YAN from A to Z: what targetings are in YAN and how they work

Online publication SEOnews and online advertising service eLama continue the course “YAN from A to Z” on setting up campaigns in the Yandex Advertising Network.

We have already figured out earlier:

In the third lesson of the video course, the leading paid traffic specialist eLama Nikita Kravchenko will tell you what targeting is in YAN, how they work and how to collect key phrases for YAN.

Types of targeting in YAN

Targeting allows you to target the audience that the advertiser is interested in. There are more types of targeting in YAN than in search advertising. Let s consider them in order.

Auto targeting

It works without any additional targeting according to the principle: you compose an ad, add links to the ad, and Yandex.Direct independently finds the audience that it considers relevant to you.

The selection of an audience in auto-targeting is based on the analysis of ads and landing pages. If you add a lot of ads and the correct landing pages to these ads, then Yandex.Direct will most likely learn to select exactly the users that you are interested in.

At the start, it is recommended to disable this type of targeting in order to target exactly those user segments that interest you the most. It is better to start point-by-point, picking up key phrases, short-term interests, etc. If you immediately turn on auto-targeting, it is highly likely that the budget will be spent quickly, and the efficiency will not be very high.

Auto targeting should be enabled at the stage when key phrases and other targetings are worked out and the auto strategy is already working well. Connecting auto-targeting to auto-strategy is the right approach, because Yandex.Direct in this case optimizes the entire advertising campaign as a whole.

You can also use autotargeting if you want to expand your reach. If you are launching a project with huge budgets, there is no time for testing, but you need to start right now and still get good coverage, you can turn on auto-targeting right away.

Display regions (geotargeting)

Here, you can select the location where the audience you are interested in lives.

Key phrases and negative keywords

The main type of targeting in YAN to start with. The keywords you add to your ad campaign determine which users your ads will be shown to. Key phrases help target an audience either by search history or by the subject matter of the sites the user is visiting right now.

It is recommended to use high-frequency and mid-frequency key phrases in YAN. You don t need to look at the frequency in Wordstat, just take the phrases that we usually use in search advertising to dig deeper into the semantics. For example, the basic high-frequency phrase “car selection” is suitable for YAN.

You can also use “problem” queries (as queries), for example, “how to pick up a used car”. In Search, you don t need to use such phrases at the start, but they are suitable for YAN, since they define the very segment of the audience that already has a “pain”.

In addition, you can use high-frequency and mid-frequency near-theme phrases. For example, if you are promoting goods for children, the target audience is young parents, then you should first define the entire range of interests of young parents. Topical phrases will help you reach the segment of the audience that interests you.

Also, you can accurately run ads on competitors (without using someone else s trademark).

Retargeting and audience selection

Retargeting allows you to target an audience that you have previously interacted with (for example, users were on your site, performed certain actions.

Audience matching allows you to serve ads to users based on:

• hyperlocal targeting (targeting to circles and polygons, configured through the Yandex.Audience service);
• targeting a look-alike audience (an audience similar to the original segment is built through Yandex.Audience).

Important: when you made hyperlocal targeting and added it to the ad group level, then this geolocation must be inside the main geo (for example, a circle in the center of St. Petersburg, main geo is St. Petersburg).

It is also worth considering that hyperlocal targeting works separately from key phrases. That is, you cannot target only people who live within a 2 km radius and were interested in specific phrases.

Life hack: if you want to target the audience by key phrases and by geo at the same time, you can add key phrases to the group level, hyperlocal targeting should not be used as targeting, but added as a bid adjustment at the ad campaign level or at the group level. For the entire advertising campaign, you can set a very low rate, for example, 50 kopecks throughout St. Petersburg, and set a high increasing adjustment for the desired radius (for example, 1200%). Then the impressions for this radius will go well.

User profile

Here you can set various short-term interests – what the user is interested in right now.

The user profile includes 19 categories of short-term interests, which Yandex determines based on the Crypt technology. One user profile can be assigned three sets of different interests, which work on the “AND” operator. In one set, you can add up to 10 different categories of interests that operate on the “Or” operator.

How to work with targeting in YAN

• Start with targeted high and mid-range keywords that you think will work for you. If you run YAN after Search Ads, you can see which high-frequency keywords work best in Search and start with them.
• Test user profiles.
• Hyperlocal targeting works inaccurately, but sometimes it gives good results, so it can also be tested.
• Auto targeting should be included if you have a budget to expand your reach or you are already working on an auto strategy.

How to find high-frequency and mid-range key phrases

First, you need to analyze the product that you are promoting: advertising objects, target audience, phrases by which your product can be searched. You fill in basic words, and then form bases from them, which can be immediately used in YAN.

Bases are easy to collect using special services that allow you to combine key phrases. For example, eLama has a free Key Phrase Combinator tool that can be used even without registration.

Further, key phrases need to be grouped in order to make an accurate proposal within each group (for example, phrases related to the selection of a car will go into one group, and phrases with the selection of a motorcycle – into another).

On a note: now YAN works very broadly, not the way it used to. If you add the phrase “wholesale airpods”, then, most likely, the impressions will go even to those users who just wanted to know about airpods. Therefore, in order to exclude non-target audience, compose ads so that those who are not interested in wholesale do not click on the ad.

Analyze, optimize and test hypotheses to improve the effectiveness of your ad campaign.