Google Ads auction insights offer a sneak peek into your ads’ competitiveness relative to your competitors. If you can read these metrics, you can gain a deeper understanding of your ads’ performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.
In this article, I will do my best to point out the key metrics, explain how to interpret the Google Ads auction insights, and tell you how you can use them to take action and improve your campaigns’ results.
By the end of this article, I hope you’ll be able to read and understand these metrics. And with this information, you will have what you need to make better decisions.
Understanding the Metrics in Auction Insights
The Google Ads Auction Insights report provides valuable data that can help you understand how you are doing in comparison with your competitors. Here are some of the key metrics you’ll find in this report:
Impression Share
This metric shows you how often your ad appeared compared to how many times it could have appeared. It is a percentage of the total possible impressions your ad could have received. For instance, if your impression share is 70%, it means that your ad showed up in 70% of the auctions it was eligible to appear in.
Overlap Rate
This metric helps you identify your main competitors. It reveals how often your ads and your competitors’ ads appear in the same auction. A high overlap rate suggests that you’re frequently competing with the same advertisers.
Position Above Rate
This metric indicates how often a competitor’s ad ranked higher than yours in the auctions. A high position above rate suggests that you need to improve your ad rank to compete more effectively.
Top of Page Rate
This metric shows how often your ad appeared at the top of the search results page (the first 3 or 4 positions). A high top of page rate indicates that your ad is getting good visibility.
Absolute Top of Page Rate
This metric goes a step further than the top of page rate. It shows how often your ad appears in the very first position on the search results page. This is the most desired ad position because it is likely to receive the most clicks.
Outranking Share
This metric reveals how often your ad outranked a competitor’s ad in an auction. It’s a combination of two factors: the number of times your ad ranked higher than another advertiser’s ad, and the number of times your ad showed when theirs didn’t. A high outranking share indicates that your ad is competitive.
Interpreting Google Ads Auction Insights and Taking Action
You can use the auction insights to your advantage and improve your ad visibility and campaign performance. To do this, you need to analyze the data, identify trends, look at the broader context, and see the patterns.
Analyzing the auction insights data
The first step you need to take is to look at the data and see what is the current state of your campaign. After that, you want to see what hypotheses can you come up with to test and increase that performance.
Tracking changes over time: The auction metrics are changing constantly. They are affected by the changes you make in your account, the competitors’ changes, and the overall user search behavior. By monitoring how your auction metrics change over time, you can identify improvements or areas of concern.
Comparing to industry benchmarks: Personally, I’m not a big fan of benchmarks, as they can overlook a lot of variables specific to your business. But they do give you a pretty good picture of what the average company is doing. Comparing your performance to industry benchmarks can help you see how you’re doing relative to others in your sector. But you do have to race against yourself and do a better job than you did in the past.
Analyzing competitor data: Imagine studying the moves of your opponents in a chess game. By examining your competitors’ auction metrics, you get some hints about their strategies and identify opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.
Using auction insights to optimize your campaigns:
With the analysis done, you can start making some changes in your campaigns to test your ideas.
Adjusting bids and ad copy: If your impression share is low, consider increasing your bids (or lowering the target goals) to improve your ad’s visibility. Additionally, experiment with different ad copy to see what resonates best with your target audience.
Improving landing page quality: The quality of your landing page can significantly impact your ad’s performance. Ensure your landing page is relevant to your ad, easy to navigate, and provides a clear call to action. Being competitive in the auction is just the beginning. You will also need to make sure your landing pages convert the users.
Targeting relevant keywords: Use auction insights to identify relevant keywords that your competitors are targeting. Consider adding these keywords to your campaigns to increase your visibility and reach a wider audience.
Tip on how to use the Google Ads auction insights data
The data you get from the auction insights is great as it tells you how you are doing compared to your competitors. But if you don’t know what action to take to improve your performance, it is completely useless. So, let’s see how you can make use of the insights report.
- Look at different data levels. You can start looking at the campaign level first to get a feel of how your campaign is doing overall. After that, you can move to the ad group level and even the keyword level.
- Check who you are competing against. Even if you know who your competitors are, you can always find new ones in there. You should check their websites, see how they are presenting their products or services, and what you can do better than them.
- Use the Segment function. You can segment the data by device or by time. So you can check the numbers for yourself and your competitors to compare the tactics used. Maybe some of your competitors are strongly focusing on mobile traffic or limiting their ads during weekends.
- Go beyond the insights report. If you see that the auction metrics are consistently lower than your competitors, and you can’t just increase your budgets, check the ads. Look to see if your ads are closely related to the keywords you’re targeting, and with the landing pages. Moreover, you can look at your competitors’ ads to see if they use any compelling messaging that makes people click on them. Improving the ad quality will allow you to become more competitive without increasing your CPCs.
Conclusion
The Google Ads auction insights report is a powerful tool for understanding your campaigns’ performance. By looking at this data, you can have a sneak peek into your competitors’ tactics and overall strategy.
Just remember to regularly check this data and make adjustments to your campaign as needed.
