Aggregating impression share data

[Jamie Tomkins]

We're trying to aggregate the data pulled from the keywords performance report up through the hierarchy - keyword>ad group>campaign>account (the data is also segmented by device and network). However we're having issues with the various imp. share values as the ">10%" results are making it impossible to aggregate upwards accurately. There are big discrepancies between our numbers and what we're seeing in the online interface

We need some sort of view on this for internal reporting and are struggling to come up with a solution. Is anyone else looking at doing this with the sunsetting of avg pos/does anyone know any way around the issue?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for posting your concern and I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Could you provide what impression share fields exactly you are using in Keywords Performance Report? Also, please note that if the fields return value like "< 10%", unfortunately, it's not possible to retrieve more specific value for those fields in AdWords API. With this, I would suggest that you reach out the Google Ads Community Forum about your concern as they are more equipped to answer to your questions.

Regards,
Hiroyuki
Google Ads API Team

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[Zweitze]

Well, you can't accurately aggregate those results. To do so, you would need a replacement value for "<10%" and ">90%", and, whatever you do you know you will be wrong. And even if you have none of such values I doubt the numbers add up. For instance, on campaign level the number of missed impressions because of insufficient campaign budget is included. It's doubtful such numbers are also included on lower levels. But that is a discussion to be held outside this forum, as it's not related to API.

Anyway - the only solution is to download more reports, with different settings. In our case, we also have results segmented by date, and therefore we download aggregated by day, by month, and by quarter. Not nice but there is no other way. Although requested, we decided NOT to download per week or US-week, the latter goes from Sunday till Saturday. Sacrifices are needed here.

In your case I suggest to download by keyword AND group AND campaign AND account (four reports). And, if necessary, download these reports with and without segments device and network, bringing you to sixteen reports per account.

Further, you mentioned you are doing this because of the sunset of average position. You should realize impression share is a different metric.

Hope this helps.

[Jamie Tomkins]

Hi Hiroyuki,

Thanks for getting back to me! We're using the below:

• SearchImpressionShare
• SearchTopImpressionShare
• TopImpressionPercentage
• SearchAbsoluteTopImpressionShare
• AbsoluteTopImpressionPercentage

Our logic was you could use these with the impression value to calculate the various fields such as possible impressions, possible top impressions etc. These could then be used to aggregate up through the hierarchy in our reports. Obviously as you say the >10% values will ruin this - you mentioned the community forum, what way would they be able to help if we can't access the values via the API? Just out of curiosity, what's the reason that don't get the values below 10% - i realise it's the same in the interface but I've never really understood why!

Thanks,

Jamie

[Jamie Tomkins]

Hi!

Thanks for the response! 

Yeah, I'm aware of the fact that they're different metrics. We just used avg pos as an indicator of where's there's headroom in auctions and therefore where we might be able to make gains via more aggressive bids, however with it being sunsetted we're switching in a combination of impr share and the top/absolute top to indicate where we might be able to find headroom.

We have few campaigns capped by budget so hopefully that would not cause those extra ones to come into effect. As you say we've tried to add in arbitrary values for the masked ones but that obviously didn't work. Just wasn't sure if other people might have been able to come up with a solution that we hadn't thought of! 

Thanks for the advice! We'll go away and look at the possibility of pulling the multiple reports - i'm not sure whether it's plausible across all of the accounts but we'll see! 

Thanks again!