What's happened?
In February, Google announced a new metric in Search Ads reporting - Click Share. Similar to Impression Share, Click Share tells advertisers the estimated share of all achievable clicks received.
Google also announced that the Average Position metric will be retired later this year. Advertisers will no longer be able to run reports showing where their ads ranked.
How does this impact advertisers?
Advertisers can use the Click Share metric to understand the keywords, ad groups or campaigns that have the potential to capture more clicks if bids or budgets were higher or if there were more ad extensions. This is a useful metric when evaluating where additional inventory is available and optimizing search budgets. Imagine a keyword that drives a lot of sales, efficiently. Having the knowledge that more clicks are available on that keyword is very powerful and the smart optimization would be to switch budget from lower performing keywords, onto this keyword.
Average Position has been a staple metric included in reporting for years. It gives advertisers peace of mind on where their ads are ranking. However, Average Position isn't particularly actionable - optimizing against Average Position alone will not drive better ROAS or more sales.
Precision's thoughts
Advertisers have been conditioned to link higher positions with greater performance - this is a legacy assumption from search's origins in SEO, where CPC is not a factor. However, advertisers should concentrate on paying efficient CPCs that drive a positive return rather than blindly aiming for top positions. For example, paying $10 per click for position 1, to promote a skew that sells for $8 does not make sense. Instead, advertisers should be considering the $8 sale value and the click-to-sale conversion rate when setting the CPC. Average Position is therefore somewhat irrelevant and a distraction.
Google is forcing advertisers to adopt this mindset by removing Average Position and giving greater visibility into where more efficient sales could be available.
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