Retargeting in Yandex.Direct: a comprehensive guide

In this article, you will learn what retargeting in Yandex.Direct is, which advertisers it will suit, and what tasks it solves; how to set it up based on Yandex.Metrica segments; whom and when to "catch up"; what to write in ads; how to analyze the effectiveness of advertising platforms + a number of tricks and tips to increase the return on retargeting.

What is retargeting

On average, out of 100 visitors to the site, the target action (sending an application, for example) is performed by 4-5 people. The rest leave and the units come back again. Even if the user liked the product and wants to buy it soon, few people will bookmark the page for later. The address of the site, the name of the company will also be remembered by far not everyone.

Accordingly, when the client "ripes", then with a high probability your competitors will be the first on his way. The advertising budget was wasted, but it could have ended with an order.

Retargeting technology allows you to show ads and re-return to the site those who left just like that. So that in the end the purchase took place. Of course, the mere fact of a repeat visit is not enough for a good return on retargeting, and then we will analyze the scenarios - who exactly and how to attract.

The standard approach is retargeting by goals. And it's not just about adding items to your cart. You can set the target as:

  • Visiting the card of a certain product;
  • Clicking on certain links (promotions, delivery, payment, contacts, etc.);
  • View certain pages;
  • Viewing a certain number of pages,

A more advanced option is retargeting by Yandex.Metrica segments. More precisely, deeper, because there you can set the conditions for gender, age, type of device; a certain amount of time the user has been on the site.

By the way, it is the time spent on the site that we will mark as the basic criterion for adding users to the retargeting database. What is the point of re-showing ads to those who went to the landing page, quickly scrolled it back and forth and left? Obviously, this visitor is not interested in your offer.

The minimum is 30 seconds.

Of course, you should not be limited by time, but this is the primary condition.

How it works

Let's take a classic example - a user enters an online store, adds an item to the cart and leaves without placing an order. Or just looking at some page in the catalog.

The store has a goal set - adding a product to the cart. Information about the behavior is collected using cookies (cookies) and transferred to the database of the store. The condition worked, and our user gets into the appropriate retargeting group.

After that, ad impressions are launched on the sites of Yandex itself (ad units in the News, Weather, etc. sections) and on partner sites (including VKontakte and Mail.ru). Type - text-image ads.

The meaning is “come back, dear comrade, buy this thing, we will give you another discount.”

According to the mind, of course, you need to separate the wording of ads depending on the parameters of a particular segment. For those who looked at products of a certain category - offer one thing, for those who spent at least 1 minute on the site - another. Well, those who put the goods in the basket - the third.

Elementary - they are all in different proximity to the purchase. Conditionally - "hot", "warm" and "cold" audience.

The biggest mistake is to “hack” the same creatives to everyone in a row.

You need to catch up with everyone that fits the conditions you set, but not everyone is the same.

Retargeting Goals

So, we figured out that goal number 1 is the sale of goods. At the same time, retargeting is also used for:

  • Upselling (most often some accessories for expensive goods);
  • Work on brand image (automotive giants, for example);
  • promotional information;
  • Repeat sales - inexpensive consumables. Let's say a printer cartridge - you know the average duration of its life, and a few days before the end of the cycle, you turn on a retargeting campaign for those who have already bought from you.

Who should use retargeting and when

The two most popular areas are e-commerce (online stores) and education (webinars, courses, conferences). They pass a large stream of traffic and a very diverse audience, with different interests.

In e-commerce, it is understandable: a lot of different products. Especially for retailers - giants - the number of commodity items is in the tens of thousands. For them, “picking up” visitors who left without an order means millions of additional revenue.

What is the minimum threshold? eLama service evangelist Konstantin Naychukov talks about at least 300 unique visitors a day. With a smaller amount of traffic, it makes no sense to bother with setting up retargeting.

Simple economics: the average conversion from retargeting to an application is 1-1.5%. Half of the real order will reach. Total purchase will end approximately every 200th visit.

Yes, some may be higher. Someone has an order from every 100th visit. At the same time, do not forget that not every visitor gets into the retargeting database. In the best case, this is 30-40% of the total number of those who have fulfilled the desired condition. Hence the figure of 300 visitors per day is justified, even better - 500-600. Otherwise, “the game is not worth the candle”: there are many efforts, the “exhaust” is negligible.

A frequently asked question is what if the traffic is small (just about 100 "uniques" per day), but the margin of the product is high (from 100,000 rubles). A case specific to some topics in B2B.

There is no clear answer here. Everything is decided by numbers. Just take a look at how much one sale from retargeting will cost you given the traffic and conversion rates you have. If in doubt, but really want to, run a test campaign for a month. Then everything will be clear - what is the return on retarding in your business.

Creating audiences in Yandex.Metrica

As we noted, two ways, two tools for setting up retargeting in Yandex.Direct are Yandex.Metrica goals and segments. Data for a retargeting campaign is transferred from Yandex.Metrica. Therefore, the first step is to connect the advertising system with the analytics system.

Synchronization of Yandex.Metrica and Yandex.Direct accounts

1) Check that the Metrics counter is correctly set on all pages of the site, and that the goals are configured and tracked correctly.

2) If the Metrica counter and the Yandex.Direct account are registered under the same login, you can go directly to the settings.

If different, open Yandex.Direct's access to Yandex.Metrica.

For this we go to Settings counter and tab Access, further - in the section Individual access click "Add user". There you specify the email of the person to whom you give access; mode - setting or editing. Commentary is not required.

The described procedure is most often done in the case when you give authority to an outside specialist or agency.

Important! Never give your username / password from your account. Everything is simpler: the counter settings allow you to grant access for a while, and then take it away, excluding the email of the specified user.

You must have access in edit mode to create segments.

Goal setting

So, if everything is in order with your goals, then you can immediately use a specific goal as a retargeting condition.

For example, going to the thank you page:

Segment setup

Why is it important to divide the audience into segments? If you show ads to everyone in a row, according to a single condition (time on the site is more than 1 minute, for example), then you will not understand which part of visitors converts better and which one worse.

First of all, this is relevant for online stores with a large product range and a large amount of traffic from different sources.

And since we are talking about time, in the traffic report you can determine exactly how many minutes on average users need for a targeted action.

For example, we create a segment of visits where the goal “Order is placed” is achieved:

We set that the average time before an order is made is 2 minutes. After that, we create a segment of those who spent more than 2 minutes on the site, save it under the name you specified and transfer it to Direct to launch a separate retargeting campaign on it.

Tab sequence: Behavior → Time on site → More than 2 minutes.

Metrica allows you to create segments by:

  • Type of source (transitions from search engines, from advertising systems, from social networks, etc.);
  • Behavior (browsing a specific URL, achieving a goal, browsing depth and time, entry / exit pages, etc.);
  • History (time since first / last visit, average time between visits, etc.);
  • Geography (location, time zone, etc.);
  • Technologies (device type, browser, operating system, IP, etc.);
  • E-commerce data (category / name / cost of goods, brand, purchase amount, etc.).

Plus socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, interests, etc.)

Several hundred different options that can be combined with target segments. Can you imagine how many retargeting campaigns you can create?

The most common options are male / female audience; device type; product category; traffic source.

Don't forget to add a "cut-off" for the minimum visit time.

Taking into account segments by goals (abandoned cart, viewing certain pages), you will get 15 - 20 groups.

An example of creating a segment in Yandex.Metrica

Let's say we have an online car tire store. We want to show ads to visitors from St. Petersburg who went to the summer tires category and didn't make a purchase.

To do this, go to any Yandex.Metrica report. For example - Direct Summary:

Adding a region:

We select users who visited the page of summer tires:

As well as users who have not made a purchase:

In total, we have four conditions in the segment. We save it and use it later as a condition for displaying ads in Yandex.Direct.