Impression Share Is Greater Than 100%

When viewing your Impression Share metrics within the grid, you may notice that the impression share percentage shows as being more than 100%. The most common reasons for this issue are: 

  • If you include yesterday’s date in your selected date range.
  • If there are any additional discrepancies within the grid.

What Causes The Issue?

  • Including yesterday's date in your selected date range.

The reason for this issue is that Google provides impression share metrics with a one-day delay (two days for APAC). When you include yesterday in a date range, the platform will include zero possible impressions for that day. This means that the total number of impressions for the range may be more than the possible impressions, resulting in an impression share that is higher than 100%.

Imagine you wanted to calculate the impression share percentage for the last two days. The calculation used by the platform would be as follows:

100 x (impressions for 2 days ago + impressions from yesterday) / (possible impressions for 2 days ago + possible impressions for yesterday)

Because possible impressions for yesterday is zero, the first number in the calculation is higher than the second, resulting in a percentage of more than 100%.

  • If there is a date within the specified range whereby the Impressions show a non-0 value but the Impression Share is 0%, then the calculation of "100 x Impressions / Potential Impressions" is thrown off. For example, if you have 2 impressions on a date, the minimum potential impressions for that date by default was 2. If the impression share shows 0%, then it's essentially saying that the potential impressions for that date was actually 0.
  • For all other possible options, please contact a member of our Customer Support team who will be happy to help troubleshoot the cause of this error.

How To Fix The Issue

  • If you include yesterday's date in your selected date range:
    Because of the 24-hour delay imposed by Google, this issue cannot be fixed via the platform. Instead, we recommend that, when looking at impression share metrics, either avoid including yesterday’s date or bear the above explanation in mind.
  • For all other possible options, please contact a member of our Customer Support team who will be happy to help you resolve this error.

Important Information

 

Written by Marketing @ Marin Software

Last published at: June 30th, 2023