What Is Google Ads Auction Insights, and How Do You Read It

Google Ads Auction Insights is a native report that shows you which other advertisers are competing in the same auctions you are, for the same keywords. It doesn't give you ad copy or landing pages, it gives you domains and a handful of aggregated metrics for each one.

It's the closest thing Google offers out of the box to answer the question "who am I actually competing with in Google Ads?". The report itself isn't the problem, knowing how to read it and remembering to check it regularly is.

Where to find Auction Insights in Google Ads

You can pull this report at three different levels: campaign, ad group, or keyword. The path is similar in all three: go to the corresponding section (Campaigns, Ad groups, or Keywords), check the box next to the items you want to review, and look for the "Auction insights" option above the table, usually near the details icon or inside the reports menu.

It's worth checking regularly, not just once: if you've never looked at it, it's the first place to start before you consider any automated monitoring system.

NOTE: The exact location changes from time to time with Google Ads interface updates.

Which campaign types support it

Not all of them. Auction Insights works for Search, Shopping, and, as of 2026, Performance Max campaigns (the latter with more limited data, broken out separately into search and shopping segments, a recent addition that restores some of the competitive visibility that was lost when PMax launched). It isn't available for Display, Video/YouTube, Demand Gen, or App campaigns.

There's another practical detail worth knowing: if a campaign doesn't accumulate the minimum threshold of impressions or clicks, the report simply doesn't generate, showing an insufficient-data notice instead of an empty or partial table.

What each column measures

You pull the report at the campaign, ad group, or keyword level. For every competing domain, it shows:

• Impression share: the percentage of auctions you were eligible for where your ad actually showed, restricted to the auctions that domain also competed in.

• Overlap rate: how often that domain's ad showed at the same time as yours.

• Position above rate: among the auctions where you both showed, how often that domain's ad ranked above yours.

• Top of page rate: how often that domain's ad appeared above the organic results.

• Abs. top of page rate: how often that domain's ad landed in the very first position on the page.

• Outranking share: how often your ad outranked that domain's, meaning it either showed higher or showed when theirs didn't show at all.

None of these columns tell you the ad's actual copy, the landing page it points to, or the exact moment it ran. You get the aggregated pattern for whatever date range you selected, nothing more granular.

What a sample report looks like

Made-up data, used only to show how the table reads, not from a real account:

In this example, your brand holds the highest impression share, but three separate domains are competing in the same auction, and one of them (competitor-a.com) is outranking you in nearly 1 out of every 3 auctions where you both show. That's exactly the kind of pattern this report is built to surface, if you remember to look.

Using it to spot brand bidding

Run the report against your own brand campaign, and any domain that shows up that isn't you is, by definition, bidding on your brand term.

You don't need to have identified them beforehand, the report surfaces them from the real auction data.

That makes it a reasonable starting point if you've never checked whether anyone is bidding on your brand. Filter the report to your brand campaign, see which domains show up, and you already have a first snapshot of who's competing for your own name.

What Auction Insights doesn't do

Here's the part that matters before you rely on this report alone: it's a retrospective snapshot over a date range you choose, not a real-time alert. If a competitor bids on your brand for three days and then stops, and you check the report two weeks later with the default date range, that pattern is easy to miss entirely, buried inside the rest of the period's data. It also doesn't notify you proactively, you have to go pull it yourself, campaign by campaign and market by market if you sell in more than one country.

Click here to see how to defend yourself

How BidLemon automates this

BidLemon starts from the same underlying logic as Auction Insights, detecting who's bidding in your auction, without relying on you to pull the report manually or remember to check it in every market. It monitors your brand terms continuously, in the countries you choose, and alerts you the moment it detects activity, with evidence captured from that instant.

Want to know who's bidding on your brand right now?

Without pulling Auction Insights by hand, market by market.

Start monitoring →