How to get more impressions on Google Ads

As we like to say, Impression Share is the best health indicator of your account and can be seen on the campaign, ad group, product group and keyword levels. 

Let's start from the definition of Impression Share. According to Google, Impression Share (also known as IS) is the percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared to the total number of impressions that your ads could get, or are eligible to get. 

Right after you launch your Google Ads campaign, you want to make sure your efforts are paying off. By tracking the Impression Share, you will have a clear representation of how well your ad is performing and whether you need to increase your bid or budget to reach more people.

Let's say, for example, Google estimated that 10,000 potential impressions are available for your newly created ad and, after monitoring your performance for some time, you record about 9,000 impressions. That means that your Impression Share is 90% (9,000 impressions / 10,000 available impressions = 90% Impression Share).

Impression Share = impressions / total eligible impressions

So, what is eligibility, and how does Google determine it? Let's just say there are many factors, and some of them could be approval statuses, quality of your ad, targeting settings, etc.

Types of Impression Share

Let's take a look at some different types of Impression Share metrics which will give you valuable insight into your Google campaigns: 

Search Impression Share – the number of impressions you have received on the Search Network divided by the approximate number of impressions you were eligible to receive;

Display Impression Share – the number of impressions you have received on the Display Network divided by the approximate number of impressions you were eligible to receive;

Search lost Impression Share (budget) – the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown on the Search Network due to insufficient budget;

Display lost Impression Share (budget) – the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown on the Display Network due to insufficient budget;

Search lost Impression Share (rank) – the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown on the Search Network due to poor Ad Rank in the auction; 

Display lost Impression Share (rank) – the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown on the Display Network due to poor Ad Rank;

Search exact match Impression Share – the impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive on the Search Network for search terms that matched your keywords exactly.

The importance of Impression Share data is now clear, and it can simply be seen as:

How to increase Impression Share

Looking at all those metrics will give you a clear idea of how well your campaigns are performing. 

Before pausing the ones with low traffic, take a look at some strategies you can use to improve their performance:

Optimise your budget

Some would say: “Increasing the budget will sort out everything.” Well, that might be true, and also, Google always likes more money. It is the budget that is in control of how often your ads will be served. Increasing it is one of the quickest ways to boost your Impression Share. 

Adjust geo-targeting settings

An immense increase in Impression Share can be achieved by adjusting your location settings to a more specific area. Keep your focus on smaller, yet efficient areas where you will be able to gain more control over your audience.

Improve Quality Score

Having a low Quality Score can also impact your Impression Share, and may affect your visibility. When creating an ad, make it as relevant as you can to match your targeted audience and selected keywords.

Speaking of Quality Score – when you improve this particular metric, you can improve your Ad Rank along with it. One crucial step for that is making sure your headlines and text are relevant to the keywords in your ad group.

Another significant element is enhancing the user experience. This brings both short- and long-term performance goals, as users always come first. 

Increase your bid 

The market is changing by the minute – so, if your keyword ranked very high a few days ago, chances are that it is at a lower rank today. That's where the bid increase comes in, and it's tightly connected to budget optimisation too; higher bids on keywords and an expanded budget can get Google to position your ads more often during the day. 

Prioritise exact match keywords 

It's worth pointing out that Impression Share is usually higher on exact match than on Broad match modified keywords, so it's a good idea to bid on them a bit more intensely. There is a handy metric called Exact Match Impression Share that can tell you the percentage of search queries with an exact match. It can also shed more light on the performance of each keyword.

Conclusion

If you monitor the Impression Share metric correctly, you will be able to see how well your ad is performing compared to its total potential, and by managing it correctly you can increase brand awareness as well as profit. 

If you need help with optimising your Google Ads campaign, feel free to reach out to us. The team of paid media experts at digital agency GRM Digital is there to help you.

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