Average position in Google Ads ends

In September 2019, the favourite metric of all PPC specialists will come to an end: the average position in Google Ads. Google announced the withdrawal well in advance so that its users could switch to a different metric from the optional columns from Google Ads. But these will fall far short of the attractiveness of the ending average position.

27. June 2019

Average position in Google Ads allows PPC (pay per click) specialists to monitor the average ad position and, based on the data, continuously adjust the maximum bid CPC (cost per click) according to needs and cost-effectiveness so that they do not spend more than necessary. Once this metric is over, it will be much more challenging to perform bidding optimizations to "balance" the optimal average position and price.

In November 2018, Google introduced new types of metrics that PPC specialists can use in place of average position:

  • Impr. Top Search Impression Rate (Impr. Top, %) - the percentage of a client's ad display at the top of the page above the organic search results;
  • percentage of impressions at the very top of search (Impr. Absolute Top, %) - percentage of impressions of the client's ad in the very first position;
  • percentage of impressions at the top of search (Search Top, IS %) - the percentage of impressions at the top of the page and the estimated number of impressions the client could have received at the top;
  • share of impressions at the very top of the search (Search Absolute Top, IS %) - the share of impressions of the client's ad in the first position and the estimated number of impressions the client could have received in the first position;

And that's not all. Thanks to the Impression Rate metric at the top, the client gets information about what % of the total impressions it received above the organic search results. Additionally, this metric provides data on the percentage of impressions the client's ad may have received above the organic results. It is this information that speaks to the potential of a given ad. 

In addition to the above metrics, Google has added another crucial one: click-through rate. This is the ratio of the number of clicks an ad received when it was displayed to the number of clicks it could have received. But will it be enough?

The fact that Google Ads is discontinuing the average position metric only confirms speculation about the company's efforts to convince PPC specialists of the need to switch to one of the automated bidding strategies. The company is thus becoming less transparent to its clients. Many PPC specialists have also begun to feel the pressure to spend more, despite the fact that the new metrics don't even come close to matching the attractiveness of average position.