Effective September 1, 2015, Yandex will establish new auction rules for all special offers and guaranteed impressions. What will be new there and how it will affect all advertisers, now we will figure it out.
If you have ever placed contextual advertising in Yandex, then you know that money is debited for each click on an ad, but here is how this same is calculated cost per click- this is the question that Yandex specialists have recently revised.
In the official publication from Yandex http://adv.ya.ru/2413 it is said that the main innovation has become more priority attention to ads with high quality indicators.
Apparently, Yandex used to actively pursue the maximum bid, preferring to show in the first places those advertisers who set the maximum bid per click in their advertising campaign than those with a lower bid but a higher CTR ().
Now he's realizing that he's losing some of his revenue by favoring less clickable ads, and he's following Google's path by increasing the influence of CTR and Page Quality Score in his auction formula to ultimately maximize CPM profits.
If earlier the page quality indicator (productivity) played a small role (and immediately after its appearance, Yandex claimed that it was not taken into account at all in the CPC formula and was only an informational indicator), now its influence will be noticeably increased.
Who needs to stress
First of all, those who have poor quality indicators: low CTR and low productivity ().
For them, from September 1, rates may increase sharply and this will inevitably lead to budget overruns - money will start to go faster.
It also makes sense to analyze their advertising campaigns for those advertisers who have a high level of competition in their niche: after all, competitors will probably revise their advertising campaigns and be able to be higher for less money, thereby providing themselves with a competitive advantage.
Those advertisers who initially spent time and money on creating high-quality advertising accounts and sites, in most cases, will feel the return on this investment, as the cost of placement for them, on the contrary, will decrease. It becomes beneficial to have a customized advertising campaign and a neat website.
What to do?
There is no limit to perfection, so you can revise current campaigns, collect negative keywords to increase the TTR, get rid of unprofitable keywords and ads, and work on new texts.
Please note that now there will be rates for all special offers in the interface:
So I recommend reading the article again, where I tried to tell you how you can really save 90% or more from advertising budget- and act, since until September 1, 2015, at the time of the release of the release from Yandex, there is less than a week left.
Useful advice: How to quickly add a useful article to your browser bookmarks: just press "CTRL + D" on your keyboard and the "Done" button, it works in most browsers, check it out now!
Blog - Sergey Arsentiev 📈
- 2588
- April 20, 2016
- April 20, 2016
As a person is greeted by clothes, the overall result of an advertising campaign depends on how effectively the ad is written. After all, its literacy, attractiveness, as well as the presence of basic elements determine the coefficient and number of transactions in the future. Therefore, today we will talk about how to create effective ad in Yandex.Direct.
Perhaps it is not a secret for anyone that the click-through rate, otherwise CTR, depends directly on how professionally the text block is composed, what extensions it differs in, how it stands out from competitors and other informational noise on the Web.
How to write an effective ad
So, let's move on to the main topic of today's conversation and try to create contextual advertising on our own in Yandex.Direct. As indicated in the help service for working with advertisements, well-composed blocks allow you to influence the right audience, as well as make significant savings on the funds spent on placement.
Elements of an effective ad
For several years of working with contextual advertising, I managed to compile a basic list of necessary components and methods to generate the right ad for Yandex.Direct. As a rule, the recommendations that are listed in this material can be applied to ads of almost any subject and direction - not only B2C, but also complex varieties of B2B.
Heading work. In most life hacks, you can find the advice to duplicate the key phrase in the title. It's hard to disagree with this.
In addition to the fact that from a psychological point of view, this technique attracts the user's attention much more (because he immediately finds exactly what he was looking for), additionally, the heading containing the key has bold highlighting. This trick increases the likelihood of a visit to the site, and, accordingly, allows you to increase the CTR.
I would not recommend copying the keyword in the title exactly as it is contained in advertising account. As we can see from the example below, it is highly likely that the overall text block will turn out to be dissonant.
It is better to write “Fishing rods at low prices”, “Fishing rods in Moscow”, “Rods for sale”, getting rid of the selling verb.
Compliance with the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Perhaps this point applies to any advertising materials, not only on the Internet. Any appeal to target audience must meet all language requirements. Among other things, all new sentences in blocks must begin with capital letters, as required by the rules of the Russian language.
Work with texts. I will try to tell you more about how to create selling text descriptions later. In the meantime, I draw your attention to the following important features of the texts that distinguish effective ads in contextual advertising:
Here, too, you need to know the measure, so I never use such slang expressions as “freebie” or “freebie”. In my opinion, such additives will only negatively affect the image of a reputable advertiser;
- upload a group of key phrases to one text block / ad group;
- use the golden rule that says that there should be one ad or group per phrase.
I myself go to the second. I'll explain why. Firstly, this way you can create the most targeted advertising messages by adapting the text to the audience's request. Secondly, such an account is much easier to manage. It makes it easier to correct text blocks, pause ineffective phrases, and analyze the current placement.
Ad extensions. The larger the ad unit, the more important information can fit in it. In addition, such an announcement is much more noticeable. Compare, for example, two different declarations. In the first declaration we can see:
Or a second ad on a similar topic for the same query:
In addition to the second heading, the advertiser does not use any additional tools. Thus, placement efficiency is lost, click-through rate decreases, and at the same time there is a risk of not receiving conversions. Let's talk in more detail about how to work out a text block competently and efficiently.
Creating an effective ad in Yandex.Direct
When working, pay close attention to the title. According to Yandex statistics, about 80% of users first look at the headlines, and then, if they are interested in them, read the text. Accordingly, only in the case when the headings are clearly developed, you can expect clicks on the ad.
CTR directly depends on relevance. It is for this reason that it is necessary to ensure that the text block matches the query that the user enters in the search bar as much as possible.
If possible, you should duplicate the keyword not only in the title, but also in the text. In this case, I recommend to substitute the phrase at the very beginning of the description. Visually, in this case, a kind of color accent will appear on the search results page, since the right words highlighted in bold.
For more comfortable work, you should use the template generation tool, which was created specifically for the user's key query to be substituted into the ad.
Working with different ad formats
Today we talked about general guidelines for writing effective ads. In most cases, these are formats that consist of text and a link to the site. They are most often used in search. Nevertheless, it is worth considering network formats:
- graphic ads,
- text-graphic blocks,
- smart banners.
When working with graphic formats, it is necessary to use accompanying images. Moreover, the use of banners and pictures of all possible sizes allows you to maximize coverage.
Because the recent times Yandex is testing various stencils, it is recommended to expand ad units not only in network campaigns, but also in search placements. Therefore, actively add images and video extensions to your search ads.
Analyze the received statistics, optimize ads in a timely manner and expect a large number of conversions! 🙂
For those who are just starting to understand contextual advertising, this article will be a guide to what to strive for and what to avoid.
Experienced specialists will be reminded of the basic things + at the end you will find an excellent case study on how to double traffic from Direct using one free tool and increase conversion to order by 25% with the same budget.
This method will allow you to get impressions strictly for the queries that you entered, without "mixing" additional words. Impressions will be only on demand in the current form.
This way you will exclude ad impressions for additional relevant phrases that Yandex selects.
Firstly, the phrases may not be entirely relevant, and secondly, you will not have the exact occurrence of the phrase in the title and ad text. And this can reduce the number of clicks on it.
For example, you advertise on the request "Buy an easy chair." If you do not quote it, then the ad will be shown for a number of other requests, such as: "Buy a soft massage chair." It does not fit the essence of the product if you are advertising a regular chair.
2) If possible, create a YML file and generate a dynamic campaign.
Using the YML file, Yandex itself can create a search campaign for you (usually effective). You will only have to write common text for all ads and specify sitelinks. This is one of the most simple ways run ads in Yandex.Direct.
A fragment of creating an ad group of one dynamic campaign:
3) Add benefits to rich ad titles.
In the title, you can substitute the first sentence from the ad text (maximum number of characters 56) with any benefit. This increases click-through rate by 4-5%. Otherwise, Yandex will pull the site address into the header.
An example of an ad with and without an expanded title:
4) After creating a campaign, additionally carry out cross-minus and remove duplicates through Direct Commander.
Direct Commander has a function to automatically remove duplicates and so-called "negative" keywords.
Doubles are repeated phrases, which often happens with the mass generation of semantics. As a result, you will compete with yourself in the Yandex auction for the same phrase.
Double example:
"Buy a jar for cosmetics"
"Jar for cosmetics buy"
Regarding cross-minus:
You sell, for example, cars and auto accessories. In the advertising campaign, you have the phrases "Volkswagen Polo" and "Volkswagen Polo floor mats." For the first phrase, you add “mats” to the negative keywords, including. Everything is logical: in this case, we sell the car itself.
At the same time, on the second request, when the user is looking for floor mats, an expensive ad will be shown in the offer of a car - “Volkswagen Polo”. Because the word "mats" was added to the negative keywords.
Be sure to look for situations like this. Otherwise, in terms of requests, you will show visitors not what they are looking for and drain the budget.
5) Test image ads and use them if you get positive results.
When creating an ad in YAN, you can choose between "text-graphic" and "image" ads.
Graphic is a banner (picture). This approach will allow you to combine the benefits of contextual and banner advertising (without a significant change in the budget).
Possible formats:
To track which format turned out to be the most effective, we recommend adding the placement size in the utm_content link parameter:
6) Enable advanced retargeting by Yandex.Metrica segments.
As it used to be: the retargeting pixel collected those who were on a certain page of the site and left without committing targeted action(call, application, order). Goal retargeting.
Now retargeting can take into account not only the achievement of goals on the site, but also the characteristics of visitors: the sources and frequency of their visits; gender, geography, age; device types and other parameters. That is, to show ads only to those who moved from social networks or from a particular city.
And you can also set a time cutoff - collect only those who have been on the site for more than 1 minute, for example.
Back in 2016, it became possible to transfer arbitrary parameters of visitors to Yandex.Metrica. According to the average check, the period of work with the product, etc.
7) Create separate campaigns for Search and YAN.
It would seem that a thing from the category of "Captain Obvious", but many novice advertisers (especially owners of small online stores who set up advertising with their own hands) make this mistake.
- In the model of user behavior and decision-making (in YAN, a person does not specifically look for your product at the moment when he meets an ad);
- In the principles of compiling ads - based on the previous point, in YAN it is important to describe the product as attractively as possible, and not “get into the request”;
- In the approach to negative keywords, in fact, in YAN you don’t need to downvote at all. Words such as “review, reviews, comparison, photos”, etc. by no means rule it out. According to them, quite targeted traffic comes here.
- In rates (in YAN they are many times less);
8) Use the principle 1 request - 1 group, and add ad options to the group with different texts and pictures.
After testing, it will be possible to determine the most effective ad. Accordingly, we test the text in search advertising, pictures (banners) in YAN.
For example:
9) Add keywords with competitor brands.
The approach does not work in all niches, but in some places it “shoots” well. In the automotive field, for example. When a consumer chooses an expensive product, he considers offers from different manufacturers. Because, most likely, he is looking for certain characteristics, and not a brand.
10) Group ads with low impressions.
This winter, Yandex introduced the "few impressions" status at the ad group level. If a specific group according to statistics gains less than 10 impressions per month, it is blocked. A painful topic for online stores with a wide product range. A huge part of the requests there is low-frequency.
As it was before: striving for maximum relevance, the advertiser set up the campaign according to the principle “1 request = 1 ad”.
For example, in auto topics:
"Cast wheel disk F1"
"Cast wheel disk M22"
These are the so-called article requests. Individually, they won't get 10 impressions a month. Therefore, Yandex calls: combine similar semantic phrases. Do not delve into all these letters - the numbers from the articles. Anyway, ads in 99.9% of cases do not lead directly to the product card, but to the product category.
Therefore, the phrases listed above can be safely combined into one group “Steel wheel disks”.
If some active group "has got" the status of "few impressions", see if it can be combined with another group that is similar in meaning. Or “pull out” a high-frequency request from another group and add it here. Of course, not "from the bulldozer", but coinciding in terms of user needs.
How to optimize an e-commerce advertising campaign for free and on the same budget
This is a case from a free automation service contextual advertising GetDirect for one of the online clothing hypermarkets (the time interval on the charts is a month).
Using GetDirect made it easier to set up contextual advertising and increase its effectiveness, namely:
1) Select a relevant semantic core (the title and text of the ad in the case were generated based on one of the key queries). Collecting the semantic core takes several minutes.
2) Generate ads based on the XML feed (the title and text of the ad in the case were made using the GetDirect automatic generator). The ad generator takes into account many parameters, thus allowing you to create ads for any topic and for any target audience.
3) Automatically set the most favorable rates (this functionality allows you to flexibly adjust the cost of a click and significantly save your budget).
All functionality is free.
The initial situation is reflected in the charts No. 1 and No. 2.
Schedule #1. Number of clicks per day (was)
Schedule #2. Conversion, in % (was)
Given:
- Stable, but slow growth in the number of clicks per day (from 51 to 118 clicks per day);
- Conversion from 24% to 32%;
- CTR 13%;
- ROI 78%.
A task: increase ad click-through rate, increase traffic and conversion by at least 20%.
GetDirect-generated ad title: "Online store of women's shirts - From 2,500 rubles!".
Advertisement text: “From the manufacturer. New collection Spring-Summer 2017! Fitting!".
What and how did they do
- Moved each ad to a separate group and added additional ad options.
- We expanded the semantic core on the search by adding queries with competitor brands and selecting additional phrases using GetDirect.
- Ads were rewritten for YAN, adding more information about discounts and delivery of advertised goods.
What did you get
- Almost doubled traffic growth — up to 224 clicks per day.
- Average increase CTR of ads by 1.8 times - from 13 to 23%.
- Increase in conversion by 25%.
- Increased ROI by 16%.
Schedule #3. Number of clicks per day (now)
Schedule No. 4. Conversion in % (became)
Once again I will list the main features of the GetDirect service, which was used to optimize the advertising campaign.
- Import conversions from CPA networks and online stores;
- Automation of bid management;
- Generation of ads based on XML feed;
- Advanced statistics and analytics;
- Selection of queries for the semantic core.
This allows you to save time on setting up and launching an advertising campaign and optimize costs in relation to the cost of a lead.
Summary