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Does Smart Bidding Impact Impression Share?
I am working with a client and their digital ad agency and noticed they are seeing over 70% IS Lost Due to Rank.
I brought this up to them as I’ve never seen this number so consistently high. We don’t have Ads access so I asked for a QS and Ad Relevance report.
They responded by saying that these kind of numbers are normal since they are utilizing Maximize for Conversion bidding.
That just doesn’t seem right but I have nothing to back it up, any thoughts?
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4 Replies
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You should absolutely get those reports but there might be something to that.
If it is maximizing for conversions the campaign gets pretty loose with what auctions it puts itself in. If it puts itself in enough less relevant auctions it will score poorly for those auctions and lose IS due to rank.
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Yes but usually at the higher performance goal settings. As you reduce smart goals impression share usually goes up but it’s also relative to the number of competitors in the auction.
Ultimately, you’ll have higher impression share at 400% ROAS than 700% ROAS goal.
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Nope, the numbers do not seem normal. I have campaigns running with the same bidding strategy – Max Conversions. Niche with very expensive CPAs. On my last meeting with our GAds Account Manager she told me that our numbers needed to be improved because we’re probably missing conversions due to low rank. Most of my Lost IS due to rank is around 25-35%. So 70% is waaaay up. You need to review ads and KWs because something is definitely not right.
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Something to bear in mind, if you’re using an automated bidding model such as maximise conversions, you’d expect your IS lost to rank to rise sharply.
Contrary to what has been said above, these bidding models actually focus down onto only the searches which the Google AI thinks are likely to lead to conversions – rather than targeting every auction, you’ll only bid in the ‘best’ prospects, essentially bidding zero for any auction that doesn’t meet the standard. It could be that that campaign has a lot of trash searches being made and only 30% are worth bidding on.
The problem is that Google doesn’t have a column for IS lost to ‘not bid on by the AI’
There are other factors in play, such as any CPA targets you might have in place… adjust these and you’ll likely claw back some of that IS. Obviously, that May not be viable within your ROAS (and possibly may provide zero improvement).
I’m not saying that I have a definitive answer as to whether your agency are doing a good job or not (I have no idea), and they should give you access to any reports you want, but the mechanics of automated bidding models are complex and specific to each individual account and campaign. For people here to tell you that this situation doesn’t seem right makes no sense to me.
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