AdWords announced yesterday that a new metric called Click Share has been released for Shopping campaigns, just in time for Black Friday. Similar to impression share, the purpose behind this metric is to show where bid adjustments and ad relevancy can be improved to increase traffic. This metric can be found on the product groups tab that we discussed last week.

How Does AdWords Calculate Click Share?

The click share metric shows advertisers the percentage of eligible clicks that each shopping campaign actually received. Let’s break that down:

Clicks received / maximum number of clicks that your ad could have received

AdWords tells us that the maximum number of clicks that your ad could have received is dependent upon two factors:

  1. Prominence of the ad
  2. Number of ads showing for each search query

Also, similar to impression share, the only way to improve the prominence and quantity of ads showing is to increase bids and improve the relevancy of the ads.

This maximum number of clicks is calculated for both auctions in which your ads were competitive and auctions where your ad actually showed.

When Should Advertisers Use The Click Share Metric?

It is clear that AdWords has released this metric specifically for ecommerce advertisers that want to optimize their product groupings during the height of online holiday shopping. Specifically, this metric should be used to identify which product groups are eligible to obtain more traffic. Once those groups are identified, an advertiser can simply increase bids for those product groups and improve feed quality, if necessary.

AdWords gives the following example of a retailer using the Click Share metric for Black Friday:

Click Share
Image from adwords.blogspot.com

First, add the click share column on the Product groups tab. In this example, you see “winter coats” with a click share of 30%. This means that you only received 30 out of every 100 possible clicks on your “winter coats” ads. Second, take this opportunity to adjust your bids for “winter coats” to make your ads more prominent. Third, make sure to check back frequently, especially for your most popular products, to closely monitor click share and continue to optimize bids.

Now that you know what Click Share is and how to use it, will you be utilizing this new tool for your Shopping campaigns?