Most people pull the auction insights report, see some competitor with high overlap, and immediately start changing bids.
That’s not how it works.
Auction insights is a diagnostic tool. It tells you which competitors show up in the same auctions as you, and who wins when you’re both there. You rarely make decisions based on auction insights alone. But it adds context to decisions you’re already considering.
Table of Contents
What auction insights shows you
The report is available for Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns. It gives you a handful of metrics. Here’s what each one actually means.
- Impression share. The percentage of auctions where your ad showed up. If you have 40% impression share, you appeared in 40% of eligible auctions. The other 60% you missed, either because of budget or ad rank.
- Overlap rate. How often a competitor shows up in the same auctions as you. If competitor A has 59% overlap, that means in 59% of the auctions where your ad appeared, their ad appeared too. It tells you who’s fishing in the same pond. Not much more than that.
- Outranking share. When both you and a competitor show up, how often do you rank higher? This is the metric that shows actual competitive pressure. 45% outranking share means you beat them less than half the time in head-to-head matchups.
- Position above rate. How often a competitor’s ad appeared above yours. Available for Search campaigns only.
- Top of page rate. How often your ad showed at the top of the page, above organic results. Search only.
- Absolute top of page rate. How often your ad was the very first result. Search only.
For Shopping campaigns, you only get impression share, overlap rate, and outranking share. Performance Max splits the data into Search and Shopping categories
How to actually read the report
The first thing to look at: which competitors keep showing up, and how does that change across different campaigns or time windows.
That’s it. Start there.
Today, for example, we found that a competitor in one account is really aggressive on product name searches, but barely shows up on more generic category searches. That’s useful. It means we can get more aggressive in the category campaign, because we face less competition there.
You wouldn’t know that from an account-level view. You’d see some average overlap number and miss the pattern entirely.
Where to look: campaigns and ad groups, not keywords
Your campaigns should already be segmented by intent or product group. So you check auction insights at the campaign level or ad group level. That’s where you get signal.
Keyword-level auction insights matters less these days with broad match doing most of the heavy lifting. But if you’ve grouped your broad match queries in a specific ad group, you could compare the competitive pressure there versus your exact match ad groups. Sometimes those look very different.
For Shopping, look at it per campaign. If you’ve split campaigns by brand vs. category vs. best-sellers, auction insights tells you something different for each. The competitor that dominates your brand searches might not even show up in your category campaigns.
Overlap rate: not that useful to act on
Overlap rate sounds like it should matter. But in practice, it’s hard to do anything with it.
High overlap just means you and a competitor are targeting the same searches. That’s expected. It doesn’t tell you who’s winning, who’s profitable, or whether you should change anything.
If you want to know who’s actually beating you, look at outranking share. Overlap rate is background information. It sets the scene. It doesn’t drive decisions.
Outranking share is where the pressure shows
If you’re losing more than half of head-to-head matchups with a specific competitor, that’s worth paying attention to. Not because you need to “win” every auction, but because it tells you where you’re weak.
Two things can move outranking share: higher bids or better quality score. Which one to pull depends on your margins and your campaign goals. Sometimes the math says bid higher. Sometimes it says invest in landing page speed or ad relevance instead.
One thing outranking share can’t tell you: whether your competitor is profitable on those keywords. They could be outranking you and losing money doing it. You don’t know. Keep that in mind before you chase a number.
Common mistakes
Looking at account-wide data. When you dump everything into one view, you get an average. Averages hide the patterns that matter. Check it per campaign.
Reacting to one metric. High overlap sounds bad until you see your outranking share is 72%. Read the metrics together.
Forgetting who’s not in the report. Auction insights only shows competitors who appear in your auctions. It doesn’t show the 15 competitors bidding on adjacent keywords who’ll enter the moment you increase bids.Treating it as a KPI. The worst version of this: running campaigns to improve auction insights numbers. That’s not what it’s for. Run campaigns to hit your business targets. Use auction insights to understand what’s happening around you.
When to check it
Once you have campaigns that are converting, auction insights helps you estimate how much more volume is available. You look at impression share, limited by budget warnings, and auction insights together to get a read on the competitive situation.
Before that point, the data is mostly noise. You don’t have enough volume, your quality scores aren’t stable, and a competitive report just distracts from getting the basics right.
One exception: branded keywords. If a competitor is bidding on your brand name, auction insights shows you exactly who and how often. That’s worth knowing early.
What to do with the information
You’ve checked auction insights on a specific campaign. Now what?
If outranking share is high (above 60%) and impression share is also high, you own this space. You can scale if volume exists.
If outranking share is low (below 40%), you’re losing head-to-heads. Check the conversion data. Are these searches worth fighting for? If yes, raise bids or work on quality score. If no, redirect budget to campaigns where you’re stronger.
If outranking share is in the middle (40-60%), check position above rate. If competitors are consistently above you, your bids are probably too low. If they’re not, your quality score is dragging.
But here’s the thing: you almost never make a decision based on auction insights alone. It confirms what you’re already seeing in your conversion data, impression share trends, and search terms reports. It’s one input, not the answer.
What the report can’t tell you
You don’t know why competitors are bidding on these keywords. You don’t know if they’re profitable. You don’t know if they’re testing or scaling. You don’t know their margins.
A competitor with high impression share and high outranking share could be losing money. You might be ranking below them because their quality score is bad, not because they’re outbidding you.
Auction insights shows competitor presence, not competitor profitability. Don’t read more into it than what’s there.
When budget is the real problem
Sometimes low impression share isn’t about competition. It’s about running out of money.
Check the limited-by-budget warning in your account. If it’s there, your impression share numbers are shaped by budget, not competition. Auction insights won’t fix that.
But the report can help you make the case for more budget. “We need more spend” is vague. “This competitor shows up above us in 67% of our best-converting keywords” is specific. That’s a useful conversation to have with a client or a manager.
The limitation in commoditized markets
In categories with 10+ competitors and similar products, auction insights shows everyone bunched together. You can’t outbid all of them. And quality score won’t save you if the market is structurally competitive.
In that situation, the useful move is to find the keyword clusters where you do have an edge. Lower outranking losses, fewer competitors, better conversion rates. Double down there. Concede on the commoditized keywords and move budget to where it works.
Auction insights points you to those pockets. But it can’t tell you which approach works for your specific margins. That part is on you.
