If you haven’t already heard the big news, Google plans to sunset one of its most popular, yet often misunderstood metrics – average ad position – this September. If you haven’t determined what metrics you are going to utilize in place of average ad position, now is the time!

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Visual Breakdown. Unlike average position, these metrics don’t reflect the order of your ads compared to other ads, but the actual location of your ads on the SERPs.

What are Google’s New Ad Prominence Metrics?
To help advertisers better understand where their ads are appearing in the SERPs (search engine results pages), Google rolled out four new ad position metrics – collectively known as ad prominence metrics.

  • Absolute Top Impression Rate the percent of your impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.
  • Top Impression Rate the percentage of impressions on the top of the SERP.
  • Search Absolute Top IS the impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location on the SERP divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the absolute top location.
  • Search Top IS the impressions you’ve received in the top location on the SERP divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.

Prominence Metrics Offer More Transparency and Control
Average ad position has always been a bit complicated to understand. Google used to refer to it as ad position and then slowly called it average position. Average position shows how your ads typically rank against other ads in the same auction. This rank determines the order in which ads appear on the page – not the ad’s location on the page.

The real benefit of the new ad prominence metrics is that they provide better indications of where your ads actually appear on the search results pages.

What Ad prominence Metrics Should You Focus On?
According to Google, when your focus is on understanding the location of your ads on the SERP, Top Impression Rate and Absolute Top Impression Rate will help you clearly understand how often your ads are appearing above the organic search results. These metrics best align with how many people viewed average ad position so we recommend utilizing these metrics when reviewing campaign performance.

Top and Absolute Top Impression Share are better utilized for when you want to use page location bid strategies. If you want to increase brand awareness – not drive traffic to your site – you can use Target Search Page Location or Target Outranking Share to maximize visibility. This can become a costly bid strategy and should be used with caution.

How Do These Metrics Work Across SERPs?
Per Google, as of now if an ad shows above search results on pages 2, 3, etc. it is still counted as an Absolute Top and Top impression. Differentiating between pages 1, 2, etc. is not relevant or actionable so there are no plans to support segmenting performance based on Page 1 vs other pages.

What Are My Next Steps?
If you’re a current client you’ll have seen communications about how we are addressing this change. If you’re not, discuss as a team what metrics you want to focus on and be sure to adjust your views within Google Ads to showcase these new columns so you can properly monitor performance. Or even better, email us to find out how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals – info@eruptr.com.

We’re big fans of this change and feel this is a win for the industry and advertisers to better understand the location of our ads.