A Study of Google Ads Impressions: Exploring The What, Why, and How!

Approximately 8.5 billion– that’s how many searches people run on Google on a daily basis. To say, then, that Google has a wide reach would be just lazily stating the obvious. As a business owner, you must strive to leverage this vast market penetration that Google enjoys; and the easiest way to do so is to implement Google Ads.

A reliable way to drive increased and qualified traffic to your page, Google Ads are not only easy to implement but also guarantee immense bang for your buck. However, to get the most out of them, you need to exercise a meticulous eye over certain critical metrics that are associated with Google Ads- impressions are one among them. 

New to the world of Google Ads Impressions? No worries! Today, we present an in-depth account of Google Ads impressions; from discussing their importance to all the various ways in which you can increase impressions- we cover it all! Read on to find out more.

Google Ads Impressions- A brief introduction

Impressions refer to the number of times your ad is shown on Google or Google Partner sites or any other site on the Google Network (note that users needn’t click on your ad for an impression to register). Critical metrics concerning the performance of your ads such as click-through rate and conversion rate are computed on the basis of impressions.

Google Ads impressions can be classified into three categories:

1. Search impressions: These are counted when your ad is displayed in the search results of Google (or any of its partner sites).
2. Video impressions: These are counted when your ad is shown on video partners belonging to the Google Network.
3. Display impressions: These are counted when your ad is shown on websites that are a part of the Google Display Network  (also includes Google services like YouTube and Gmail).

Now, we already know that an impression is registered every time a user sees your ad (this user might either be real or a bot). So, what are some other ways in which impressions are counted? 

Google Ads records additional impressions in the event of an accidental page refresh (in such a scenario, impressions both, preceding and succeeding the refresh are counted). This is, of course, undesirable, for, this will give you an inaccurate idea of the number of people who are seeing your ads. That said, Google does have sophisticated filters in place that can efficiently detect invalid activity, thereby providing you with error-free information. 

Google Ads Impressions Share- What’s that?

As you might have taken a guess from the name itself, impressions share refers to the actual number of impressions your ad garners compared to the total number of impressions it could potentially accrue (also known as eligible impressions). Computing this percentage is a good way for you to understand how your ads are faring in relation to others in your niche. 

Impressions share is dictated by multiple factors such as the quality of your ad, the number of people searching for the terms you’re targeting, your budget, and the like. Therefore, it is futile to try to determine an ideal impression share for any ad campaign. While spending more money will definitely take your ad to more eyeballs, if it’s lacking in quality you might not be able to prop up your conversions. Regularly monitoring impressions share, thus, is vital as it will help you stay in the know regarding the health and efficacy of your ads. 

Of course, Google Ads Impressions are important. But why?

From our discussions above, at least one answer to this query materializes rather conveniently- impressions give you an idea regarding the visibility of your Google Ads; if they are being displayed to people or not, to begin with. Zero or a scarce number of impressions might be indicative of a serious issue in your campaign. For instance, your bids might be too low. Or, there might be a technical issue, too. 

On the other hand, if your ads are acquiring a healthy number of impressions but paltry clicks, you might want to shift your focus towards fixing their quality. At the end of the day, it all boils down to your business objectives. A business that is new to the market and is looking to boost up their brand awareness will prioritize securing impressions over clicks. At the same time, a business looking to maximize their ROI, will assign greater importance to click instead of impressions. 

All that said, let’s take a look at some factors that influence Ads impressions:

• Budget: As we stated earlier, the more you spend, the higher will be the number of impressions you acquire. 
• Place of exhibition of ads: There are many businesses who prefer to display their ads only on the Google search results pages. While there’s nothing wrong with this tactic, they should also look to go a step further and put out their ads on other sites on the Google Network; this will allow their ads to earn a higher number of impressions.
• Ad quality: Quality Score, Google’s diagnostic tool sizes up your ads, assigning them a score between 1-10. Ads that secure higher scores are shown more frequently to users.
• Campaign settings: Things like targeted keywords, ads scheduling and geographic targeting options also significantly determine the number of impressions your ads collect.

Not happy with your impressions? Here’s how you can improve them!

In this section, we discuss some techniques that will help you raise your Google Ads impressions. Let’s find out what they are.

• Get your keywords right. This is important for two reasons- firstly, it will obviously help you fetch more impressions and secondly, and more critically, it will help you get impressions from your target audience. That’s the goal at the end of the day, isn’t it? There’s simply no point in your ad reaching a billion eyeballs, if only out of those only a handful are your prospective customers. Therefore, being specific with your keywords is an absolute must. How do you identify these keywords, you ask? Well, gone are the days when you’d have to do this manually. Now, you have at your disposal a host of efficient tools that will help you zero in on the right set of keywords for your crowd. 
• Pay attention to the keyword match types. Google Ads offers you three match types to choose from- exact match (search query matches the meaning of your keyword), broad match (search query relates vaguely to your keyword), phrase match (search query matches the context of your keyword). Selecting the right keyword match type will send your ad to sites where there’s a greater likelihood of obtaining not just impressions but also conversions. 
• Chalk out a sound bidding strategy. A lot of the time, businesses lose impression on their ads because they fail to realize they are being outbid by their competitors on the very keywords they’re targeting. For small and mid-sized businesses who work on tight budgets, preparing a strong bidding strategy becomes all the more important. Rather than stretching themselves thin by trying to outbid their competitors on all their desired keywords, they are much better off preparing a list of their most essential keywords, assigning a hierarchy to them, and then bidding accordingly. 
• Look to continuously raise the quality of your ads. Remember how we talked about the Quality Score rating determining your ads impressions? An ad that ticks all the right boxes will always give you rich returns. A few ways in which you can fine-tune your ads are: write crisp and persuasive headlines; ensure the ad copy centres around the customer’s sentiments; include an impactful CTA; clearly illustrate your USPs; make clever use of visual elements. 
• Study the ads of your competitors; there’s always plenty to learn from them!

Wrapping it up

Google Ad impressions data offer crucial insights regarding the performance of your campaigns and hence they must be monitored with great care and discipline. We hope the insights shared above will help you not just amplify your ad impressions but also secure greater conversions! And for more deep insights and how google ads impressions actual works connect with our team at Mavlers.