Is Impression Share A Valuable AdWords Tool?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, July 7, 2007 Comments (2)

Google has added a new feature to its AdWords tool:

Impression Share, a new AdWords metric, is similar to share of voice — it represents the percentage of times your ads were actually shown in relation to the total number of chances your ads could have been shown, based on your keyword and campaign settings.

But will this be a valuable tool to advertisers? I think it may be. But advertisers will have to be careful in how they use it.

If you want to know where you stand in relation to your competition for specific keywords then this could be a valuable tool. The feature also will tell you how many lost opportunities you had for the times that your ad was available. In other words, if you set your daily budget for $5 and you reach that budget by noon then you are missing opportunities that your ad could be viewed for the rest of the business day. What percentage of the time available did you miss out on opportunities? Would you like to know?

I suspect Google is offering this feature in hopes that pay-per-click advertisers will realize that they are setting their budgets too low and will start to spend more money based on the numbers they see. That’s where you’ll have to resist the temptation.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend more money if you find that your ad is being viewed only 30% of the times that it could possibly be shown to your target audience. But you’ll have to weigh the value of that other 70% and your daily budget – not to mention your ROI. If you find that the morning hours are more profitable for your pay-per-click campaign – say to the tune of 80% of your sales come from that 30% of the opportunities then it makes sense to just focus on that 30% and max out your budget early in the day. On the other hand ….

If you are missing out on valuable sales opportunities because your ads are not being shown 70% of the time that they could be, well, it just might be in your best interest to increase your budget – if, and here’s the big if, your ROI based on that increase makes it worth your while.

Bottom line: When it comes to pay-per-click advertising, opportunities are not important, how much money you make versus how much you spend is.

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Comments (2) Category: Search Marketing

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2 Comments

Comment by Enigma Valdez

Made Saturday, 7 of July , 2007 at 6:35 pm

This is a great tool to tell me how many lost opportunities I have had. I mean this can save me a lot of money on other programs that don’t do half is good and it also can bring me a lot of money. I have found it hard to keep up with the Adwords game because I really just bid on any keywords I can to get the highest traffic.

Comment by namecritic

Made Wednesday, 11 of July , 2007 at 1:14 am

A lot more to doing well with adwords than just bidding on keywords. It’s a combination of things.

1. Choosing the right keywords to bid on.
2. Deciding which keywords you want #1 position for and which ones you are willing to be #4, #8, #18, or whatever due to wanting a better ROI for those keywords.
3. Creating the right ads to match the ketywords you choose and testing those ads, then altering them again and again until you have the best results.
4. Matching the right landing pages with the right keywords.
5. Testing the landing pages to see how well they convert, then tweaking the landing pages until you are converting enough sales to make what you are spending on that keyword worthwhile.
6. Tracking results, tracking results, tracking results.
7. testing, testing, testing.
8. Have I mentioned tracking results or testing yet?