Migrating from Google Ads to Yandex Direct. What Do You Need to Know Before Launching an Ad?

On March 3, the Google Ads advertising system announced the temporary suspension of advertising to users located in Russia. For companies promoting their products and services on the Russian market, there is an alternative - the Yandex Direct advertising system. Today we are going to tell you about opportunities that Yandex offers for advertisers.

Yandex Ecosystem for an Advertiser

Yandex has created a whole range of services that allow you to assess demand and advertising costs, create, launch, and automate advertising campaigns, as well as analyze them. First things first.

Keyword Selection

Choosing the right keywords is the basis of search engine optimization and high-quality customization of contextual advertising. The result of the advertising campaign largely depends on the formation of the semantic core: the position in the output and the level of conversions.

The Yandex search engine regularly gathers information about users’ requests. A convenient Yandex WordStat service has been created based on this data. It helps get acquainted in detail with the needs of Runet visitors, track trendy topics, and choose the most suitable keys.

Google Trends can be called a distant analog of this tool. However, Yandex WordStat is substantially superior to its foreign analog.

Among the advantages of the service, special mention should go to simplicity and high speed of operation. This free service has excellent functionality. With its help, you will be able to:

• find out query frequency in Yandex in exact, phrasal and broad match;
• get statistics for a specific region;
• use the "Query History" to determine seasonality.

Budget Forecast

Yandex.Direct Budget Forecast is a service integrated into the Yandex advertising system. It carries out calculation of possible bids, gives a forecast of impressions and allows you to calculate the cost of advertising under specified conditions.

The advantages of the service are the ability to set various filters for accurate calculation of the advertising budget and the average cost per click:

• selection of a region (for some countries, the details are available with an accuracy to a city),
• selection of ad display devices: all devices or only mobile,
• period (week, month, quarter, year),
• currency,
• keyword selection.

However, the service also has its disadvantages. Firstly, the budget can be calculated only on Yandex search - the service does not provide data on the ad impression on the network. Secondly, not all key queries can be used to calculate click price. As a rule, this applies to low-frequency requests.

Transferring Ads to Yandex.Yandex. Direct

Yandex Direct is a tool for placing contextual advertisements on Yandex pages and on participating sites of the Advertising Network. Advertising in Yandex.Direct is placed with payment per click for ads, not for its impression.

In the article Overview of Yandex advertising opportunities, we provided insight on the advertising formats, targeting and Yandex analytical system. It will be useful for those who intend to configure an ad account and advertising campaigns from scratch.

In this article let's consider more closely what to do if you need to transfer an ad campaign that has already been configured from Google Ads to Yandex.Direct.

1. Log in to Google Ads Editor under the access of the account where the campaigns are located.

2. In Google Ads Editor, select Account -> Export.

Important! Only one campaign should be selected for downloading at a time.

3. After the file is downloaded to your computer, go to Yandex.Direct and select Managing ads with Excel in the Tools section.

4. Click "Upload from CSV" and select the downloaded file.

Transfer all ad campaigns from Google Ads to Yandex.Direct in such a way.

Besides creation, launching and tracking the status of campaigns, the Yandex.Direct offers some more services. Using Yandex.Direct API you can create applications for managing advertising campaigns. For example, you can use your own bid management algorithms. There is also Yandex.Direct.Commander. It is suitable for managing large-scale campaigns when launching contextual advertising. It is easy to work with a large amount of data in Commander.

Google Ads Can Still be Used…

For those who consider that advertising on Google within Russia is essential for their business and there is no way without it, there is a solution. We hasten to add that it is suitable not for everyone. And no one knows how long this method will work.

After the mass blocking of Western resources, many people have installed a VPN for themselves. You can also use it to configure and run ads by simply changing your location.

Peculiarities of setting up ad campaigns in Google ads in conditions of blocking:

• Set up a campaign all over world and exclude countries that are irrelevant (it is now impossible to choose Russia, so we are working by the exclusion method);
• Use queries only mentioning geo (buy a dress in MOSCOW, invest in real estate in KRASNODAR);
• Use geo in headings;
• Use key queries in exact and phrase match - avoid broad match;
• Carefully work out negative keywords;
• Continuously monitor queries on which ads are displayed and apply negative keywords.

Be also advised of the following: from now on you cannot top up your ad account using Visa and MasterCard cards in Russia. Thus, this method is suitable only for those companies that operate in Russia, but at the same time have representative offices abroad and, accordingly, have the opportunity to top up the Google ad account from other countries.

The Consequences are Inevitable

• The segment of mobile apps will suffer the most — Google Ads were important for them, almost the main installation sources.
• Companies and brands that work closely with the generated traffic from search will lose a significant part of the traffic. Indeed, according to Yandex Radar, 38% of Russians use the Google search engine.
• Increased competition among advertisers in Yandex.Direct will warm up auctions and increase the cost of attracting a client.
• There is no fully-functional YouTube in Russia now, so advertisers who have focused on video advertising will suffer first of all.

Under the current situation, brands need to adapt to new conditions and switch to available advertising systems as quickly as possible. Contact the RMAA marketing agency to get you ad campaigns configured quickly and in a quality manner. Our experts render a full range of services on setting up and running advertising campaigns in Russian advertising systems such as Yandex.Direct, myTarget, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks.

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