Impressions are down but clicks are better?

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📉 Your shopping ad impressions are down. your best clicks might be up.

AI Overviews may be reducing the total volume of Shopping ad impressions while concentrating the clicks that do happen among higher-intent searchers, according to recent search industry reporting. 

That's a specific and easy-to-misread pattern: a team watching impression volume decline has every reason to assume the channel is losing ground, while the actual shift might be that AI Overviews are absorbing the lower-intent browsing queries that used to generate impressions without converting, leaving a smaller but sharper pool of clicks behind.

Those are two very different stories for the same declining number. One says Shopping ads are losing relevance. 

The other says Shopping ads are becoming a more efficient channel wearing a worse-looking top-line metric. 

Reacting to the wrong one means abandoning a channel that's actually working better than it looks, or missing that the remaining traffic deserves a different bid and budget strategy than the broader traffic it used to compete alongside.

Separate impression volume from conversion quality before drawing any conclusion

A pure volume decline tells you activity changed. It says nothing about whether the activity that remains is better or worse, and conflating the two is how a genuinely positive shift gets treated as a problem.

Pull your Shopping campaign data split by impression volume and conversion rate over the same period, rather than looking at either number alone. A falling impression count paired with a rising conversion rate is the specific signature this pattern would produce, and it calls for a different response than a decline across both metrics together.

Recalibrate bids for a smaller, higher-intent pool rather than defending old volume

If the remaining clicks genuinely represent higher purchase intent, bidding as if you still need to capture the same volume of lower-intent traffic wastes budget chasing impressions that structurally aren't coming back through this channel.

Test higher bids against the now-smaller, more qualified pool and track whether cost per acquisition improves even as total spend or impression share looks smaller on a surface-level report. A channel converting better on less volume can still be the better allocation of the same budget.

Watch whether this pattern holds across your specific category, not just in aggregate reporting

Aggregate industry reporting on a shift like this doesn't guarantee it applies evenly to every category or query type, and a category with different purchase-intent dynamics could see this play out differently.

Tracking Shopping ad performance alongside AI Overview visibility for the same queries, rather than treating paid and AI-surfaced visibility as two separate reports that never get compared, is what Semrush One is built to surface. You can see how it works here.

A declining number isn't automatically bad news. It's just a number, and what it actually means depends on what's happening underneath it.

Together with Billo

You Need To Check This Before You Scale Another Q4 Ad

Your best-performing ad may be underperforming against the ads competing for your customer.

Q4 benchmarks change by category and month. Scale against the wrong one, and every extra dollar can widen your performance gap.

Billo analyzed 80,069 sales-objective Meta video ads across 14 categories and turned the findings into a free Q4 Performance Calculator.

• See how your results compare with the right category benchmark.
• Find the month when your category offers the biggest opportunity.
• Identify the performance gap to fix before increasing spend.

In under a minute, you get a sharper target and a clear priority for your next creative batch. That means faster decisions and more confidence behind the ads you choose to scale during the most competitive quarter.

Run the calculation before your next Q4 budget increase locks in an avoidable disadvantage.

⚡Great ACoS can hide stalled amazon growth 

This framework argues that Amazon campaign labels can create a misleading picture of performance. A supposedly non-branded campaign may still capture branded searches or target the brand’s own ASINs, making efficiency look strong without generating much incremental demand.

Why it works: Classifying converting search terms by actual branded versus non-branded intent reveals where spend is really going. Brands can then reduce unnecessary defensive spend and redirect budget toward keywords capable of acquiring new demand and improving organic rank.

Where it needs balance: Branded advertising isn't automatically wasted spend. It can protect placements from competitors and support conversion. The goal is to understand its incremental value and avoid letting cheap branded conversions make overall acquisition performance look stronger than it really is.

🎥 Reel of the Day

What Works:

1. Emotional Time Jump - The identical doorway composition makes the adult-to-child cut feel like time reversing itself. Without explanation, viewers instantly understand the message that adulthood changes the body, not the spirit.

2. Music Drives Emotion - “Hey There Delilah” brings nostalgia before the visual payoff even arrives. Its gentle, familiar melody makes the transition feel reflective and sentimental rather than like a typical pizza-brand Reel.

3. Brand Through Feeling - Krusty’s Krack barely needs to sell the pizza. Instead, pizza becomes the connecting object between adulthood and childhood, associating the restaurant with comfort, memories and enduring simple pleasures.

Show the same product being enjoyed at two different life stages, match the composition precisely, then pair the reveal with nostalgic music. The product becomes an emotional bridge rather than an advertisement. 

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Thanks for reading this edition! Keep pushing boundaries, testing ideas, and staying inspired. See you in the next edition with more ways to ignite your marketing success. 🥰