{"id":11300,"date":"2021-08-04T14:09:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T20:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.topspot.com\/blog\/?p=11300"},"modified":"2022-06-27T12:26:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T18:26:44","slug":"what-is-impression-share-and-why-is-it-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.topspotims.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/what-is-impression-share-and-why-is-it-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Impression Share: What is it? And why is it important?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Impression Share is a term often used when discussing pay-per-click advertising<\/a> performance, but what does it really mean for you? In addition to being measured hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc., the reasons behind what causes the percentage you\u2019re shown can be complex. In today\u2019s blog post, we pull back the curtain and walk you through what you really need to know when it comes to impression share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Am I Not Seeing My Ads?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Search Engines rotate ads based on a daily allowance designated by the advertiser. Your daily budget is your monthly budget divided by the number of business days in a month. Oftentimes, this is then divided between Google and Bing Ads<\/a> based on your business goals and historical performance on both search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Daily budget breakdown for $1300 monthly spend<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

For example, if your monthly spend was $1,300 (like it is in the budget breakdown shown above) and your ads were being shown Monday \u2013 Friday, you\u2019d have around $60 to spend across both Google and Bing each day. If you wanted to show your ads on the weekends too, you\u2019d have to stretch your daily budget a little further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Google and Bing display your ads as often as possible while staying within your daily budget. When the budget limit is reached, your ads will typically stop showing for that day. Your daily Google exposure can be measured with a metric called Impression Share.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Impression Share?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Google Impression Share 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. Your impression share is updated daily and can be viewed as an average for a longer period of time, based on the day of the week, and even hourly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Hourly<\/a>
Hourly Impression Share Report<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In the example above, you can see how Google is attempting to stretch the duration of the time the program\u2019s ads are able to receive impressions by showing them as evenly as possible throughout the day. This is why the impression share stays in the mid 20% range for the majority of the day. If it started the day off at 100%, the program would run out of budget quickly and ads would not be shown for most of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a Good Impression Share?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A good impression share truly varies based on your business goals. Let\u2019s say one of your PPC Campaigns has a 100% impression share but isn\u2019t driving the right leads for your business while also costing you a lot of money. It\u2019s a great impression share on paper but isn\u2019t a great impression share for your business. Finding that sweet spot where the leads coming in are exactly what you are looking for while you\u2019re also comfortable with the amount you\u2019re spending (and the return on your investment is there) is ultimately what your \u201cgood impression share\u201d should be measured at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is Impression Share Important? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Taking It to the Next Level<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say your business is located on the East coast, and you are wanting to grow your online presence and leads on the West coast. You are getting traffic and leads throughout the day, your ads are set to show until 9 pm ET, (which is 6 pm PT) but you aren\u2019t seeing any increase in traffic or leads from the West coast like you were wanting. It\u2019s time to check your impression share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If your impressions are dropping off long before the evening hours on the West coast, that may be the reason your exposure hasn\u2019t increased as you had hoped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the images above, you can see the traffic increase (to the West coast specifically) that occurred after a paid search account increased their budget and impression share. Total traffic from California increased by 292% (from 3,213 in the 3 months prior to 12,605 users in the 3 months following the test increase) thanks in part to the additional exposure generated by paid search.<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another important area to look at is your average phone calls and form submissions by hour. If your hourly lead graphs are dropping around the same time as your impressions, that may be a good reason to test a budget increase or make other updates to your program in order to extend your ad exposure to later in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the comparison above, you can see the increase in impressions caused by a test budget increase and how that also assisted in an increase in traffic, form completions and phone calls from paid search.<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How Do I Improve My Impression Share?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019d like your ads to remain more visible throughout the entire day, you may need to make a few adjustments to your program. While you don\u2019t need to make all of these adjustments, a combination of a few of them would improve your ad exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n