Yesterday, after months of frothing anticipation on the part of PPC Hero and the Internet at large, Microsoft announced that impression share reporting has been released in adCenter.  In the colorful blog post penned by an author that favors the same sorts of hats as our own beloved Jeff Allen, Microsoft gleefully announced the following metrics are all available for your view:

  • Impression share
  • Impression share lost to budget
  • Impression share lost to rank
  • Impression share lost to relevance
  • Impression share lost to other

There are a few things to keep in mind about the new and improved reporting features.  First, the impression share report only works for the Day view, so when you’re fumbling through adCenter’s many, many dropdown menus in their reporting tab, make sure that you select the Day view.  Additionally, the impression share reporting is only available for Account, Campaign or Ad Group Performance.

And because everyone just loves adding in conversion and CPA columns every single time a report is run in adCenter, Microsoft was thoughtful enough to make sure that these new metrics need to be added in the Advanced Settings (under change columns and layout) every single time as well.  They really make you earn those metrics, baby.

Microsoft's New Impression Share Metrics

Buried beneath the wonderful news, joyous mood and Jeff-Allenian hats in this new press release is the “Impression Share Lost to Other” column, which is defined by Microsoft in the blog post as “the percentage of impressions your ad missed due to other reasons.”  Which is so gloriously vague and non-meaningful that it takes the Internet’s collective breath away.  Thanks, Microsoft!