Google Shopping ad click-through rate is up roughly 17 to 20 percent year-over-year, even as the number of impressions those ads receive is falling. That's the headline from benchmark data published 7 September 2026 in Optmyzr and Smarter Ecommerce's Market Observer, analysed by Mike Ryan and drawn from a proprietary dataset of thousands of campaigns.
If you run Shopping ads and have been watching impression volume slide this year, this data suggests you may be reading the wrong number. Fewer impressions doesn't automatically mean weaker performance, and in this dataset it's showing up alongside a meaningfully better click-through rate.
What the data actually shows
The Market Observer analysis found Shopping ad CTR up in the 17 to 20 percent range compared with the same period a year earlier, at the same time that overall impression volume for Shopping ads is declining. Those two trends moving in opposite directions is the interesting part. It isn't simply that Shopping ads are performing worse across the board, it's that they're being shown less often but clicked on more often when they do show.
The theory: AI Overviews are filtering the queries
Ryan's analysis ties this pattern to AI Overviews reshaping which search queries actually trigger Shopping ads in the first place. The theory is that AI Overviews are absorbing a chunk of lower-intent, browsing-stage queries, the kind of searches where someone is comparing options or researching rather than ready to buy. That leaves the remaining Shopping-ad impressions concentrated on higher-intent searchers, people further along in deciding to purchase, who are more likely to click through.
It's worth being precise about what this is and isn't. This causal link to AI Overviews is Ryan's own theory, based on the pattern he's observing in the data, not something Google has confirmed. The CTR and impression figures themselves come from a real, large dataset, but the explanation for why it's happening is an analyst's read of the pattern, not a confirmed mechanism from Google.
What this means if you run Shopping ads
If this theory holds, falling impressions on your own Shopping campaigns aren't necessarily a sign that your product feed, bids or ad quality have gotten worse. They may reflect fewer lower-intent browsers reaching a Shopping ad at all, because AI Overviews are answering their query before a Shopping placement ever gets triggered. What's left is a smaller but more qualified pool of impressions, and if CTR and conversion are moving up alongside the drop in volume, that's a fewer-but-better-qualified situation rather than a decline in ad performance.
The risk is reacting to impression volume in isolation. A dashboard showing impressions down for the quarter looks like a problem at a glance, and the instinct is to raise bids, widen targeting or increase budget to chase the volume back up. If the drop is actually query-mix related rather than a targeting or quality issue on your end, that response can push spend toward lower-intent traffic that was never going to convert as well, undoing the benefit this data suggests is already happening.
What to actually do
Pull your own Shopping campaign data and check click-through rate year-over-year, not just this month against last month. Look at CTR and conversion rate side by side with impression volume, for the same time window and the same set of products, so you're comparing like with like.
If your CTR and conversion rate have held steady or improved while impressions have dropped, treat that as a reasonable sign of a query-mix shift rather than a performance problem, and hold off on bid increases aimed purely at recovering impression volume.
If CTR has dropped alongside impressions, this pattern doesn't explain your situation, and the cause is more likely something specific to your account, such as feed quality, product availability, or a competitive shift, worth investigating on its own terms.
Either way, don't treat the AI Overviews explanation as settled fact when you're briefing a client or a boss on why Shopping numbers moved. Present it as a plausible, analyst-sourced theory worth watching over the next few quarters, not a confirmed mechanism, since Google hasn't verified this causal link.
The bottom line
Shopping ad click-through rate is up an estimated 17 to 20 percent year-over-year even as impression volume falls, according to Optmyzr and Smarter Ecommerce's Market Observer data, with AI Overviews absorbing lower-intent queries as the analyst's working theory for why. Check your own CTR trend alongside impressions before reacting to falling volume, and treat the AI Overviews explanation as a theory to watch rather than a confirmed cause.