Google Says Ad Strength Is Not Used In The Ad Auction

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, said again “Ad Strength is not used in the auction.” She wrote this on X in response to an article on Search Engine Land named Google explains why Ad Strength is ‘so important’ as it addresses industry concerns.

Ginny Marvin explained, “To be clear, Ad Strength is not used in the auction.” She added, “It is a diagnostic tool that was developed to help advertisers understand how the diversity and relevancy of their creative assets can maximize the number of ad combinations that may show for a query.”

She went on to add:

Ad Strength looks at 4 categories that have been identified to result in better performance through regression analyses.

For example, a low Ad Strength could explain a lack of impressions, but low Ad Strength doesn’t *prevent* ads from entering into auctions.

It’s a feedback mechanism for creative content and meant to be used as a helpful guide to improve the effectiveness of your ads. Again, it isn’t used directly in the auction.

I highly recommend checking out the section on Ad Strength in our RSA technical guide as well (pages 5-6).

In that PDF, it reads:

How does Ad Strength influence my ad’s serving eligibility?

What’s the difference between Ad Strength and Quality Score?

While the categories that Ad Strength measures do influence your ad’s serving eligibility, the Ad Strength rating itself is not a factor in the auction during serving. Ultimately, the quality of your ads and assets are what influence your serving eligibility. Ad Strength is a way for Google Ads to provide feedback on how well your ad is set up. Similarly, Quality Score is a diagnostic tool that aims to give you an idea of how well your ad quality is compared to the quality of ads from other advertisers. Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It’s a diagnostic tool to identify how ads shown for certain keywords affect the user experience.

A lot of this confusion came when Google tested a new diagnostic insights view.

Here are those posts:

Hi Julie, I see the article has been updated with some additional context.

But, to be clear, Ad Strength is not used in the auction.

It is a diagnostic tool that was developed to help advertisers understand how the diversity and relevancy of their creative assets can maximize…

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 8, 2024

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