61. About Google Adwords Impression Share Report?

The importance of impression share is not discussed much as many people do not know that such a report exists. Impression share is a metric in Google AdWords that shows how often an ad shows up in search results. We get asked many times why ads are not showing even though the account had been set up and adwords campaign implemented properly.

This is important information for Adwords / PPC campaign optimisation.

Here is a quick 3 step guide :-

1. Get Share Impressions report - Simply go to the reports tab in your Adwords account and build a report on your campaign. If you still cannot see it just make sure that the fields IS, Lost IS (rank) and exact match IS are included. Generate report.

2. The next step is finding out what the data means – The Adwords Impressions Share Report basically provides you information on areas with a low coverage or low share of impressions, tells you how often your ads appear on search results when they are eligible. You get a better understanding of your of campaign presence and can prioritize your optimization efforts.

3. The last step is finding ways to drive that Impression Share up to respectable levels – Your Adwords account optimization decisions can be based on the Impression Share Report. If your Impression Shares are low due to insufficient Budget, then you can consider increasing your budget or increase budget marginally and improvise on other performance optimisation parameter. You can consider increasing your bid in case you are losing on the Impressions shares due to ad Rank and also closely evaluate the relevancy of the Keyword + Ad text + Landing page mix. You can consider time bands when results are better and aim to high impression share and reduce share in nonperforming time bands.

What do these mean?

Impression share Percentage: This is the Percentage of impressions your ads got out of the total available impressions in the target Market.

Lost Impression Share Rank: This represents the Percentage of Impressions Lost Due to Ad Rank

Lost Impression Share Budget: This is the Percentage of Impressions that were Lost Due To Insufficient Budget.

Effective SEO with a well strategized adwords and social media campaigns will help you drive traffic and conversions are lower cost.