Last year many dealers panicked at the thought of half of their co-op dollars being dedicated solely to Google Adwords unless 35% impression share is obtained.

Luckily, I was able to participate in some of this discussion with Ford to guide our clients with iFrog on what needs to be done. Impression share is easy to manage and know where you are at any point in time but I do warn dealers that focusing solely on their impression share too much could potentially become a pitfall. I’ll explain more on that later in this article.

So, let me start out by explaining what impression share is. Impression share is the number of impressions of a paid search ad you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you could have received granted there were no restrictions. Items that would restrict your ads from being shown include your current ads’ targeting, ad status, bids, budget, and quality scores.

Let’s begin with ways to improve your impression share. Ultimately there are four ways to improve your search impression share. They are listed below:

1.    Increase your campaign budget. Your budget controls how often your ads are shown, so when you increase your budget, your ads will get shown more often until the budget depletes.
2.    Increase your bid. Raising your bid can improve the likelihood that your ad will show for a given ad auction but remember that raising your click bid can also deplete your budget more quickly, decreasing your impression share.
3.    Decrease your geographical targeting. If you reduce your geographical targeting or area that you choose to have your ads displayed, your impression share will increase. This is also true if you set your ads to only show during certain hours.
4.    Improve your quality. Improving your ad quality score will result in paying less for your bids while still holding your desired ad position. Contact us to learn of ways on how to improve ad quality.

These are simple ways to increase your impression share. But often there are more details and needed strategic input to figure out what is your best option. Knowing which campaigns convert the best (profitable) for you to place more budget or knowing which markets you want to target to increase your market share are examples of strategic questions you must ask yourself.

Back to an earlier point when I said, “I do warn dealers that focusing solely on their impression share too much could potentially become a pitfall.” Dealers focusing only on impression share must realize that to get to a certain level; they must “give” in some way. Dealers most often need to spend a good portion of their budget to target their desired markets and increase their impression share. Looking at search lost impression share (budget) helps you determine how often your ads are not showing because you have too small of a budget, in which case you would need to increase your paid search budget. Dealers often want to target outside of their DMA or PMA and to increase impression share without an additional budget. Unfortunately, dealers have to reduce their targeting or increase their budgets.

For more information on impression share or Ford’s impression share requirements, contact iFrog Digital Marketing at LetsChat@iFrog.com or give us a call at 410-673-8278