Reviewed during the [1]. Scallon's campaigns are losing significant impression share due to low Quality Scores, traced to below-average Expected Click-Through Rate (eCTR) — a symptom of poor landing page experience.
Scallon's Google Ads campaigns are underperforming on impression share despite having adequate budget. The root cause is low Quality Scores across keywords in the retirement/senior living campaigns.
Key metrics observed:
- Quality Scores: 4–5 out of 10 across most keywords
- Impression share loss: majority lost due to rank, not budget
- Budget utilization: spending roughly half of the $75/day budget
- Optimization score: 54% (well below the >80% target)
- RSA headlines in use: 9 of 15 available slots filled
- Descriptions in use: 3 of 4 available slots filled
- Sitelinks in use: 2 of 5 available slots filled
Google's Ad Rank formula: Ad Rank = Quality Score × Bid
A low Quality Score forces higher bids to win the same auction position — or results in losing auctions entirely. The diagnostic breakdown for Scallon's keywords showed:
| Component | Status |
|---|---|
| Expected Click-Through Rate (eCTR) | Below average |
| Ad Relevance | Average |
| Landing Page Experience | (implied below average) |
The eCTR being below average while ad relevance is only average points to the landing page as the primary drag. A good ad is sending traffic to a landing page that doesn't convert or signal relevance to Google's quality systems.
"We've got a good ad going to a bad landing page. That's what's happening here." — Mark Hope
Improving Quality Score from 5 to 6 has the same Ad Rank effect as a 20% bid increase — at zero additional cost. For a client like Scallon where budget is not the constraint (impression share loss is rank-driven, not budget-driven), landing page and RSA work is the highest-leverage optimization available.
Mark's guidance: maintaining an optimization score above 80% is a reliable way to keep eCTR competitive. Filling all RSA asset slots (headlines, descriptions, sitelinks) directly contributes to this score and gives Google's algorithm more material to find high-performing combinations.