issue with SearchImpressionShare for whole Campaign

[Evgeniy Terentyev]

I'm pulling the Search Impression Share metric from KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT through the Google Ads API using AWQL:

select CampaignId, CampaignName, AdGroupName, Device, Criteria, Impressions, SearchImpressionShare

from KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT

where CampaignId = xxxxxxxxx

during 20200424,20200424

I've received following list of Search Impr. share values:

20.00%
< 10%
33.33%
25.00%
< 10%
42.86%
66.67%
25.00%
40.00%
20.00%
55.56%
33.33%
< 10%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
50.00%
75.00%
33.33%
40.00%
< 10%
100.00%
100.00%
< 10%
< 10%
< 10%
< 10%
< 10%
< 10%
33.33%
31.25%
38.46%
< 10%
100.00%
< 10%
Total: < 10%

Please pay attention to the total value - it's <10%! Also, when I requested SearchImpressionShare for this Campaign from CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, I got "< 10%" value too.

Could anybody please explain why AdWords API shows SearchImpressionShare as "< 10%"  for the Campaign while in average for dimensions I'm getting 36% at least (if I count <10% as 0 value)?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Evgeniy,

Thank you for reaching out. Getting the total search IS for the campaign isn't just the average of the search IS for all the keywords. It is the total impressions / total potential impressions. One of your keywords could have 2 total impressions / 2 potential impressions and have an IS of 100% while another keyword could have 10 total impressions / 100 potential impressions and have an IS of 10%. The total would then be 12 impressions / 102 potential impressions which is very different from the average of 100% and 10%. You should think of it as a weighted average.

If you are still having any issues, please share your client customer ID and the un-masked report definition via Reply privately to author.

Regards,
Mitchell
Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UaSwjn:ref

[Daniel Alvarado]

Hi Mitchell, 

That makes sense. However, is there any way we can obtain Potential Impressions from the AdWords API? I checked the Campaign Performance Report columns and it doesn't seem to be a column listed in there. We obtain data segmented by day for each campaign in our MCC, and we would like to be able to show a summary of the Last 7, 14, or custom dates. So we would want to be able to know what data we can store daily, to perform this calculation and make our data show as close as possible to what the Web UI would. 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Daniel,

It isn't possible to pull the number of potential impressions directly but pulling the impressions and SearchImpressionShare for each campaign using the Campaign Performance Report should give a good estimate assuming all of your impressions are on the search network.

[Daniel Alvarado]

Hey Mitchell, Thanks for the clarification. 

Would that be something like this? 

Impressions: 100

Impression Share: 50%

Calculated Potential Impressions: 200

And then we can add up the total potential impressions for a time period, add up the actual impressions, and then recalculate the impression share based on those two. 

What do you recommend we do with the special values of < 10%? and > 90%? Should we take them as exactly 10%, and exactly 90% as that would then likely yield results that don't match the UI closely. We want to make sure our reporting matches the UI as closely as possible. 

Thanks, 

	Daniel Alvarado
	VP of Technology  +1-305-859-3849  +505-8435-9607 www.whitesharkmedia.com

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Daniel,

Yes, that is the calculation I was referring to. You can also get the ImpressionShare over the period of time that you set your report for so you don't have to do any additional calculations. The API report summary row will also give you the total ImpressionShare for your report which will match the UI. It's up to you what to do with the <10% and >90%, there isn't much I can do to advise on that. These values are estimates anyway so there is some error margin to be expected.