword, and then computes the average weighted by impressions. Learn more about the difference from target position.
For example, consider a bid strategy that targets position 1.0 and specifies 4 as the lowest position constraint for one keyword. The bid strategy runs for two days. If the keyword receives 1,000 impressions with an average position of 2.0 on the first day, and 500 impressions with an average position of 5.5 on the second day, the unweighted average position for the bid strategy is:
- (2.0 x 1,000 + 5.5 x 500) / 1,500 = 3.83
3.83 is within the target position range, so you might think the error is 0. However, in reality one-third of the impressions didn't reach the target.
To calculate Diff from target pos for the same bid strategy, Search Ads 360 would use this formula:
- (0 x 1000 + 1.5 x 500) / 1,500 = 0.5
In the calculation above, the position error value for the first day is 0 because the position of 2.0 is within the target range of 1.0 - 4.0. To calculate the error value for the second day, Search Ads 360 takes the difference from the second day position (5.5) to the lower end of the target range (4.0), and the result is 1.5. Search Ads 360 then weights the result by the number of impressions (500) and divides the whole term by all impressions (1500).