Following an announcement in February, Google is preparing Google Ads advertisers for the average position metric sunset from September 30, 2019.
In February, Google announced its plan to sunset the average position metric this September. Before the announcement, it had rolled out two replacement metrics – “Impression (Absolute Top) %” and “Impression (Top) %” – that describe “what percent of your ads appear at the top of the page and absolute top of the page.”
As Google explained at the time, they “give you a much clearer view of your prominence on the page than average position does.” In fact, they reflect the actual placement of an ad on the page – not just the position of an ad compared to others.
To complement these new metrics, Google also rolled out “Search absolute top impression share” and “Search (Top) IS” to allow advertisers to further optimize their Google Ads for position. To complement their efforts, advertisers can also use the Target Impression Share Smart Bidding strategy to get their ads to a prominent location in search results.
As the average position metric will cease to exist in just over a month, advertisers who currently use it are recommended “to start using these new metrics when measuring and optimizing for prominence”.
As a result of the change, the following will be disabled as well:
– Rules using average position
– Custom columns using average position
– Saved reports that filter on average position
– Saved filters with average position
For any advertisers using Google Ads scripts that use average position, it is recommended they review them to make sure they continue working. Furthermore, advertisers need to take note, as the average position metric will also be removed from saved column sets, saved reports that use the average position column (but don’t filter on it), and scorecards that use average position in dashboards.
In the week starting September 30, 2019, the {adposition} parameter will start to bring up an empty string, so advertisers who use ValueTrack parameters should take note.
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