Auction Insights is a Google Ads report that shows how your ads' performance compares to other advertisers competing in the same auctions. It reveals: which competitors are appearing alongside your ads, what percentage of eligible auctions each competitor appeared in (impression share), how often competitors appear above your ads (outranking share), how often competitors appear in the absolute top position, and overlap rate (how often you and a competitor both appear in the same auction). Auction Insights is Google Ads' primary source of competitive intelligence within the platform.
Auction Insights does not show competitor bids or spend — this data is not shared by Google. What it shows is competitive presence and positioning, which is informative for understanding the competitive landscape and diagnosing why your impression share or position is changing over time. A sudden increase in a competitor's impression share during a period when your performance declined may explain the performance drop without any change in your campaign settings.
How to use Auction Insights strategically
- Monitor impression share trends — if a major competitor's IS spikes, they have likely increased budget or improved Quality Scores
- Identify new competitors — new entrants to your auction space appear in the report even without prior knowledge
- Assess your competitive positioning — outranking share above 50% suggests reasonable competitive position; below 30% indicates significant room for improvement
- Segment by device, location, and time — Auction Insights can be filtered to reveal competitive differences by device or geography
- Use for bid strategy decisions — high competitor impression share combined with low outranking share suggests bid increases may improve position
- Benchmark against industry — if all competitors have similar low impression share, low overall market conversion rates may explain budget constraints
Auction Insights is available at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level in Google Ads. Navigate to the campaign or ad group, click the 'Auction Insights' button in the top menu bar. The report requires that the selected campaigns or keywords have a minimum threshold of data (typically 7 days and sufficient impressions) before competitors appear. Viewing Auction Insights at the keyword level for your most important target keywords provides the most actionable competitive intelligence.
Higher competitor impression share indicates they are appearing more frequently in auctions you are eligible for. Potential responses: increase bids (if lost IS is primarily due to rank), increase daily budget (if lost IS is primarily due to budget), improve Quality Score (reducing the bid needed for equivalent Ad Rank), or accept the competitive positioning and focus on conversion rate optimisation to extract more value from the impressions you do win. Not every campaign needs to match competitors on impression share — efficiency (CPA and ROAS) matters more than raw impression share.