Google Ads Auction Insights is a valuable tool for PPC professionals to gain insights into competitor performance. However, the tool has notable limitations that can hinder your ability to create more effective campaigns in AdWords or Google Ads. This post explores those limitations and explains how Adthena can help you overcome them to optimize your PPC strategy and maximize your ROI.
Key limitations of Auction Insights
Overlapping terms only: Auction Insights only shows competitor activity on overlapping search terms, providing a partial view of their PPC strategy. For PPC managers, this means missed opportunities to identify untapped keywords where competitors may dominate. Even for the same terms, the data is limited to times when you’ve overlapped with them in the auction.
Limited visibility of competitor activity: For PPC managers, Auction Insights’ limited visibility makes it harder to track competitors’ strategies across the market. Without insight into auctions you aren’t participating in, benchmarking and identifying opportunities for keyword expansion become difficult. To effectively outbid competitors, you need to understand their entire bidding strategy, including what other keywords they’re targeting and how they’re allocating their budgets.
No Looker Studio integration: For PPC professionals who rely on tools like Looker Studio for reporting, the lack of integration adds complexity. This can delay analysis and make it harder to communicate results to stakeholders effectively.
Impression share threshold: Auction Insights has a minimum 10% impression share threshold for your own activity. If your impression share falls below this threshold, the data won’t appear in your report, limiting your ability to fully assess your performance. Therefore, while it may seem like you have a full view of the competition, a significant amount of critical data remains hidden.
(Venn diagram showing limited terms you actually get to see in Auction Insights)
How PPC professionals can address these limitations
Here’s how Adthena can help you bridge that gap and drive more impactful results:
1. See terms your competitors appear on
With Adthena, PPC professionals can identify where competitors are bidding, but you aren’t. This includes prospective terms for categories you want to compete in, to ensure you can successfully launch new activity.
For example, PrettyLittleThing leveraged Adthena’s competitive insights to identify exactly which search terms their competitors were targeting, enabling them to connect with consumers who were ready to buy. This approach allowed them to appear on 1,400 additional terms with text and shopping ads compared to the previous year, resulting in a 47% increase in share of clicks on generic text ads and a 225% increase in Google Shopping ads year-over-year.
“Search is the channel we rely on to drive lower-funnel decisions that bring in new revenue. With Adthena’s data, we were able to increase share and appeal to our trendy, fashion-forward customers who are already in the market for our products. We now use Adthena for intel in six of our markets globally – and as we expand, we’ll continue to look to Adthena for insights.” — Matt Holmes, Head of Digital Marketing, PrettyLittleThing
2. See the full competitive landscape
Auction Insights shows you data only when you’re directly competing in the same auctions. But what happens when you’re not participating in an auction? Without that visibility, it’s harder to make strategic decisions on market expansion and new keyword targeting. Adthena bridges this gap by offering a market-wide view of competitor activity, helping you identify untapped markets and find new competitive advantages.
For example, Journey Further obtained a market-wide view of their client’s performance relative to category competitors. As a result, they delivered a 97% increase in revenue from Google Shopping campaigns and a 27% increase in impression share. Additionally, the return on ad spend (ROAS) grew by 38%, making the client’s shopping campaigns a big success.
“Adthena gives us visibility into our entire market, and that has been a tremendous help for our Google Shopping campaigns. We had a hunch that we could be doing more on Google Shopping, but without the right data, it was hard to see how. By using Adthena, we’ve been able to see exactly how we rank against competitors, where we can become more aggressive, and how we can drive more revenue from our campaigns.” — E-Commerce Manager at Home Furnishings Retailer
3. Enhanced performance metrics
While Auction Insights provides limited performance metrics, it often falls short when it comes to benchmarking your account health against competitors. Adthena provides comprehensive metrics like Share of Spend, Share of Clicks, and Avg. Position, giving you a clearer picture of how you compare against competitors and where you can make adjustments for better ROI.
For example, Dentsu achieved a 360% increase in demand and a 140% increase in traffic for their client during Black Friday by using Adthena’s insights. They identified that a top competitor reduced its budget in the Image and Micro categories while offering lower discounts. This allowed Dentsu to increase spending strategically, resulting in a 37% increase in impression share and significant revenue growth during this competitive period.
“Thanks to strategic insights from Adthena, we’ve been able to identify our best compared to our competitors, allowing us to increase our revenue during the most important month of the year. This would not have been possible to do in a timely manner without the help of Adthena, which also saves us time.” — Celia Rosado, Paid Search Analyst, and Rubén Fernandéz-Avilés, Paid Search Manager
4. Unlock insights for shopping and PMax campaigns
For Google Shopping and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, Auction Insights lacks critical details on product-specific performance, which is essential for optimizing these types of campaigns. Adthena fills in these gaps by providing granular insights into product-level impressions, pricing, and competitor behavior, helping you optimize feeds, ads, and budgets for more effective campaigns.
You can build a view like this for your competitive metrics (Share of Impressions, Clicks, Spend & Avg. Position). For you and all of your competitors.
(Key competitive metrics for a Google Shopping or Performance Max (PMax) campaign in the Adthena app)
For PMax campaigns, you’ll have visibility into extra search terms that trigger your ads, which Google often fails to provide, as well as a search term report for terms specifically triggering your shopping ads, which Google currently doesn’t provide any visibility on, unless you have a Standard Shopping campaign.
This transparency allows you to fine-tune your campaigns by optimising your shopping feed, text ads, negative keywords, and more.
For example, VodafoneZiggo aimed to enhance their PMax campaigns and drive more revenue. By leveraging Adthena’s insights, they identified terms that were driving up costs and increased spending on non-brand terms by 45%, resulting in a 70% boost in impression share and a 500% increase in orders. They also paused spending on five “Lone Ranger“ terms, saving five figures annually.
“The valuable insights we get from Adthena are simply unavailable elsewhere. Adthena shows us not only where we have opportunities to bring in more sales and revenue, but also where we can save money. It helps ensure that every hour and Euro we invest in paid search is spent wisely.” — Jerry Jacobs, Paid Search Lead
5. Streamline reporting with seamless integrations with Looker Studio
One of the key challenges with Auction Insights is the difficulty in reporting on comprehensive competitive data to stakeholders. Without the full view of your competitive landscape, it’s hard to clearly communicate campaign performance.
Adthena integrates seamlessly with Looker Studio, enabling you to create detailed reports that not only reflect your own performance but also provide insights into the broader competitive environment. This makes your reporting more insightful and actionable for stakeholders.
(Example of the Adthena Performance Dashboard integrated with Looker Studio.)
Curious about other ways Google limits visibility into your campaigns? Check out our blog on how hidden search terms are impacting your google ads to learn how much of your ad spend could be slipping through the cracks.
Take back control with Adthena
Auction Insights can give you a partial view of the competition, but to truly maximize your PPC performance, you need a comprehensive tool that offers deeper insights into keyword opportunities, market trends, and competitor bidding strategies. By leveraging Adthena’s powerful search intelligence platform, PPC professionals can gain a competitive edge. With a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape and robust metrics, you can optimize your campaigns with confidence and maximize your ad investment.
Regardless of your industry, Adthena empowers you to tackle your biggest digital marketing challenges, save money, and enhance ROI and conversion quality. Our AI-driven technology offers a comprehensive view of your search landscape, guiding you toward paid search success.
Discover how the Adthena platform can enhance your PPC strategy by helping you make smarter, data-driven decisions.
