Yandex Direct for Central Thailand: Reaching Russian-Speaking Travelers
Attract Russian-speaking tourists to Central malls in Thailand
Background
Central Group is one of the largest retail operators in Southeast Asia. Its shopping malls in Thailand — Central Phuket, Central Pattaya and Central Samui — sit in three of the country's top tourist destinations.
Russian-speaking travelers are a meaningful inbound segment for Thailand: approximately 1.8M visitors a year, about 5.5% of the country's inbound tourist flow. Since 2022, after a wave of international brands suspended their Russian operations, shopping abroad has gained additional weight in the travel motivation of this audience.
Goal
Central Group needed a direct line to Russian-speaking tourists at two moments: while they were still planning the trip from Russia, and while they were already on the ground in Thailand. The client did not run a Russian website and had no in-country digital presence aimed at this audience, so the campaign had to build the conversion surface from scratch and keep both the messaging and the next-step action simple enough for a tourist using a phone.
Solution
Strategy
The strategy split the Russian-speaking audience along two axes — what each tourist looks for and where they are in the trip cycle.
The first axis grouped creatives by interest:
- Shoppers — international fashion and lifestyle brands, with Central framed as a shopping destination during a Thailand trip.
- Night-out audiences — restaurants, cinemas, leisure and nightlife around the malls.
- Families with children under 12 — play zones, aquariums, indoor entertainment.
The second axis grouped users by trip stage:
- Audience 1 — Pre-trip planning: Russian-speakers outside Thailand who were actively researching their vacation, with messaging that added Central to the trip itinerary.
- Audience 2 — In-market demand: tourists already in Thailand, with messaging that pointed them to the nearest mall.
Landing page and conversion mechanic
Central did not have a Russian website, so the campaign needed its own conversion surface and a single, low-friction action.
We built a one-page Russian landing with four rules:
- Short format — only the information a tourist needs to decide whether to visit.
- Single page covering all three malls (Phuket, Pattaya, Samui).
- Plain language — what to do at each location (aquarium, dining, family zones), without retail jargon.
- Honest motivation — the page addressed shopping abroad as a real reason for the trip, not a promotional add-on.
To convert a click into a physical visit, we added a Save location button. One tap opened Google Maps and let the user pin the mall on the phone for later turning the ad into an offline navigation asset.
Campaign execution
Yandex Direct served as the primary advertising channel to capture active search demand. For international brands, Yandex is the largest search engine and digital ecosystem in Russia, operating similarly to Google. Its advertising network (Yandex Advertising Network) goes far beyond simple search results. It allows brands to display banners across a massive ecosystem of top-tier platforms, including Kinopoisk (the Russian equivalent of IMDb and Netflix), Yandex Weather, Yandex Music, and popular navigation apps.
The work ran as two independent flights.
Flight 1 — March–June 2025. Four sequential stages:
- Stage 1 — Calibration (March 24–31): a small test budget mapped how the auction reached the target audience. Blocking weak traffic sources early cut CPC by 70% against the initial plan.
- Stage 2 — Creative and bid tests (April 1–13): 42 mini-campaigns ran in parallel to compare ad versions. CTR reached 2.22% and actual CPC settled at €0.02 (converted from RUB in the internal campaign report).
- Stage 3 — Deep optimisation (April 14–20): based on bounce rate and time on landing, we locked in the 18 top-performing creative combinations and paused 8 weak ones.
- Stage 4 — Media launch and scaling (May–June): display and performance formats deployed at full scale. Central Phuket led engagement, with 15% more clicks than Pattaya and 25% more than Samui, and the highest CTR of the three locations.
Flight 2 — October–December 2025. The winter wave started at full scale on day one, using the 18 winning creative combinations and the geo settings from Flight 1. The flight kept the cost structure of the spring wave and extended the reach into the high season.
Results
Both flights exceeded plan on reach and clicks.
Flight 1 — March–June 2025
- Impressions: 31,592,371 (+204% vs plan)
- Clicks: 325,128 (+364% vs plan)
Flight 2 — October–December 2025
- Impressions: 45,439,314 (+262% vs plan)
- Clicks: 316,974 (+265% vs plan)
Across both flights, the campaign reached 77M+ Russian-speaking impressions and 642K+ clicks within the planned budget. According to client feedback, the spring and winter waves coincided with a visible increase in Russian-speaking visitors at the promoted malls.
Central had no Russian website, and that is normal for many international retailers. The question was what to build instead. We shipped a short Russian landing page and a Save on Google Maps action, then split Yandex Direct between people planning a Thailand trip and people already there. Two flights let us learn on the spring wave and tighten the setup for the winter one. Both runs beat plan on reach and clicks, and the client observed more Russian visitors at the malls.
