Advertising campaign optimization. Techniques and ways to optimize and improve advertising
Details Created on 07.02.2014 12:05
In this article I will talk about 5 chips in I index.Direct, which help to significantly reduce the cost of a click and outperform competitors. There are several options in the YandexDirect system to influence the cost of a click on a keyword. Some are explicit, some are hidden, some are used, some are not. But, most importantly - 90% your competitors have no idea about them!
Attention! You know that the greater the value CTR(click through rate of ads as a percentage of impressions), the greater the discount per click from Yandex? For example, when entering the Special Placement for the required phrase for a new ad for 5 c.u. . with a CTR of this phrase of 15%, the discount can reach up to 70%! That is, you will pay 1.5 USD. instead of 5!
Chip number 1.
“We reduce the cost of a click to ad moderation!”
Is it really possible? Yes! Compliance with the following rules will give you a significant reduction in the cost of a click even before passing through moderation and receiving a CTR. Your task is to provide the following:
The title and text of the ad must match exactly. key phrase meaning, and best of all - include the key phrase in its entirety.
Example:
Title and text on thelanding page must match the keyword and ad text. The text should contain a key phrase and reveal your unique selling proposition.
There are two powerful tools to help you reduce untargeted impressions:
1) YandexDirect syntax
Using quotation marks, "!" and "+" for requests can significantly reduce the number of untargeted impressions. Compare yourself.
The company carries out professional repair apartments on the territory of Moscow.
|
Request specified in the YandexDirect interface |
|
| Apartment renovation in Moscow | "!Repair!of apartments +in!Moscow" |
| The ad will be shown on requests: | |
|
apartment renovation moscow(this is how optimizer programs are looking for, absolutely inappropriate ad display to the robot) private apartment renovation in moscow moscow apartment renovation forum apartment renovation private masters moscow renovation of apartments in moscow photo renovation of apartments in moscow reviews renovation of apartments in moscow cheap work apartment renovation in moscow renovated apartment to buy moscow jobs in moscow apartment renovation |
Apartment renovation in Moscow |
Thus, a strict restriction of the request to the streaming form of words (cases and singular/plural), the size of the phrase, the prepositions used allows you to achieve impressive CTRs, and hence discounts!
2) Use of negative keywords when showing ads for broadly relevant queries
Take, for example, a company that sells multicookers. An excellent niche product, which is practically not asked in the “product + brand” combination, so advertising for the request “multi-cooker” is simply necessary for us.
In this case, the use of negative words (collected from here http://goo.gl/mqq00Q): -recipe, -porridge, -chicken, -repair,... etc. will allow us to reduce ad impressions to those who already bought a multicooker or repairs it.
Collected negative keywords should be divided into 3 categories, with different area actions:
- for the entire advertising campaign;
- for a separate advertisement;
- for a single keyword.
Use the collection of negative keywords for all regions, not just the target one.
This is much more efficient due to the features of the service http://wordstat.yandex.ru/
Chip number 3.
“We provide maximum clicks for our targeted impressions!”
The maximum number of clicks on an ad can only be on the position of special placement - advertising above the column of sites found by Yandex search.
That is why we need to provide impressions only on 2 or 3 positions of special placement, in no case go below. To do this, we stop showing ads at all if the bid we set is not enough to show an ad in Special Placement.
This can be done with the standard Yandex.Direct strategy.
The increase in clickability should also be ensured by using words from key phrases in the title and ad text: they stand out in the ad texts when shown and thus visually attract attention. This is an obvious and popular method of increasing click-through rates.
Setting up additional "quick links" for ads allows you to further increase their effectiveness - due to the attractiveness of the meaning of these links for the target audience.
Chip number 4.
“We get additional discounts for expensive targeted queries!”
Not everyone reads the YandexDirect help, which says in black and white that the overall CTR of a campaign affects the discount for all queries in it. You can and should use this to get a discount on clicks!
For example, you have several highly targeted, conversion-efficient queries. However, these requests are very expensive even after receiving the discount, even though you have applied all the tricks from this guide. At the same time, the total CTR of your campaign with a wide coverage of the audience, containing more than 100 ads for 1000 queries, does not exceed 3 percent. Indeed, a wide coverage does not allow the overall CTR to grow. What to do?
It's simple:
- all requests for which the maximum discount is needed should be placed in separate advertisements at the stage of creating a campaign;
- Ads that need the maximum discount should be moved to a separate campaign that is advanced in terms of clicks, CTR and budget at the stage of creating a campaign. In this case, its overall CTR will be very high and the discount for each request in it will be maximum.
Chip number 5.
“We don’t let competitors waste our budget, we quickly manage the rates for the transition”
Use automatic services to control bids and ad positions that work through the YandexDirect API. Such systems are inexpensive, but give a large number of advantage in a highly competitive environment.
The services allow you to protect yourself from unscrupulous competitors who can raise your bid per click and significantly increase your budget with the help of automatic programs, which will lead to cost overruns and a quick stop of the campaign after they end.
The main advantage of using such services is a clear control of the cost per click, as well as ad impressions in the second or third position in special placement! Remember chip number 3? The ability to keep most impressions on the third position of special placement allows you to save at least 30-50% of the budget in many topics, since the difference in the cost of a click on positions 2 and 3 of special placement is significant in most cases.
Bonuses
Bonus number one.
How to make a really better campaign?
The best thing you can do as a campaign manager is remove from it key phrases for which there is no conversion , thereby increasing the budget for key phrases for which there are conversions and they are maximum.
Not surprisingly, the maximum number of clicks is not equal to the maximum sales. One phrase is expensive and gives minimal effect, the other is cheap and gives maximum effect.
Analytics! Here's what to do first. Goals on the site, target call for visitors from contextual advertising, monthly data analysis. Believe me, in six months you will be able to remove half of the phrases and get more than a 100% more effective campaign in attracting customers without increasing the budget!
Bonus number two.
Want to know who pays the most per click?
Who made the campaign better and got the maximum discount,
you or your competitors?
To get information about the cost per click and the effectiveness of the campaign, you need to take a few simple steps:
- We drive in the search query you are interested in
- Open the link "all ads" in a new browser tab. All competitors are ranked by efficiency + bid per click.
- We compare positions in the search and on the "all ads" tab. All competitors are ranked by referral bid only.
Let's take a screenshot as an example:
Look, the site with the most expensive click, lachatte-spa.ru (first place in "all ads") is at the bottom of the page, in first place in the second block. He will never get a CTR for a discount and will spend much more than necessary. But the site sauna.spb.ru, which is in 6th place by cost per click (1-5 places pay more per click than 6th place), is in an advantageous position of the second special placement and has excellent CTR.
Use new skills.
Knowing the "chips" and applying the techniques, you will get a significant advantage over your competitors!
Analyze.
Don't forget to watch your phrases: optimize!
Research competitors.
Competitor activity analysis will help you adjust your strategy in the most correct way!
Contact a professional.
To competently organize the start of your campaign, attract a specialized agency!
Learn.
Stay tuned for updates on my content!
Hello everyone!
Campaign Management Google Adwords the same not an easy process as. But be that as it may, the optimization of contextual advertising (CR) is the most important action, without which the work of an Internet marketer does not make sense.
Surely, most of my readers had experience launching campaigns in both CR systems and, for sure, they didn’t get the desired results the first time. This happens to everyone, so do not be upset - it just takes time to complete the necessary work.
This most necessary work is the optimization, or maintenance, of campaigns, which we will talk about today. However, to begin with, I recommend reading which we will use.
Have you read? Then let's go!
Stages of optimization
Conventionally, campaign optimization in any contextual advertising system can be divided into several stages:
- Working with keywords;
- Work with other targeting parameters: geography, time, devices;
- Work with ads.
Thus, all the most important parameters of the RK are covered, on which the result depends. Let's go through each, in order.
Working with keywords
On the this stage it is necessary to carry out several types of analysis and, on their basis, already make any changes:
- Analysis of search queries;
- Keyword performance analysis;
- Search and expansion of negative keywords.
In order to carry out this work, we need only one tab and three more nested in it. The tab is called "Keywords": 
Let's start with the Search terms report. Thanks to the data presented here, we will be able to understand what queries the PS users enter before clicking on our ad. In addition, this report expands the semantic core (list of keywords), if, of course, there are phrases that can be added to it, and expands the list of negative keywords, if there are such queries that need to be cut off.
Working with data in a report is easy:
In this way, there is a search for new phrases for contextual advertising in the "Search queries" report. The expansion of the list of negative keywords is almost identical - only you will need to click on the "Add as a negative keyword" button and leave only those words of the phrase that are its basis.
As an example, the phrase “how many minutes to sterilize jars in the microwave” is not at all targeted, so impressions for it should be cut off, you never know. However, the words “how much” and “microwave” can potentially bring customers, so we cut off the word “sterilize”. To do this, it is enough to leave the above word in the "Negative word" field (sorry for the pun): 
Also don't forget to select the level where the non-target request is added. You can add the rest of the query words in the same way, or through the "Negative keywords" tab.
That's how, with just one report, we were able to find new phrases and cut off non-targeted visits. Therefore, we will spend a little less on advertising, and if the costs increase, they will become more efficient.
Now you should analyze the already used keywords. To do this, we will use the "Keywords" tab, where all the qualitative indicators of the elements of the semantic core are presented: 
For example, if the key phrase has unsatisfactory performance (low percentage of conversions, low CTR (engagement rate)), then it should be disabled or corrected.
By the way, in order to track the conversion of elements of an advertising campaign, you need to set up this very tracking. I already wrote about this, read it.
Working with other targeting options
Here our task is to identify the most effective display regions (if you are shown in several regions) and device types (suddenly your mobile traffic converts much better than desktop traffic). For this task, we need two reports located in the "Settings" tab: 
Let's start with geography. Here you also just need to analyze the qualitative indicators in certain regions or n/a of our country:
If some region/city shows nice results, then it makes sense to apply an upward adjustment for it. So, for example, in one client account, the city of Ufa turned out to be the most effective, for which an upward adjustment was applied, which resulted in a slightly larger number of applications from this city. Unfortunately, I can't attach a screenshot because it's not possible right now.
With devices, everything is a little simpler: just go to the "Devices" tab, analyze quality indicators, apply adjustment: 
In this simple way, campaigns are optimized in Google Adwords based on working with targeting parameters.
Working with ads
At this stage, we will work with elements of advertisements:
- title;
- Text;
- Display URL;
- Extensions.
Before you start working with ads, analyze their quality indicators and write them down somewhere so that after making all the changes you can measure their improvement or vice versa.
header
The title of the ad should be as relevant as possible to the search queries of users. To do this, you need to specify in it the main keyword of the ad group for which impressions occur (if your group has several keywords): 
Now there are no problems with indicating the necessary information, since Google has made certain additions in the form of a second heading and an extended description (text) of the ad. So that you can make the headline really big, which will help grab attention. more potential clients.
Text
The text should clarify your proposal, which we reported in the title. Specify Additional information about a sentence using words from the key phrase. So these words will be highlighted in bold when they match the user's request, and the more bold he sees in the text, the higher the likelihood that he will click on your ad and buy from you. 
Below is a case report on optimization advertising campaigns for one of my franchise clients.
However, I am posting this case here not to show its “mega efficiency”, but to demonstrate the LOGIC that should be followed when optimizing advertising campaigns.
Of course, this case is not exhaustive - there are many "trifles" and "tricks" that cannot be described within the framework of one report.
But, nevertheless, this report forms a general idea of optimization, and I am sure that after reading it in detail, you will know exactly the answer to the question: "FROM what I should start optimizing Yandex.Direct advertising campaigns.”
So, case.
Studia12 advertising campaign optimization report
Before proceeding directly to optimization, I analyzed the statistics for the past year for all your advertising campaigns.
Specifically compared period A(2nd half of the year of unwinding, ) and period B(1st half year of unwinding, from March 27, 2016 to August 28, 2016)
It turned out that the average conversion price in the second half of the year (Period A) was 405 rubles. and turned out above almost 2 times than in the first half of the year (Period B). (In the first half of the year, the average cost per conversion was 248 rubles.)
Those. it is obvious that the "drawdown" in all respects began precisely in the second half of the year.
Therefore, it was decided to optimize advertising campaigns based directly on statistics for the second half of the year ( from August 28, 2016 to March 27, 2017).
Step optimization
I must say right away that they are painted below general steps towards optimizing advertising campaigns. Those. describes those actions that "at a distance" will positively affect the overall conversion.
I preferred to omit various subtleties and nuances so as not to overload this report with them.
1. First of all, I looked at the general statistics for all advertising campaigns in order to determine which campaigns should be continued and which should be immediately removed from the rollout so as not to overload the interface and complicate further analytics.
As you can see, there are several campaigns in the promotion, the price of the target for which ranges from 800 to 10,000 (!) Rubles.
Why do we need such campaigns? If others are much cheaper?!
In general, remember a simple rule: if an advertising campaign (especially YAN) shows negative results after 100,000 impressions (high lead cost, low CTR and conversion), then it is better to stop such a campaign , in order to avoid various misunderstandings.
Therefore, the first thing we do is turn off all those advertising campaigns that have gained 100,000 (or more) impressions and showed negative results. From now on, we DO NOT launch these campaigns.
Why don't we launch?
Because these advertising campaigns simply attract NOT OUR target audience. And no matter how we “bother” with A / B tests of texts, pictures, disabling platforms ... if the audience comes not ours, then the money "merges" in vain.
Here are the names and IDs of the campaigns that have been paused:
p_business_RSI_by_all 17205885
p_business_RSI_az_all 21998537
p_franchise_RSI_by_all 17206493
p_franchise_RSI_az_all 21998547
p_franchise_RSI_am_all 17206498
p_product_RSI_ru 12028870
I highly do not recommend launching and “re-uploading” these campaigns in the future.
2.1.Now we look at the statistics for specific ads. We are primarily interested in those ads (or rather key phrases), the cost of the goal for which was more than 500 rubles:
For example, on request: small business ideas the cost of the goal was 4416 rubles, which, you see, is “not cheap”.
Thus, we should go through the entire list of keywords and simply disable everything that “eats” the budget. At the same time, I note that after we turn off the "bad" ads, the "good" ones will start to gain more impressions. However, I still do not recommend increasing the cost per click on “good” ads, at least at YAN.
Below are some identifiers for the most "bad" ads (I've disabled them):
M-1793463673
M-1826407415
M-1826407424
M-1826407031
M-1826512930
M-1826408346
M-1826407424
M-1826513575
M-1826407389
M-1826408421
M-1826512849
M-1793437979
By the way, queries like: looking for business gave about 300-400 clicks on YAN with zero conversion.
Thus, a general list of more than 500 phrases and ads was worked out.
2.2.Also certain part budget ate "Automatically added phrases" (gave 2 conversions per 10,000 rubles of the budget):
But we will deal with them when we analyze the missed negative keywords in the search.
3. For now, let's move on to the sites. We will filter the sites according to the same principle by which we filtered key phrases. All those sites, the cost of the target for which was more than 500 rubles, we will add to the "black list".
Why did I take exactly 500 rubles for the lower bar?
Because if you take 300 or 400 rubles for the lower limit, then you can very much cut coverage audience, which, in general, is highly undesirable.
In addition, instead of our “bad” sites, Yandex can “slip” new ones, the quality of the audience on which will be, frankly, “not top-notch”.
Therefore, those who are too pedantic in the selection of sites on the YAN often get into trouble - instead of increasing the conversion, they often notice its deterioration. They do not understand the simple fact that instead of one "bad" site, Yandex can slip 10 new bad ones (sorry for the pun!).
We are not we will repeat the mistakes of others and approach the selection extremely reasonably.
Here are some of those sites that will definitely have to be turned off:
I note that a total of 82 sites were identified that negatively affect the conversion. These sites will be included in the list of "forbidden" for each YAN advertising campaign.
Full list of "bad" sites
4. A similar analysis was carried out by region. After analyzing the reports, the most expensive regions were identified and disabled:
Why exactly 600 rubles. here taken as a starting point?
Because when filtering regions, you should be a little more liberal, to don't lose out on reach, and the “quality” of the audience does not depend on the region as much as it does on the same advertising platform.
I note that the regions will have to be adjusted in the parameters of EVERY YAN advertising campaign. Yes, it is a little inconvenient and energy-intensive, but effectively.
5. Now for the "negative words". In your case, Yandex added a bunch of garbage to search campaigns through “automatically added phrases” and synonyms, withCTRaround zero:
If you are advertising for phrases in broad match, then you constantly need to track which REAL queries are being shown (you can see this in Report Wizard -> Search terms). Otherwise, a huge part of the budget will be wasted! (No exaggeration.)
Of course, I went through the list of requests and removed unnecessary phrases, but from now on, requests should be tracked on regular basis.
This is another reason why the budget "shoots in the milk."
Creation of advertising campaigns for YAN with image ads
As we agreed, for YAN, I created new advertising campaigns containing image ads, as well as the most effective key phrases.
Russia
Armenia
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
You have individual campaigns as well as unique landing pages.
Consequently, a unique YAN advertising campaign was created for each region, with image ads.
Now I will briefly talk about the creation of these campaigns themselves.
First of all, I chose those keywords that provided the largest influx of conversions in YAN, with an adequate average cost.
Here are some of those phrases:
franchise business
business for beginners
small business ideas
ideas +for small businesses
discover your business ideas
"start business"
new business ideas
best business ideas
Here is an example ad (240x400 format):
After that, for each of the previously listed regions, a unique advertising campaign with image ads.
This is enough to test the effectiveness of the graphic format in your niche.
Summary
However, this does not mean at all that tomorrow the cost of your advertising budget will fall by 2 times ...
The real result in the form of an increase in the overall conversion (reduction in the cost of the goal) will be noticeable at a distance of about a month.
This is especially true for search campaigns, which, as it turned out, for the most part broadcast ads at all. wrong the audience you need.
On this, perhaps, everything.
I hope this report was helpful to you.
Sincerely, Dmitry.
Optimization is an increase in efficiency. When applied to contextual advertising, this is a reduction in the cost of a conversion (a call, an order on a website) or the achievement of more complex goals.
Optimization is possible when two conditions are met: the availability of a way to measure the cost of a conversion and the ability to change the parameters of advertising campaigns.
Optimization is not a one-time action, it is a continuous process:
Analysis of statistics > Formulating hypotheses > Setting up an experiment > Analysis of results.
What is the quality of transitions
The quality of transitions from an ad in contextual advertising is determined by the conversion from these transitions. In contextual advertising, you can control the choice of phrases (show / not show), ad position and display time. Ad texts are given to computers only for sites with a large (tens of thousands) and constantly updated range of products.
The campaign advertises different products or services. Always some goods are better, some are worse. It turns out different conversion for different products. Several phrases are responsible for advertising one product - Group. A simple way to optimize is to identify group-specific conversions and shift the budget from low-converting groups to high-converting groups.
The phrases in the group are different from each other wording. The phrase may be closer to the purchase and further. The phrase "buy a bike" is more convertible than "bikes". Often conversion phrases are low-frequency. Let's remember this for the future.
Usually the higher phrase position- the more quality visitors come through it. This has a simple explanation - the more the client is set to buy, and not to “choose”, the more likely he is to click on the first or second ad and not look further. Of course, there are always exceptions, but in terms of volume they are insignificant.
From show time visitor conversion is highly dependent. In each market, this addiction has its own unique profile. But usually the highest conversion in working time from 10 to 14, and then to seven o'clock it goes into decline. 100 clicks from 10 to 11 will bring more sales than 100 clicks from 19 to 20.
Problems of automatic optimization
The idea to entrust the optimization of campaigns to a robot visits any programmer who has encountered contextual advertising. Optimization problems are the most efficient application of computers. Many contextual advertising optimization services have grown from this idea. Every major advertising agency there is such a service. But the way programmers and clients saw in their dreams the operation of such services (by pressing one button), they do not work. Why?
Let's imagine that we set up ad impressions for two phrases and the following statistics ran up in a month
Based on such data, can we conclude which phrase is better? Obviously not. Too few impressions, transitions and conversions. And how much is needed for a reasonable conclusion? If you hold the statistics in the corner and ask this question for a long time, the answer will be about 35 conversions. With such a volume of impressions per month and a conversion of, say, 5% (which is a lot), it will take 165 months to collect statistics. And often, as we noted earlier, conversion phrases are low-frequency. Dead end.
Of course, there are keywords in the campaign that are more frequent, and the stability of indicators in Yandex.Direct makes it possible to ignore the strict laws of statistics and turn off the display of a phrase in the absence of conversions from just 300 clicks. Programmers come up with clever algorithms that try to predict future conversions based on the conversion of these phrases on other sites, user behavior and moon phases. But you can't argue with mathematics - at least somehow automatic optimization works on high-frequency phrases and requires a long campaign period to collect statistics.
Another problem with automatic optimization is that it does not know how to select CONVERSION additional phrases. For example, to the word “buy a two-suspension” there are additional words “buy a frame” and “shock absorber for a bicycle”. Their conversion rate depends on the availability of these products in the store, which the automatic system cannot find out in any way. And to draw a conclusion based on statistics, it will take years.
So what - automatic optimization systems do not work?
Nevertheless, automatic optimization can and does bring serious benefits - but only for large (tens of thousands of phrases) campaigns with a budget of 500,000 rubles per month, where many high-frequency phrases are used and work only in tandem with a talented analyst who understands where to start system, and where it should not be used.
Closest to the symbiosis approach automatic systems and a qualified analyst approached Calltouch. There, the system offers solutions, and the analyst accepts them or not. The system is currently undergoing closed testing. The worst fit is Yandex, where decision making is opaque, and it is suggested to wait “6 weeks or more” for evaluation.
For small campaigns effective method- setting up accounting for the cost of a conversion using a metric and the same Calltouch, and then - manual analysis and decision-making by an analyst.
We are now following this path in Eureka, automating only the receipt of information for decision-making.
Types of display strategies in Yandex.Direct
The simplest - highest available position. You yourself determine the maximum bid for a particular phrase. Yandex shows the phrase at the maximum position available for this bid. In fact, this is not a strategy, but a direct way to work with bidding for ad spaces. For all campaigns, we use this strategy in combination with a bid management robot.
Show in block by minimum price - Theoretically, it allows you to hang in special accommodation for minimal money. In practice, savings do not come out due to the effect of warming up the auction, when two advertisers with such a strategy meet on the same phrase. Each ad strives to enter the block and consistently higher bids are assigned.
Average CPA- an attempt to use automatic optimization of an advertising campaign by Yandex. It has all the limitations described above, combined with the absolute opacity of decision-making. Imagine that you are driving a taxi, the driver is not familiar with the city and is wandering, and you are blindfolded and cannot tell the way, although you are passing through familiar places.
Average return on investment (ROI)- the same as the average cost per conversion, but for online stores. The approach itself can give interesting results with painstaking and proper campaign setup. But again, the lack of transparency in decision-making makes it impossible to effectively apply this tool. More benefit will be from manual analysis.
Average CPC- Yandex is trying to catch up with more clicks by keeping the average price close to what you specified. The situation is similar to the average cost per conversion, but now the taxi driver does not even know the end point of the route. Yandex will choose for you phrases that bring more clicks with no matter what conversion. It will also collect cheap clicks - from low positions and at low competition times - just when the conversion for them is minimal.
Independent management for different types sites- this is not a strategy, but a switch that allows you to separately set strategies for displaying ads on search and on YAN.
The remaining strategies are combinations of the above.
The use of all these strategies gives unpredictable results. The only rationale for their existence is that this result is usually slightly better than randomly placed bids and selected phrases - the typical state of a campaign put together by a person who does not have serious experience with contextual advertising.
How auctions for places in Yandex.Direct work
In Yandex, bidding for ad spaces takes place according to the rules of the Vickrey auction (VCG). The player who named the highest bid wins the auction, but does not pay it, but the price named by the second participant plus the bidding step. Such an auction is better than the usual one in that it is beneficial for players to name their maximum bids, and not consistently increase them “playing on the nerves”. Thus, the auction can be held in one move.
It is assumed that the players have accurately calculated their maximum bets. AT real life this does not happen, but if the auction takes place once, then everything works in accordance with the theory. Everything changes if auctions are held regularly - players have a chance to adjust their bids based on the actions of other players. The Vickrey auction theory is no longer designed for this, and the strategy of announcing maximum bids ceases to be dominant (always bringing the best result).
When bidding for positions in Yandex.Direct, practice is even further from theory - bidding takes place continuously, players' rates change independently of each other in time. Most of the bets are made on the basis of inaccurate data on the rates of other players. Players have different goals, different qualifications, different methods of calculating bets, and many mistakes. There is no theory describing the optimal behavior of players in such a situation. This means that the existence of an “optimal automatic strategy” is also impossible.
How the bid management robot works
For robot-controlled campaigns in Yandex.Direct, the “highest available position” strategy is set. In the interface of the robot, you can set the maximum bid for each campaign and even for each phrase, the main strategy, and a backup strategy that works if the maximum bid is not enough for the main one.
The purpose of the robot is to hide your maximum bet from other players. For example, if you set the strategy SP + 0.01 in the robot, it will place a bid for the phrase at the price of entering special placement + 0.01 cents every five minutes. If the third player in the special placement uses the “display in the block at the lowest price” strategy, then by successively increasing the bids for the working day, the robot will raise the bid by a maximum of 1 c.u. (in 8 hours he will make 96 bets). If we had simply chosen the strategy “impression in a block at the lowest price” in Yandex.Direct, the price would have skyrocketed to the maximum bid of one of the players, at which the second player would have received all the clicks for that day.
Benefits of using a robot
- You do not tell other players your maximum bet. Sincerity is not the dominant strategy in consecutive Vickrey auctions, so by not bidding you are in a position to get better results.
- Rate hikes are happening at a controlled pace.
- You can choose very different primary and secondary strategies
- You can define your own strategies for individual words without separating them into a separate campaign
We have released a new book "Content Marketing in in social networks: How to get into the head of subscribers and fall in love with your brand.
Many advertisers are sure that after the launch of advertising campaigns, advertising specialists do nothing there - they just sit, count the number of clicks and spend their money, spitting on everything else and never returning to these campaigns. Ah, if only.Optimization of Yandex.Direct advertising campaignsshould be done regularly, only then advertising will be effective and generate income.
Today I want to tell you what happens to an advertising campaign after you hit the magic start button.
backing track
It would seem that the campaign has been launched, there are impressions, clicks too, but the conversion is a little lame, or in general there are a lot of impressions and few clicks. The first thing that comes to mind is to check the requests for which ads are shown. To do this, go to Yandex.Metrica and go to the "Direct - Summary" report:
and select the appropriate groupings that interest us:
In this case, this is a slice by campaign, ad, key phrase from Yandex.Direct, and the search phrase for which the ad was shown:
For example, in our campaign we have the query "makeup school". Having built the necessary report, we see that our ad was shown not only for the query “makeup school”, but also “why can’t makeup go to school”. In this case, the words "why", "impossible" need add as to a phrase or the whole campaign in general.
Why is this needed? Wordstat statistics are constantly updated, users are constantly generating new requests that are not in the system and that you could not even think about. Therefore, you do not need to think that, having canceled everything once and for all, you will no longer have to return to this.
Assessing the positions of your ads
If it seems to you that you are not getting traffic, you need to look at where exactly your ads are shown - in special placement or in guarantee. To do this, you can go to the standard reports in Yandex.Direct and check the boxes that you need, remembering to click in front of the "Position" slice. As a filter - "Type of site" - "Search".
Why is this needed? You can estimate how often you lose on . Perhaps only a slight increase is needed to minimize impressions in the guarantee. After all, whatever one may say, special placement attracts the attention of users more and, as a result, receives more clicks. But it all depends on your budget and capabilities.
Estimating the effectiveness of phrases
It's no secret that often some phrases bring long-awaited orders, and some just drain the budget. If there are no non-target impressions for them, in general everything is fine, but there is no effect, then you can:
- try to rewrite the ad and evaluate the effect;
- lower the bid for these requests;
- reluctantly refuse these requests.
If the phrase is effective enough and brings a conversion, you need to find out if it is possible to get more clicks on it. To do this, see if it often falls under the guarantee and if it can be fixed somehow. Perhaps only a small rate hike is missing, which then pays off with a vengeance.
Exclusion of sites in YAN
Why is this needed? Often, ads are shown on sites that are completely unrelated to your ad. As a result, idle impressions lower the notorious CTR, and ineffective clicks waste the budget.
To understand which sites you do not need, use the following reports:
- Report in Yandex.Direct. Here you can evaluate costs by type of site and its effectiveness in terms of impressions, clicks, and costs.
What is useful? You can download the report, sort the sites according to the criteria you need, select those that should be excluded, and add them to "" in the campaign settings.
- Report in Yandex.Metrica. In the menu "Reports" - "Standard" there is a report "Direct - sites", which can also be segmented as you need. This is how the report looks like:
What is useful? In Metrica, you can segment the report according to the goals you need, and, therefore, evaluate the effectiveness of the site not from the cost side, but from the side of its effectiveness.
Additional adjustments
Among other things, you can quickly conduct a quick analysis in Yandex.Metrica and configurebid adjustments in Yandex.Direct.
- Adjustment for sex and age. To adjust this adjustment, you can use the Age and Gender reports:
Here you can evaluate who comes to your site by age and gender, evaluate who makes more conversions and set up bid adjustments by gender and age. For example, I see that my the target audience These are women from 18 to 34 years old. Then I go to the settings of my advertising campaign and raise the bid based on these data:
- Mobile adjustments. To configure it, you need to go to the "Devices" report:
And add a new condition:
As seen, Yandex.Direct campaign optimizationrequires an appreciation of what you are doing and a clear understanding of why you are doing it. Therefore, if in doubt, you should contact the experts, and everything will definitely be fine.
