Are you seeking real-time information about your Google Ads campaign performance and want to compare it to your competitors? The Google Ads auction insights is your go-to resource. Reading this basic guideline, you’ll understand the full potential of auction insights, optimize your Ad Rank and surpass your competitors.
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Google Ads Auction Insights overview
What is Google Ads auction?
Auction in Google Ads is a competition in which advertisers bid to have their ads displayed on Google’s search results pages (SERPs). The process happens with each Google search so as to decide which ads will appear for that specific search and in which order those ads will show on the page.
The ad auction happens in real-time for each search. The winning ads are displayed based on their Ad Rank. The auction’s goal is to help advertisers reach their target audience by providing users with the most relevant ads.
>>> Read more: All About Google Ad Rank and Tips for Improving Ad Position
What is auction insights in Google Ads?
Google auction insights is a valuable tool for Google Search ads and Google Shopping ads campaigns. It provides information on how frequently your ads appear compared to your competitors’ ads in your target placements.
The auction insights is usually within a day of your ads being displayed. Therefore, it gives you updated insights into the ranking of your campaigns. You can make informed decisions to optimize your campaigns.
How does Google Ads auction work?
The auction in Google Ads is a process that determines which ads will be displayed on Google’s SERPs and other Google advertising platforms. Mega Digital has summarized two key points to help you understand how the process works.
The process of a Google Ads auction
Every time a user searches on Google, an auction takes place to determine if, when, and where eligible ads will appear on the SERP. Here’s how the process works:
- Matching ads: When a user searches, the Google Ads system sorts out all ads with matching keywords in the search query.
- Eligibility check: The system finds any ads that are not eligible (such as ads targeting a different market or those that have been disapproved due to policy violations).
- Ad Rank selection: After the first 2 steps, only those with a sufficiently high Ad Rank will be displayed.
Simply put, the auction process on Google ensures that ads appearing on the SERP are relevant and high-quality. These criteria should align with the user’s search query.
5 factors determining ads appearance and order
- Bidding: When you set your bid for a click on your ads, you set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay. However, the actual cost is often lower than your maximum bid, as you can adjust your bid at any time.
- Ad quality: Quality Score reflects the relevance of your ad and the linked website. You can monitor and boost the Quality Score of your Google Ads account for better ad performance.
- The ad assets’ expected impact: Google assesses ad assets to evaluate their impacts on ad performance. Additional information, such as a phone number or page links, are considered ad assets. At a lower cost than competitors, relevant keywords, ads, and other assets can help you achieve a higher position.
- Ad Rank: Google maintains high-quality ads by setting minimum quality standards for specific ad positions.
- Ad context: Google considers factors like search time, search locations, and other information to evaluate ad context.
In short, these factors determine the order and visibility of your ad to potential customers.
Benefits of understanding auction insights data
Advertisers can use numbers from Google auction insights in order to optimize bidding strategies. Let’s take a look at the benefits of understanding Google auction insights.
Competitive analysis
Google Auction insights determine the performance of your competitors’ ads. They also estimate how much they might be spending. For example, you can see competitors’ ads performing better than you by looking at the Position Above Rate. The figure shows ads that are placed at higher positions than yours for searches where both ads were shown at the same time.
Advertisers should learn to understand how other advertisers bid and position their ads. Afterwards, they can gain visibility and make strategic adjustments to increase their campaign performance.
Performance evaluation
Auction insights in Google Ads provide figures to help assess the effectiveness of ad campaigns. By monitoring these figures actively, advertisers can identify areas for improvement and optimize their bidding strategies accordingly.
Market understanding
The Google auction insights reports provide valuable insights about the overall market views. This includes shifts in competition levels, new competitors’ presence, and ad positioning changes. This helps advertisers stay up to date about market volatility and make updated decisions about their advertising campaigns.
Optimization solutions
Advertisers can uncover optimization opportunities by breaking down metrics provided in the auction insights. These include outperforming competitors, increasing impression share, or improving Ad Rank. Advertisers can analyze to adjust bidding strategies and boost targeting results.
Budget allocation
Advertisers should analyze the performance of their ads in comparison to competitors. After that, they can determine where to allocate their budget to maximize their ad position and achieve a higher return on investment (ROI).
>>> Read more: What is Google Ads ROI: Ways To Calculate and Improve Your ROI
Valuable insights from Google Ads statistics
Google Ads auction insights provides data to help advertisers analyze their performance in ad auctions in comparisons with other advertisers. Here are 6 figures shown in the Google auction insights Report:
- Impression share
- Average Position
- Overlap rate
- Position above rate
- Top of page rate
- Outranking share
Impression share
First, an ad’s impression is calculated by dividing the number of impressions received by the total impressions. This provides insight into how often your competitors’ ads received impressions relative to your ad, based on the proportion of your bid.
Targeting settings, bids, and Quality Score can affect Impression share. This provides insights about whether a competitor is bidding for a keyword.
>>> Read more: What is Google Ads Quality Score and How to Increase it
Overlap rate
This provides insights into how often your competitors and ads receive impressions.
At the keyword level, sharing an overlap rate shows that competitors are bidding on the keywords with more or less similar factors like targeting, budget, and bidding strategy.
If you have the same target keywords as your competitors, you need to focus on strategies to drive higher traffic for that keyword.
Position above rate
The rate shows the percentage of times a competitor’s ad appeared in a higher position than your ad. You can see how often competitors are outperforming your ad. Then gauge your ad’s competitiveness in the auction. Hence, advertisers can use this data to improve their Ad Rank in future auctions.
Top of page rate
As shown above, the Top of the page rate shows how often your ad appeared at the top of the SERP. It provides insights into how often your ad achieved a prominent position above the organic search results. In that case, advertisers can aim to improve visibility to potential customers.
Absolute top of page rate
The measure indicates how often your ad appeared as the very first ad at the top of the SERP. You will know how often your ad achieved the highest position. Thereafter, advertisers can use this figure to raise the visibility of their ads at the absolute top of the page. Then, advertisers can improve visibility and maximize the potential for clicks and conversions.
Outranking share
The outranking share shows how often your ads ranked higher or was shown when your competitors’ ads were not. At this point, it helps you identify the number of times you have outperformed your competitors in the auction. This data lets you gain insights into your ad’s competitive performance to improve your advertising strategy.
Advertisers should not jump to conclusions by looking at just one metric. So Mega Digital recommends that advertisers assess all figures to analyze competitors’ behaviors objectively.
What to learn from Google’s auction insights
Afterwards, understanding the data provided in the Google Ads auction insights report is not enough. Meanwhile, take a look at Mega Digital’s recommendation to get a better analysis of your Google Ads auction insights.
Setting KPIs based on the auction insights
The auction insights can provide you with information about the performance of your campaigns in the marketplace. Here are the primary key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess using this tool.
- Identify your objectives: Determine your goals for using auction insights. So do you aim to outperform competitors or increase brand visibility?
- Review available data: Understand the metrics provided in auction insights. Then assess which are most relevant to your objectives and show effective measures of your ads auction.
- Set specific targets: Among the 6 figures, which measure would you like to improve first? For example, you may aim to achieve a certain impression share percentage by a specific percentage point.
- Consider benchmark data: Benchmark is the key to make effective comparisons! At this point, consider industry data to gain insights into specific performance levels and set attainable KPIs.
- Monitor and adjust regularly: Make regular assessments of the whole process to boost your advertising campaigns and strive for improved results.
Remember to regularly track and analyze the chosen data in auction insights to evaluate your performance. Afterwards, you can spot areas for improvement and inform your optimization strategies.
Limitations of Google auction insights
- Data delay: Auction insights data has a one-day delay. Therefore, advertisers should consider this to analyze reports and make bidding or keyword changes.
- Limited impression share data: The impression share metric in auction insights only considers active periods of keywords. As a result, off-periods are not included in the impression share calculation.
- Incomplete visibility: Auction insights may not offer a complete understanding of competitor performance. It only shows information during active periods, leaving gaps in Ad Rank understanding.
- Limited insights into individual search terms: Auction insights lacks the option to view total impressions for each search term. Detailed information based on settings like location – targeting is not enough.
- Inability to see competitor’s active keywords: Auction insights does not provide information on competitors’ currently active keywords. Hence, this leads to limited insights into their keyword plans.
Final words
To achieve KPIs in Google Ads, set SMART goals and be aware of the limitations of auction insights. Afterwards, use additional tools for comprehensive campaign analysis.
In essence, analyzing Google Ads auction insights provides advertisers with a profound view of their campaigns. As a leading Google partner in the APAC region, Mega Digital offers the best Google Shopping Advertising services. Reach out to our team and optimize your Google Ads auction!
