• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 4, 2024

Google’s Optimization Score, which provides recommendations to improve ad performance, has been updated to highlight competitive pressures impacting impression share.

The feature was spotted by Craig Graham, a Google Ads expert and owner of Grayvault Consulting, who shared a screenshot of the tool on LinkedIn.

The tool provides a clear picture of how competitors like Amazon and Microsoft affect ad campaigns, helping advertisers to make better decisions.

Optimization Score now provides real-time insights into auction levels and identifies when competitors have been affected by campaign metrics.

Knowing the exact competitor gives advertisers a “huge” advantage to refine bids and strategies, Muhammad Atif, an ecommerce specialist, wrote on LinkedIn.

He wanted to know whether Graham has observed patterns in which competitors tend to push up the cost per clicks in certain categories, to which Graham responded: "Totally." He has heard anecdotes from ecommerce advertisers about different spaces spending more aggressively on weekends.

Some auction insight reports that Graham has reviewed support this. But he was unable to provide anything that is concrete, specific or actionable.

Chris Chambers, head of paid search at Understory, thinks this change by Google encourages bidding more and a fear of missing out of contacting with users based on competitors where marketers may have concerns.

“It’s always fun to find ways to extrapolate actually useful info from Google’s recommendations,” Chambers wrote.

Navah Hopkins, Optmyzr brand evangelist, wrote that “ever since Optmyzr found the positive correlation between performance and Optiscore, I've been giving it more benefit of the doubt.”

Hopkins called it another “’data point” in a string of helpful guides.

“This is a really important call out and puts perspective on it,” wrote Heidi Sturrock, digital marketing nerd and growth chaser, on LinkedIn. “Amazon is a way different competitor/defense strategy than a direct competitor outside a marketplace.”

Martin Svilenov, founder of Averank Digital, called it interesting. “Still the reason for showing this is likely to encourage competition and bidding wars,” he wrote, adding that it is not difficult to see who is likely to benefit.