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The short answer
Impression share lost to budget is only worth buying if the missing traffic would convert at a cost you accept. Oppy prices the missing share at each campaign's own rates and proposes a capped budget raise only when the extra conversions would cost no more than your target.
Why it matters
A campaign showing on half the searches it could looks like it is leaving money on the table. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the missing half is the expensive half, and buying it would raise the cost per conversion past what the business can pay.
The percentage alone says nothing. The price of the missing traffic says whether to buy it.
How Oppy decides
The check needs the account's conversion rate and cost per conversion.
Checks that weigh money or clicks judge what they find on your own account's numbers, not on one figure applied to every account, so what counts as a problem on a small account is not the same on a large one. Checks on settings read how the account is set up.
When there is too little to go on, the check says so instead of guessing. A finding always comes with the rows behind it, so you can read the evidence before you decide.
| This check | |
|---|---|
| Step of the audit | Spend |
| What it reads | Campaigns, their settings and their results |
| Needs trustworthy conversions | No. It does not wait for the tracking step. |
| What happens next | Oppy prepares the new daily budget, with the cap it stays under. Waits for your approval in both modes. |
Check it yourself in Google Ads
- In Google Ads, open Campaigns for the last 30 days and add Search impr. share, Search lost IS (budget) and Search lost IS (rank).
- Keep the campaigns losing more to budget than to rank.
- Estimate what the missing share would bring: the extra clicks and conversions, at the campaign's own click-through and conversion rates.
- Work out what each of those extra conversions would cost. If that is under your target, more budget is worth testing.
What to do about it
Raise the budget in steps, up to the cost of the missing traffic, and check the cost per conversion after two weeks. The impression share estimator does the arithmetic on your numbers.
If the campaign loses more to rank, improve ads, Quality Score or bids instead. More budget will not help.