Elusive Exact Match Impression Share Explained

What good is advertising if people don’t see your ads?

Fewer views equal fewer clicks, which is bad news for marketing ROI.

Digital ads are taking over from television, so unless you want to fall behind your competition and succumb to ‘Digital Darwinism’, you need to get familiar with online advertising now.

If you want to optimize your campaign to maximize success, there’s one metric more important than most – Exact Match Impression Share.

Exact Match Impression Share (EMIS) is the metric that shows you how well your keywords align with search queries. Specifically, EMIS is a percentage rate that indicates how often your keywords match exactly with search queries.

Understanding this metric enables companies to stop wasting money with irrelevant clicks. Ultimately, this leads to a lot more bang for your buck.

What is an Ideal Exact Match Impression Share?

First of all, it’s important to understand that Exact Match Impression Share is not directly related to match types. However, match types are related to keywords. So, if you choose to bid on a lot of ‘Exact Match Keywords’, you would likely generate a high EMIS.

By using ‘Modified Broad Match’ or ‘Phrase Match’ keywords, your EMIS is likely to hit the bullseye about 50% of the time, whereas solely focusing on ‘Broad Match’ keywords alone will yield a low EMIS, often 25% or less.

A common mistake is to assume ‘Exact Match’ keywords are best, as you’ll get 100% EMIS and save lots of money. The reason this is wrong is because it’s impossible to predict all the search queries your target audience will use, so you should use a mix of match types to cast a wider net.

The ideal EMIS is in the 70-80% range. If you’re getting higher than this, then you’re missing out on a lot of potential keywords. Anything lower than this is risking irrelevant queries and unnecessarily wasted spend.

How to Improve Exact Match Impression Share

The most important question is how to improve impression share? Online advertising is an evolutionary process. Let me give you a couple of tips to help guide your EMIS into that sweet spot.

Add Negative Keywords

This will weed out irrelevant searches, which will reduce wasted spend.

1. Check the EMIS report each week
2. Find irrelevant search queries
3. Add them to the campaign as negative keywords

Monitor Match Types

I’d advise you to limit each ad group to a minimum number of keywords. Only commit 30-40% of your spending on Modified, Phrase and Broad Matches. This commits most spending on the highest targeting level but also allows for keyword discovery at minimal cost.

The Bottom Line on Exact Match Impression Share

EMIS can be challenging, but it is one of the most crucial metrics in Google Ads.

Understanding how search queries and match types are related is critical. Search queries can trigger your ads, and EMIS is the percentage of the time that your keywords match exactly with those search queries.

A higher EMIS indicates tight control over your keywords. Too high can cost you valuable keyword opportunities, and too low could cost you money on irrelevant search queries. Aim for 70-80% range and you’ll have a solid balance of keyword discovery and control. Do you want to measure how your Google Ads campaigns are performing in terms of EMIS. Run PPCexpo Exact Match IS Report today.