Impression Share is the number of impressions your campaign received divided by the estimated number of impressions it could have received. The estimation is based on several parameters like geolocation, audience, bids, and quality score. The diagram below illustrates the concept. An increase in the part of your impression share will result in more “targeted people” seeing your ads.

This is my favourite upselling tool as it speaks a language that most businesses understand – share of voice or simply put market share. At times AdWords terminology might actually work against you when speaking to a client and simplifying things can definitely help. Don’t talk about it as Impression share, but rather talk about it as market share. The definition above might be too technical and a more simply definition would be:

The percentage of time your ad appeared in front of a customer who is looking for exactly what you have to offer

Let’s use an example to illustrate the concept. If your impression share is 30% – it means:

• Your paid search ads appear less than once per three queries made for search terms that are relevant to your products and services
• This is like putting up a closed sign for over 70% of the people who visit your business and are actually queueing outside

Solution – by increasing your budget, you will be able to capture more of this interest in your business

Scenarios and solutions

If the impression share is lower than 30% and the advertiser is not willing to give you more budget, then you can ask to either decrease the target radius or move budget from other product lines. This is called the power of the Take away and trust me business owners won’t like that. They won’t want to reduce areas that are working.

70% and above

• Expand the campaign by adding additional keywords
• Visit the client’s website and check for additional products
• Is the site mobile friendly – if so increase mobile bids
• Near me searches
• Prices, Black Friday sale, discounts