Yandex.Direct is a contextual advertising system associated with the Yandex search engine. It can be used by any businessman who wants to attract potential customers or increase website traffic.
There are a number of features that distinguish Direct from its competitors, which will be discussed below. I will analyze not only them, but also tell you how to get started with this site and post your first ad.
Benefits of using Yandex.Direct
I suggest you start right away with the benefits of using this tool.
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Perfectly working algorithms suitable for those who have not been able to promote their product for a long time for various reasons.
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Increased efficiency thanks to the settings present in the system.
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Directional targeting, that is, you can select a city, display time and other parameters that describe the target audience.
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Guaranteed publication of ads on verified sites that have already passed strict moderation.
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Lack of various documentation and other nuances that prevent the launch of advertising in the shortest possible time.
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A simple interface that even a novice owner of a web resource can understand.
And these are just the main advantages that define the whole essence of contextual advertising in Direct.
Account creation and advertising campaign
Now you can start performing the basic actions on the site of the advertising platform. It’s worth starting with registering a profile and posting the basic information necessary to start an advertising campaign. Go to the official website and create a new Yandex account if you don’t have one yet. After successful authorization on the main page, click the button “Launch advertisement”…
You will need to select your country, provide a valid email address and phone number to link the campaign. Be sure to check the boxes for accepting all the rules for using the service, and then click the confirm button.
Please note that the site has a section “You find it difficult to set up your campaign”… There you can choose help from a Yandex specialist or a private certified person. Of course, this service will cost money, but some users are better off using it than manual configuration.
In the first window for creating a campaign, you will need to fill in the basic information: provide a link to the site, add key goals and counters, specify a strategy (budget for advertising and display locations) and enter time limits. Once all the fields are filled in, proceed to the next step.
The second step is audience customization. You have to choose which city it will be from, add keywords for queries and negative keywords, select user interests and retargeting (that is, whether to show the ad to the person who visited one of the specified sites). All of this is filled in according to personal preference.
It remains only to choose the type of ad. It can be a text-graphic image, just a picture, video or mobile advertisement. The following parameters are already dependent on the selected type. Attachment of various links and messages, images and videos, product prices and other details that can be displayed in the ad is available. There are additions, for example, a virtual business card or the price of a product. Each of the add-ons adds a certain amount of percentage to the click-through rate.
This completes the basic setup process. Fund your wallet to activate the campaign.
Selection of key phrases
An important part of a successful advertising campaign is choosing the right key phrases. They affect the ad display parameter, that is, the ad pops up only if the user searches in Yandex for something that matches the specified keywords. First, you need to find out which of the phrases are the most popular and how they should be written in order to increase the effectiveness of impressions. To do this, use a proprietary service from this company called Yandex Word Search (Wordstat).
Enter your keyword query and see the statistics to find out which of the expressions on your topic are the most popular. Copy them and set when setting up your ad, specifying them as a list in a special block. Keep in mind that there can be no more than 200 phrases for one ad group.
When working with keywords, you will definitely pay attention to the “negative keywords” block. These are the queries that shouldn’t be triggered for your ad. For example, you sell exclusively summer tires, so the key phrase “Buy tires” is suitable for you, but you need to set “- winter” as a negative keyword, since you do not trade like that and you do not need to show ads to users who want to purchase such a set. …
Auctions in Yandex.Direct
Above is a step-by-step guide for a beginner to figure out how to set up your first ad group and start promoting, but these are not all the nuances that need to be mastered. Auctions are another important factor. This is the name of the ad selection scheme for display, since you are not the only one who wants to promote your product or services using Yandex.Direct. The most expensive ads are always shown first, that is, those for which the author has offered the highest bid. This takes into account the predictions for click-through rates and the profile quality indicator, which is written about on the support page.
The types of auctions are changing and Yandex currently uses the VCG format. This is a complex system, which consists in the automatic selection of the cost per click, which is necessary to achieve the required effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Setting up retargeting
Above, I have already touched on the topic of retargeting in passing, talking about the basic settings for an ad group. Now, it’s time to talk about this feature in more detail, as sometimes using it can significantly improve click-through rates and ad serving performance. In short, retargeting is a scheme for showing ads to those users who have already visited sites related to your product. You independently determine which user segments are worth capturing and which pages of the web resource to take into account. Be sure to use the counter in Yandex.Metrica.
Read also: What is Webvisor in Yandex.Metrica
After successfully adding the site, you can start setting up retargeting on the ad page. Specify a page or an entire site as a target by pasting the link in the appropriate field. Add your own rules that affect ad serving, then complete the setup and review your projected visitor numbers.
Choosing an automatic ad serving strategy
I will analyze three options for an automatic strategy for displaying contextual advertising in Yandex.Direct. Each of them is suitable only for experienced advertisers, and at the initial stages of working with the system, a manual type of bid management is always indicated. Keep in mind that each strategy has its own level of effectiveness, and optimal performance is achieved only after a certain time, so it may take several weeks to reach the desired value.
Optimizing clicks
The first type is called “Average cost per click”… Optimal for users who do not want to spend more than a certain amount per week on advertising. When setting up, a certain number must be indicated, and the system automatically sets the amount of bids, giving preference to the maximum number of users to attract.
The disadvantage of this strategy option is the inability to predict the correct average bid in advance, since sometimes there is a sharp increase in competition or advertisers with wider wallets come to the market, which is why it is not possible to achieve the desired result.
Conversion optimization
The main difference between this strategy and the previous one is that the fee is charged not just for the user’s transition to the site, but for his actions there. To do this, you need to use Yandex.Metrica to track user actions and understand how effective the strategy will be when choosing specific goals.
This option is more difficult to implement, as there are certain calculations to be made based on the weekly budget and estimated ad serving performance.
Optimizing profitability
If you are an online store owner, take a look at this strategy. It comes in handy if you need to manage ROI and monitor ROI, bringing values closer to goals. Here, too, you need to use the Metric, setting the appropriate goals. When choosing this strategy, several parameters are available: CPC, weekly budget, and percentage of product cost.
Getting to know Direct Commander
Finally, I will tell you about a useful application for those who are deploying a full-scale advertising campaign and need special tools for more flexible management of all ads. It makes no sense to talk about this tool in detail, since it only indirectly relates to the topic of the article. Instead, I advise you to read the instructions on the official website to understand how the software works and whether you need it.
I tried to tell you in detail what advertising in Yandex.Direct is, how to set up your first ad and what development strategy to choose. Of course, it will not be possible to reveal absolutely all the details, since this is a complex topic.
Remember that you can always use the services of certified specialists who will lead the created campaign to success much faster.