How to use Google Ads Competitive Indicators

If you’ve been running Google Ads for a long time, you know that campaigns generally have a competitive side and you need to monitor vanity metrics around ranked locations.

In one of my previous jobs, senior leaders passed by every day and asked if we or our competitors were ranked number one that day.

The problem wasn’t lowering the cost per acquisition or improving the overall metrics of the account, but pure vanity and the desire to “win.”

It doesn’t really make sense to “win” this way, but it’s important to raise your head from time to time to understand the performance of your campaign and the performance of your competitors. This helps you to know the real competitors and their aggression.

These data points can be used to understand the fluctuations in your data. Even if your CTR is down, or if you haven’t actually changed anything, it doesn’t mean your competitors aren’t working. Google recognizes the importance of these data points and is rolling out more competitive indicators to the Google Ads platform.

In the Google Ads reports section, these metrics are listed in the metric and dimension menu list.[競合指標]When[オークションインサイト]It is in. Below these two areas are some very good tools for understanding relationships with competitors. Here are some of my favorites.

Search for top shares

This data tells you which specific domains outperform your ads and how often. This data is available at all levels (accounts, campaigns, ad groups, keywords).

This is especially useful if you have brands that sell directly to various affiliates. Given many factors, it’s difficult to see all the different competitors, so it’s also helpful to understand and identify competitors that weren’t on the radar.

Search for positions that exceed the overlap rate and rate

Some of the other similar but important metrics available are positions that exceed the search overlap rate and rate.

Search duplication rates help you understand how often your brand or domain appears together. This will give you a better understanding of the options available to consumers on the search results page.

The position average metric provides insight into how often branded ads appear on top of your ads when both are viewed together. The last part is really important.

Not only does this data show that branded ads rank more often than average, but they also show that they are bidding on each other, especially for the same customer search results.

Why is this important?

It helps to give insight into direct competition.

In the data below, Listingbaby.com outperforms client ads by almost 90%.

Based on this, the action I take is to understand the ad copy and landing page experience in order to evaluate the search experience. Look for differences that can affect your quality score.

Below the competitive indicators, there are also many valuable data points. The data point we use most is around ImpressionShare.

Understanding impression share helps give brands insight into market-wide opportunities.

The impression ratio is the ratio of the total number of impressions that the ad was displayed to the possible number of times.

For example, if you search for “running shoes” 100 times and your ad appears in 50 of those searches, your impression share will be 50%.

The next part of Google’s insights is why your ad didn’t show up in other potential search results. They break it down into two buckets:

• Lost due to rank
• Lost due to budget.

These are actually two important ways to get more ads. We always use this to help our customers understand “how high?” “How much is the total market opportunity?” “How much can I spend if I exceed my ROI target?”

For keyword strategies, exact match impression share metrics help you understand how well your keywords match your search target.

Exact match keywords give you better control over bids and your overall experience. It’s certainly not possible to make this 100%, but by monitoring this metric, Google will algorithmize how closely you work, how customers may change your search. You can see how you are changing.

Clickshare is another important competitive indicator offered. “Clickshare” is the number of clicks you receive on your search network divided by the estimated maximum number of clicks you may have received.

These impression share metrics are available for both display and search campaigns.

They are also available for absolute top impressions (true # 1 ranking). Unless you’re crushing reminders and KPIs, it’s the vanity trap that chases the absolute number one position.

These metrics can be used in the following different areas of your business:

• Search Marketing: Notify Bid and Keyword Strategies
• Product Management: Gain a better understanding of who the truly competitive set is and how the product is positioned (brands ignore who their true competitors are and perceived competition. Often focus on the other person).
• Creative / UX: See the experience of your competitors and their landing pages.
• Treasury: Understanding and anticipating market opportunities. Helps to inform you of your budget for future financial planning.

These data points put the campaign in context

These data points help advertisers understand the volumes available and their competitors.

You can use this data to inform a variety of business units, not just search marketing.

Use your data wisely, check your ego, get out and win!

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest authors, not necessarily search engine lands. The authors of the staff are listed here.

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