Google Ads is a live auction. This means that you are bidding to have your ads shown in an auction with other advertisers who are also bidding on the same keywords.
Understanding how you are performing against competitors can provide valuable insight into the marketplace and help to inform your decision making process about where to allocate resources.
For most small-medium sized businesses, the free tools and techniques below will provide enough information to take action, without needing to invest in more comprehensive tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs.
Follow this simple strategy to see how you are performing against competitors, and what steps you need to take in order to gain competitive advantage.
Start with Auction Insights
Auction insights can be found within Google Ads under: Campaigns > Insights and Reports > Auction Insights.
Auction Insights will show a list of advertisers (including yourself) who are all competing for the same keywords, in order of impression share.
Impression share = impressions / total eligible impressions.
In simple terms, impression share shows how often your ads appeared in search results vs how often they were eligible to appear.
Impression share will never be 100%. Remember, this is a live auction with multiple advertisers all competing for the same keywords and claiming their own impression share.
In a niche market with few competitors, it may be possible to get a 50-70% impression share on a modest budget. In a highly competitive market, getting 30-50% impression share will put you in a strong position. Aiming for anything higher may be cost prohibitive.
Impression share is a useful metric to give a broad overview of how you are performing against competitors, but it should not be used as a goal in isolation, or as a performance goal alongside return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
Yes, appearing above the competition is usually desirable, but only if it makes sense for your budget and marketing goals.
Plenty of businesses do just fine sitting in 2nd or 3rd place, spending less and getting a higher return-on-investment (ROI) by focusing on conversion rate optimisation.
How to Improve Impression Share
To a point, adding more budget will improve impression share. The more daily budget you have, the longer you will be able to stay in the auction and the more your ads will be shown.
To see if you are losing impression share due to budget, add the “Search lost IS (budget)” column at the campaign level. Again, the goal isn’t to have 0% impression share lost due to budget, but to find the sweet spot for your business.
If your ads are not restricted by budget, you will be losing the remaining impression share due to ad rank.
To see if you are losing impression share due to ad rank, add the “Search lost IS (rank)” column at the campaign or ad group level.
Ad rank is calculated using your bid, ad and landing page quality, context of the search, competitiveness of the auction, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.
Improving ad rank is a whole article in itself, but outside of bids, start with improving keyword quality scores by matching your keywords with ads and landing pages in tightly themed ad groups. This will improve the expected click-through-rate (CTR), which is an important component of ad rank.
Scout the Marketplace
The quickest and easiest way to understand the auction landscape is to search for the keywords you will be bidding on.
For the most unbiased results (Google will always show personalised results based on search history, location and other factors), use Incognito mode, Guest mode or create a separate profile without any email login.
You can also use a VPN to see how the auction looks from different regions or countries.
Take note of:
- Which competitors are at the top of the results.
- Keyword frequency in the ads (bolded text).
- Call-to-actions (CTAs), unique-selling-points (USPs), callouts, sitelinks, reviews, ratings, offers etc.
- Different results for different keywords.
Additionally, click through to the landing pages and see how the user experience extends beyond Google Ads.
See Through the Competition
To see exactly what ads your competitors are running, use the Google Ads Transparency Centre.
The Ads Transparency Center is a searchable hub of all ads served from verified advertisers, showing the ad content, ad format, which ads were shown in which region and the last date the ads ran.
Screenshot the ads and compile them into a document.
Take note of:
- Messaging (ad copy, CTAs, USPs).
- Ad creative (images, rich media and video).
- Different ad formats (Search, Display, YouTube).
- Underserved or completely ignored audiences.
- Products and services that are being slept on.
Final Thoughts
To gain a competitive advantage in Google Ads, first understand your position in the market and what your competitors are doing (and not doing).
Look for gaps in their marketing strategy and fill those gaps with your own messaging, USPs and offers.
Once your campaigns are established, increase your impression share by adding an appropriate budget and improving ad rank, then optimise the landing page experience by A/B testing different messaging, UX/UI elements, CTAs, USPs and product offers.