How To Get More Out Of AdWords Shopping Campaigns
It’s no secret that shopping campaigns are an important aspect of ecommerce success. One of the benefits of using AdWords shopping campaigns is that there are a lot of metrics, which measure the performance of Google and can help you make more informed decisions about your current and future campaigns.
On the downside, however, because there are so many ways to look at and interpret these campaigns, they are often interpreted incorrectly (and thus, not really helping anyone at all). The end goal of any shopping campaign analysis is to do everything in your power to maximize profit. To make this happen, insights regarding competitors as well as potential opportunities need to be interpreted correctly, and part of that is understand everything you can about using Shopping Campaigns.
5 Ways to Maximize Your Profit and Get More from AdWords Shopping Campaigns
Below breaks down 5 ways to maximize your profit and ultimately get more out of Google AdWords shopping campaigns. I got several ideas from this article from SEMRush along with a few of my own. Additionally, with each of these 5 methods, a note about how they can be misinterpreted (which causes some problems with using the data):
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Auction Insights
The Auction Insights component of Google AdWords Shopping Campaigns allows advertisers to get a better idea of how their campaigns compare to their competitors’ campaigns. There are two main components to Auction Insights that are available:
Account & Campaign Level:
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Store Display Name (name of competitors)
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Impression Share (impressions divided by maximum amount of possible impressions)
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Overlap Rate (how often ads of competitors had impressions when your ads had impressions)
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Outranking Share (how often your ads ranked higher)
Ad Group Level:
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Display URL Domain (display URL of competitors)
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Impression Share
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Position (average position of ads)
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Position Above Rate (how often your competitors’ ads ranked higher)
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Top of Page Rate (how often ads are shown on the top of the page)
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Outranking Share
How They Can Be Misinterpreted: You can also use this information to adjust bids accordingly if the columns are interpreted correctly. One common mistake that is easy to make is to misinterpret the Outranking Share. If a competitor’s Outranking Share is higher than 50% (51%+), it means you are doing well and that your ads are actually showing up higher than your competitors more than half of the time.
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Search Lost (IS) Rank
Another aspect that is important to look at is the “Search Lost (IS) Rank,” which can be defined as “the percentage of time your ads weren’t shown on the Search Network due to poor Ad rank”. The search loss (IS) rank is a valuable custom column that any AdWords shopping campaign can benefit from. If you look at this in combination with the Auction Insights data, it can be really helpful because both reports influence bid decisions. Ultimately, lower ranks can be raised by bidding more as well as by increasing the quality score.
How They Can Be Misinterpreted: There is a common mistake that is important to address. Often when looking at the outcome of this analysis, the tendency is to increase bids and try to increase the quality score by changing ads at the same time. The problem is that when this is done it is impossible to interpret how the ads actually interpret the ads individually. The best thing to do is to run the analysis and decide if a split test is actually going to be worth your while. This will take more time increasing the bids, but you are going to get much more accurate results. However, changing the bids would make more sense if other values such as quality score and CTR are optimized and margins allow for higher bids.
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Search Impression Share
According to Google AdWords Support, the Search Impression Share is “the number of impressions you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.” People often interpret search impression share as the percentage of impressions that were generated compared to the impressions that are available for this particular market, However, this is not the case.
The Search Impression Share looks at both the current settings, quality score, and the budget of the ads. It is important to consider that if the budget was increased, the impression share could stay the same with the reach increased.
How They Can Be Misinterpreted: I spoke with Sergio Aicardi from The Miami SEO Company about how he deals with PPC campaigns, and he added, “Rather than increasing the Search Impression Share percentage, try to increase the amount of impressions the account, campaign or ad group can receive. To be more specific, by raising your Quality Score and bids, you are able to receive more impressions and will get more impressions as a result of the changes you made.”
Considering this, your Search Impression Share might still be lower because you are now eligible to show up for a lot more. Why is this the case? It’s because your competition is higher and your search impression share is not as large in proportion.
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Benchmark CTR
The Benchmark CTR shows the average CTR of other advertisers for the same product ads. When you are looking at this value keep in mind that ads that show up higher when they have a higher CTR. Therefore, it is best to first look at the Position Above Rate from the Auction Insights Report, then compare it with Search Lost (IS) Rank and then, interpret the Benchmark CTR. This way the ad position and how your own ads rank compared to competitors has been taken into consideration before looking at the CTR.
How They Can Be Misinterpreted: Don’t worry too much if the CTR of your competitors turns out to be higher than yours. What you can do from her is consider testing new ad promotions, such as free shipping or a new campaign altogether.
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Benchmark Max CPC
The fifth optimization strategy is to look at the Benchmark Max CPC. This provides information about how other advertisers are bidding on similar products. Note that this value will only be available for analysis when enough advertisers have placed bids (meaning that the number is statistically relevant). Looking at only the statistically significant data will assure that misleading values are avoided.
How They Can Be Misinterpreted: This value is probably one of the most helpful because the Benchmark Max CPC can be useful for a variety of different things. As an example, if the value is significantly higher than your bid, it could mean your competitors have more budgets and can therefore bid more aggressively. On the other hand, it can also be an indicator that they have higher margins. Out of the five optimization strategies, this can definitely be used to look at multiple angles of bidding and shopping campaign success, just make sure you know what you are looking at and are taking statistical significance into account.
The Takeaway
The takeaway point of this article is that in order to have a successful Google AdWords shopping campaign, it is really important to interpret analysis correctly. This article discussed five optimization strategies, which can improve the performance of shopping campaigns. They are certainly among the most effective, but as you can tell, there are also disadvantages if you interpret the information incorrectly. Make sure you focus on the best strategy for the ad campaign you are running, and know what you are looking at when analyzing successes and failures.
Do you have experience using Google AdWords shopping campaigns? Are there additional strategies you have found helpful? Let us know in the comments section below.
About The Author
Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com
Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.
