Google Adwords has announced the launch of the Auction insights report. This new feature will help empower your college marketing department to make better informed optimization decisions (by giving you a better idea of what your competition is doing).
Currently, Google Adwords offers Impression share columns within campaign and ad group reports, which show the percentage of impressions received compared to what was estimated. As we know, this is a valuable report, however, it does raise questions about who is competing in the same auction.
The new Auction insights report can now answer those questions, comparing your performance with other schools competing in the same auctions. More specifically, the report will let your marketing department know how often your ads rank higher than your competitors’ ads on the search results page, and how often your ads appear compared to theirs.
The data provided is at the keyword-level, with five different statistics:
- Impression share
This provides the percentage of time your ad appeared for that keyword - Average position
Where your ad ranks compared to competitor ads - Overlap rate
Percentage of time you and competitor ads show up in the same auction - Position above rate
Percentage of time competitor ads ranked higher than you in the SERP - Top of page percent
The percentage of time competitors are at the top of the page
Clearly, this information can help your college make informed strategic decisions about bids, budgets and keywords. More importantly, it will provide a better indication of where you are succeeding and where you can improve.
For now, reports can only be provided for single keywords (and data is only available from May 1), but this may change in the future. Stay tuned.
What do you think about the Auction insights report?
For more on using Google Adwords for education marketing, check out our posts on Google Adwords Tips for College Marketing Coordinators and Pay Per Click Writing Tips.
