Calculating traffic loss due to competition

Hi. I got a task from my boss to calculate the loss of traffic - for a specific keyword - to our firm's website due to competitors bidding on the same keywords we we're bidding on in a time period of about a month.

Unfortunately the competitors were bidding on that keyword since day one of the campaign until the last one.

I checked obviously the auction insight report but the metrics over there won't tell (or maybe I just don't know what how) me how to calculate exactly or at least almost exactly how much traffic (let's say Clicks) I lost to them.

If anyone could shed light on this the subject I'd be grateful

tnx

 

This is an impossible question to answer. You simply don't have enough information.

You would need to know the CTR of competitors and you don't have that. You could make some assumptions but you could never pin it down. Besides, it could easily change and does. Don't get into a mindset that what you see is static.

Instead, concentrate on improving your own campaign. You have no control of what competitors are doing so best to worry about what you're doing and increasing your own sales. In my opinion, spending time on that sort of activity your boss wants you to do is a big waste of time.

Now the auction insights is a good tool to gauge how you compare to others. I assume that the fourth line is you since it shows nothing for overlap rate. That 85% impression share rate is great. Given only one other serious competitor, I would increase my budget to get it higher, provided your QS is good too. Looks like it may not be as good as that first one (87% of time above you and average half a position higher than you).

Just the fact that your main competitor has their ads show 87% of time above you, since CTR is higher in the higher positions, he has a better CTR than you. That does not tell you what his CTR is however. It doesn't even tell you the exact keywords he's using and if those match yours but they probably are much the same. You certainly can't do this on a keyword-by-keyword basis and for all competitors. You can get the impression share on a keyword basis in the keywords report. It also provides the reason why you are not at 100%, because of budget or ranking, and these can be useful information as to the health of your campaign.