The Opportunities tab is located on the main navigation tab in AdWords and gives you ideas to:

• Increase traffic even if costs increase
• Increase traffic while balancing costs
• Maintain or decrease costs

The three areas in which ideas are shown include:

• Overall campaign budgets
• Keyword bids
• New keywords

It is important to note that these ideas are also shown in other areas of the AdWords interface, whether it be the Keyword Tool or the Bid Simulator. The Opportunities tab is a central area where all of these ideas are kept.

The first 2 ideas revolve around budget, whether it be for individual campaigns or keyword bids. In the bar graph above, we can see that we are missing an estimated 5 clicks due to budget because of our current spend. By increasing our daily budget we will theoretically capture these 5 missed clicks moving forward.

In the second example, Google is recommending we change our bid for a particular keyword from $0.40 to $0.46. By increasing our bid to $0.46 we will potentially see on average 22 more clicks with 653 impressions at a cost of $11.40.

Though these budget and keyword bid estimates are based on historical data, it is important that you only make updates if the recommendations make sense for your campaign goals.

The third idea is essentially a condensed version of the keyword tool as Google recommends new keywords with estimated potential clicks and the competitiveness of each term. You also can see the potential impressions and costs of each keyword. Again, make sure that each new keyword you add makes sense for your bottom line.

Within the Opportunities Tab also exists the “Analyze Competition” option. Within this option you can compare your clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position against competitors who fall into your categories. In the example above we see that this advertiser is at the top of the competitive range for clicks in the Apparel category, meaning this advertiser performs extremely well against competitors. For the Computers & Consumer Electronics industry this advertiser is in the median range. You can also go more granular by digging into subcategories.