What is impression share?
Impression share (IS) is the percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared to the total number of impressions that your ads could get – Google
It is a Google Ads metric that shows you the percentage of impressions you received against the number you were eligible for.
How to calculate impression share?
To calculate impression share, divide the ‘number of impressions your ad received’ by the ‘total number of impressions it was eligible for’.
To calculate your impressions share in percentage, multiply the number by 100.
According to Google, ‘eligible impressions’ are estimated using many factors, including targeting settings, approval statuses, and quality. Impression share data is available for campaigns, ad groups, product groups (for Shopping campaigns), and keywords.
Formula for calculating impression share
Real-life example of impression share
Let’s look at an example of impression share:
Say, you created an ad campaign and Google estimated 5,000 potential impressions. On monitoring the ad after one month, it received 4000 impressions.
Now, your impression share will be: 4000/5000 x 100 = 80% impression share.
What’s considered a good impression share? (benchmark)
You should aim to achieve at least 60% impression share. 95% impression share should be considered good in the case of branded keywords and in the case of non-branded keywords 80% should be the benchmark. 100% impression share is the holy grail, but it isn’t an easy number to achieve.
The impressions share depend on your goals, keywords, and the size of your addressable audience and its relativity to your objectives.
A very low impression share indicates that either the keyword you are targeting is highly competitive (or a poor ad rank) or your budget is too low – as explained by Google.
Ways to improve your Google ads impression share
- Improve your ad quality: Ad quality can also have an impact on impression share as it will increase your quality score leading Google to display your ads more frequently. Google listed some ways to use Quality Score to improve your performance.
- Adjust regional targeting: If you restrict your regional targets, you may see a spike in impression share. But also keep in mind that restricting location settings reduces the potential number of impressions available to you.
- Adjust your budget: Remember, one of the reasons for low impression share is low budget. Your budget controls how often an ad is shown. You might need to consider increasing your budget if the impression share is too low. Read: How to Estimate Your PPC Budget to Get the Best ROI