What is Impression Share?

Impression share is the percentage of available auction impressions your campaign actually received. Metric in Google Ads, Yandex Direct, and some programmatic reports—shows budget, bid, or rank limits.

Components (Google)

• Search impression share — search impression share.
• Lost IS (budget) — lost to budget.
• Lost IS (rank) — lost to bid/quality.

Interpretation

Low IS at profitable ROI suggests raising budget or bids. High IS on a losing campaign is not scale-ready—fix CR/EPC first. Display IS differs from search definitions.

In arbitrage

IS matters for search and brand. Pop/native/push rarely expose IS—watch volume, win rate, eCPM. IS supports scale decisions, not creative quality alone.

See also: search ads, Google Ads, CPC, bid strategy.