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Adwords High Average Position with Low Impression Share!?

by consultant1027
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've been noticing something more and more starting about two or so months ago.

I'm seeing a high average position on Ad Groups that have a an Impression Share under 60%, sometimes as low as 40%. I have alerts setup anytime my daily cost on any campaign exceeds 80% of the budget and am receiving no alerts! I confirmed it isn't a budget issue as the Lost IS (budget) is 0% - it is lost to rank but this is on campaigns showing an average position of 1.x and 2.x !!!

I did some testing. I took an keyword that was showing Average position of 1.2 when looking at Today (to make sure I was looking at current data that wasn't historically skewed.) I then went and searched for the keyword on Google and the ad was showing up in position 9! I thought, what the heck?!

Realizing the search results take a lot of things into consideration, I then went to the Ad Preview and Diagnostic Tool and for that keyword, it is saying it is currently not ranking on the first page of results. I refreshed several times on both the Ad Preview tool and Google itself and no change. (Not surprising considering if you keep using the same keyword, ads that are not clicked on will be preferred less and less).

I spoke to an Adwords "Expert" and Google and he said there are actually two decisions that Adwords makes. First it decides if the keyword will even be entered into the auction, then the second decision is the auction result itself (where you will be displayed.)

But I asked how can a keyword with average position of 1.2, 2 or even 3 have only a 50 o 60% impressions shares. Wouldn't keywords receiving a low impressions share be more "on the bubble" meaning the bid, quality score, etc. are such that the average position would be pretty low. I just don't understand how a high average position ad group (pos 1-3) can have a 60% or less impression share? I've never seen this before (or maybe just never noticed it.)

The problem is, I do keyword bid management based on looking at not only conversion rates but also average position. I've got automated rules setup to raise and lower the bid by these factors. What looks like what may be happening is the automated rule has lowered the bid to the minimum to still get the average position I want but at the same time has dropped my impression share. Unfortunately impression share is not a factor you can use in Automated Rules which essentially defeats the purpose of using Automation rules to maintain a position (since the position preference setting was removed.)

Could there be some strategy going on behind the scene at Google that is discouraging users from being able to maintain a position for the lowest cost, in order to produce more revenue? It just doesn't make sense to me a high avg pos ad group would have a low impression share.
#adwords #average #high #impression #low #position #share
  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi consultant1027,

    The most likely answer, based on what you posted, is that this is a budget issue.

    Since an ad may theoretically be clicked up to 2 hours after an ad impression is generated, there is often impression throttling to prevent your campaign from exceeding it's daily budget. Once enough impressions have been served, that could be clicked at some point in the near future, the system will throttle down impressions until enough time has passed to safely start serving impressions without exceeding your daily budget.

    The primary function of the daily budget limit is impression throttling. Even though your daily budget isn't being exceeded, it will certainly cause impression throttling unless it is set very high over the potential traffic for your targeted keywords.

    I typically set my daily budget to at least five times what I plan to spend daily to prevent impression throttling. I prefer to control my ad spend by bid levels rather than impression throttling. The side effect this tactic is that it tends to lower my CPC significantly.
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  • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
    Your response is the most common for this case, but unfortunately not the answer. Under the Dimensions tab in Adwords, when you go to look at the Imression Share, there are two more fields you can view. IS Lost (budget) and IS Lost (rank) which show the percentage of impressions you lost to budget issues or rank. All of my campaigns the IS Lost (budget) is 0% so it isn't a budget issue.

    So what is still baffling is how can there be a significant Impression Share loss with a rank issue when the keyword for that group and campaign have an average position in the 1-3 range when they ARE displayed? All the settings are pretty static, nothing is really being changed to cause that.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi consultant1027,

      That metric may not represent exactly what you think it does. To confirm this, up your daily budget at least 10 times its' current level and observe how this effects those numbers.

      Even though you have an average position of 1-3 you may still see some of you ads displayed at much lower positions than expected. This could be due to the dynamic nature of an auction based ad system. Things like dynamic bid adjustments and day parting will often cause wild swings in ad positions. Since the swings tend to be very temporary you may still maintain an average position of 3 or above, yet have some ads not making it to the 1st page of search results.

      There are other possibilities, but we can only speculate without having the full picture of your campaign structure.
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      • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
        Interesting theory. I AM seeing many keywords with very high average positions that when testing them today, they are appearing in far far lower positions.

        Regarding low IS though, I believe this is the issue...


        The Impression Share statistic is at the ad group (or campaign) level, you cannot get it at the keyword level. So you could have a few keyword with high positions and high impression share and you could have other keywords that have a higher total available impressions but due to Quality Score and/or bid issues, or CTR issues, are only getting a very small percentage of those impressions and thereby skewing the IS stat for that ad group. I have decent quality and bid amounts so I think it all boils down to CTR and Google's ability to make more money.

        Example would be say you make titanium jewelry. Let's say the phrase 'titanium jewelry' gets a total of 1,000 impressions a day and you bid on it and get an impression share of 90%+ and average position of 2. In that same ad group lets say you are also bidding on the keyword 'jewelry' which gets 100K impressions a day. Your quality score is lower on that keyword but you are bidding much higher to compensate, so when they do display the ad, you get pos 3. But Google is seeing a far lower CTR on your ad because you are advertising for the titanium niche. So to make more money Google wants to display the ads with the higher CTR, even if you have a higher bid and similar quality score.

        1000 impressions X 90% = 900 impressions
        100K impressions x 20% = 20,000 impressions

        Avg pos for the ad group would be 2X900 + 3X20,000 / 20,900 = 2.95

        The impression share for the group will be 20,900/101,000 = 20.7% !

        So when looking at the Ad Group Avg Pos and IS, it appears you have a decent average position (2.9) but a very low IS.

        This is an extreme example though. I think essentially what I am noticing is the result of Google tweaking their methods over the past 6 months to maximize revenues.

        One technique we use is to try to 'pre-qualify' our customers BEFORE they click on the ad, like 'Luxury Gizmos starting at $1000 each' (or in other words - 'don't click this ad if you can't afford us') Most of the competing ads don't do this and do everything they can in their ad to try to get the click. We are about conversions not about click-thrus. However this type of optimization will naturally bring your CTR down which means less money for Google.

        Where on the Natural Search Results on Google the bounce rate is a key factor in determining rankings, the opposite holds true for Adwords as Google profits from more clicks as a results of the searcher not finding what they are looking for, they go back and click on more ads. They could get around this though if they required all adwords users to implement conversion measurement and thereby factored that into the ranking and impression share but that isn't going to happen.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          That is exactly why you should never use more than one keyword per ad group. The more granular your account structure the better your stats and the more control you have over your campaigns.
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          • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
            Really, there are actually a lot of people with hundreds or thousands of keywords doing one keyword per Ad Group? I find that hard to believe. I suppose once you spend all that time to set it up, managing it probably isn't much more complex then ad groups with multiple keywords? Seems like there has to be a big downside from doing it that way though, or else Google wouldn't have things structured they way they do. Why have Ad Groups at all then?
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            • Profile picture of the author dburk
              Originally Posted by consultant1027 View Post

              Really, there are actually a lot of people with hundreds or thousands of keywords doing one keyword per Ad Group? I find that hard to believe. I suppose once you spend all that time to set it up, managing it probably isn't much more complex then ad groups with multiple keywords? Seems like there has to be a big downside from doing it that way though, or else Google wouldn't have things structured they way they do. Why have Ad Groups at all then?
              Hi consultant1027,

              Ad groups allow multiple ads to be rotated for the same keyword. This make split testing and muti-variant testing very easy.

              I have tools that creates account structures based on my preferences. Once I have the ads prepared I can create hundreds or even thousands of ad groups in mere seconds.
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              • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
                Makes sense. I could write a script to generate a file that could be imported. Just seems like it could be a bit of a management headache at times.
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                • Profile picture of the author dburk
                  Yes, it does add finer control of your campaigns, which increases the number items to manage, however the payoff is cleaner data and a significant advantage over advertisers who are neglecting to do this. I haven't found it difficult to manage, if anything it makes micromanagement easier.

                  I also create unique destination URLs for each keyword/ad combo giving me even finer control, which I find useful for optimizing performance via ICC calculations necessary for maximizing profits.
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  • Profile picture of the author calfred
    I think dburk is right.

    Take a look at this.

    Impression share - AdWords Help

    Improving your impression share

    To increase your impression share, your ads must appear either more often or in more places. Here are some general tips to improve your impression share:

    Increase your campaign budget – it's important to remember that the budget controls how often an ad is shown.
    Increase your bid.
    If you increase your regional targets, remember to consider readjusting your budget so that it will cover the costs of your new campaign settings.
    If you decrease your regional targets, you may see an increase in impression share – but keep in mind that the size of the "pie" has been reduced.
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