How double-serving is impacting Auction Insights in Google Ads

Everyone’s talking about double serving in Google Ads right now, but almost no one is talking about what’s really impacted: Auction Insights.

With metrics like impression share getting diluted through the double serving update, advertisers need to be careful on how they interpret competitor metrics in Auction Insights. 

Here’s what’s changed, what it means for your performance, and how to regain visibility into how competitors are impacting you.

Even before Google’s latest policy update, Auction Insights had some limitations:

• Overlapping terms only: You only see insights for shared search terms. 
• Overlapping auctions only: You don’t get full visibility even on the same terms, only when you overlap in auctions.
• Limited visibility of competitor activity: You’re blind to what competitors are doing when you’re not in the auction. If you drop out, so does your visibility into their movements.
• Impression share threshold: You lose visibility when your activity falls below the 10% minimum impression share threshold, limiting your ability to fully assess your performance in the auction landscape.

With Google’s latest changes, Auction Insights has just gotten more confusing. Let’s break down what’s happening and what it means for your PPC strategy.

As of April 14, Google updated its Unfair Advantage Policy, now officially permitting advertisers to display multiple text ads on a single search results page, provided they appear in different ad locations. 

Translation: The same advertiser can now show up at both the top and bottom of the page, at the same time.

Here’s a breakdown of how double serving could affect your Google Ads campaigns:

• Impressions: Expect these to increase because two impressions will be counted when an advertiser double serves.
• Impression Share: Eligible impressions increase with double serving, but unless you double serve each time, your impressions don’t rise proportionally – leading to a decline in impression share
• CTR: Advertisers who double serve are likely to see more impressions, but not a proportional increase in clicks since CTR at the bottom of the page tends to be much lower – leading to a drop in CTR
• SERP dominance: Advertisers with larger budgets may now have more visibility on the page.

The “Top vs Other” segment in Google Ads surfaces some visibility into how much more often you’re serving outside of top positions since double serving began. It doesn’t pinpoint double serving, but it can be an extra point of reference:

Since double serving impacts impression share, it will also impact what you’re seeing in Auction Insights. 

Let’s say your competitor’s impression share increases from 70% to 80%. Does this mean that they have become more aggressive, threatening your performance? Or are they simply double serving more frequently? 

That’s the problem: Auction Insights doesn’t tell you. It’s unclear if changes to impression share are a result of double serving fluctuations. 

Even “The top of Page Rate” metric, while helpful, only shows you part of the picture. It tells you how often someone appears at the top, but not how many times they appear overall.

Either way, you can’t know for sure. Many other factors can impact impression share fluctuations, but double serving makes it even more difficult to understand what’s driving changes in your competitive landscape.

Double serving adds another invisible layer as you may be reacting to misleading data and wasting budget doing it. 

To make matters worse, not everyone is affected equally.

Adthena’s research shows that double serving frequency varies dramatically by advertiser, even for the exact same search term.

That means:

• Some advertisers dominate with multiple ad placements.
• Others lose impression share despite no change in behavior.
• Auction Insights becomes a misleading benchmark for competitive visibility.

Adthena developed a double-serving dashboard to give advertisers back some lost visibility into their competitive landscape. 

The dashboard breaks down:

• Which competitors are double serving
• Which categories are affected most 
• How often it happens, down to the specific search term

Imagine you see a competitor’s impression share spike. Are they actually bidding more aggressively? Or are they just double serving more often than you are? 

With Adthena, you can overlay:

• Double serving data 
• Impression share trends
• Top-of-page presence

And finally start seeing the full picture.

Double serving is reshaping the Google Ads landscape at an unprecedented pace. Auction Insights, once a decent proxy for competitor activity, now leaves critical blind spots.

Basing strategy on incomplete or misleading data leads to wasted budget, poor decisions, and missed opportunities. And the longer you wait, the more it costs you.

Book a demo with the team, who can walk you through your custom report and help you uncover if competitors are taking your market share.