Bid adjustments are what make it possible to set up ad campaigns for different device types. If you are interested is your ads appearing solely on mobile devices, your bid adjustments for desktops should be set to −100% in Yandex.Direct. To do the opposite, and limit the campaign's impressions to desktops, set −100% bid adjustments for mobile devices. These settings were previously only available in display campaigns. Earlier this year, we added flexible bid adjustments by OS to allow more targeted purchases of mobile traffic.
Some of our clients participated in experiments, completely dividing their mobile and desktop traffic purchases for their performance ads. Their examples showed that such an approach can increase the overall effectiveness of ad campaigns.
Here are the results for the telecommunications company Tele2: using bid adjustments and choosing campaign settings for their target audience, they were able to increase the effectiveness of their Yandex.Direct search campaigns:
More than half of telecommunications traffic now comes from mobile devices. In light of the growth of e-commerce in this segment, we need not only to attract more users, but also to regulate their quality, which is very important for our business.
The results of Tele2's experiment:
- Splitting purchases allowed them to increase the volume of transactions without raising their cost.
- Mobile devices brought 39% of all transactions.
The goal of the separate auction experiment was to show how many potential buyers an advertiser can attract by customizing ads and optimizing their site for different device types.
This is especially important right now, as the volume of traffic from mobile devices is larger than ever before. Mobile and desktop traffic ought to be analyzed separately, and their campaigns are also bound to differ.
We see that experienced advertisers are interested in mobile traffic and set up separate ad campaigns not only for different devices, but also for different smartphone operating systems, i.e. iOS and Android. In other words, they use the opportunity to build cross-platform communications with their audience and invest in mobile advertising consciously.
The ability to separate purchases will soon be added to Direct Commander.
Mobile or desktop?
It is important to have an advertising presence on all device types to avoid losing your audience and conversions. Users already spend most of their time on the internet via smartphone, the most popular device for watching videos[1]. 35% of users only access the internet via mobile devices[2]. Disabling impressions on smartphones means missing out on both good sites and potential conversions. Here is an example of one of our advertisers, data for the last month of the goal "E-commerce: order."
Though less than 2% of their customers use both desktops and mobile devices in the process of placing an order, these same users generate more than 10% of conversions and revenue. At the same time, the total share of conversions involving mobile devices is more than 36%.
A similar example from another advertiser — a producer of home textiles, also for the goal “Order.”
In both cases, you can see that most of the site's users come from mobile devices, and that they are the ones that generate a significant share of orders.
Some advertisers are skeptical about the quality of traffic from mobile sites, including apps, and occasionally are sure that mobile traffic is not for them. However, site owners and Yandex are both equally interested in conversions for advertisers, so we constantly work on traffic quality. Today, we’d like to take the opportunity to tell you how we do this.
Algorithms protecting traffic quality
It is well known that Yandex.Direct is able to raise or lower bids depending on the predicted likelihood of conversion. Neither desktop sites, nor their mobile version will be able to earn good money if they bring low-quality traffic: if users visiting their sites click on ads accidentally and without motivation, Yandex.Direct can reduce bids and prevent impressions on their sites.
When an advertiser sets priority goals in Yandex.Direct, or uses automatic strategies with conversion or ROI optimization, this helps Yandex algorithms understand which sites are most likely to bring about target actions among users. If not goals are set, the system is able to determine on its own which actions on the site to consider important. To read more about how Yandex.Direct forecasts the likelihood of conversion, we have a detailed article.
Taking both advertisers' and site owners' interests into account, we have carefully worked on the mechanics of ad impressions in apps, so that traffic quality and conversion rates of traffic have increased by a factor of one.
In addition to Antifraud, double-click tracking technology and other mechanics help to avoid irritating users while also preventing random clicks on ads, along with enhanced filtration of random and pointless clicks, and special display formats in apps. And we continue to add new barriers to low-quality traffic.
For example, Yandex has technology that makes it possible to filter out non-target clicks that were made accidentally, let's say, by a child. The percentage of clicks filtered out depends on the site, but on average it is 10-15%. Advertisers do not pay for these clicks.
The total share of clicks that are filtered out from the mobile web and apps can reach 30%. The clicks that remain allow advertisers to get a significant share of additional traffic and orders.
Effectiveness on all devices
Separate management with bid adjustments and careful work with different device types will help you balance savings on traffic purchases and weigh out spending relative to profitability. Improvements to the funnel can also be made separately for desktop and mobile users, and you can also check cross-device scenarios to make sure that no matter where your potential customer comes from, they will be able to leave a request and get a result.
If Yandex.Direct has sufficient data about which user actions are important for your business, and an automatic strategy that maintains average CPA is set, then the system itself will optimize bids to get you the most conversions at the right price. As you can see from the example of another advertiser, Yandex.Direct purchased mobile traffic from sites that are more likely to generate conversions at the set average cost of 30 rubles. In this case, conversion costs do not differ by traffic source — apps and mobile site versions maintain the specified KPI.
Switching to an automatic strategy or to payment per conversion will allow you to stop worrying about off-targeting spending or low-quality sites — CPA will be maintained regardless of the user's device type or the specific place where an ad appears.
[1] Research: Deloitte "Media consumption in Russia – 2019"
[2] Mediascope WEB-Index, % of Monthly Reach, 12+ years of age, June – November 2019, Russia 0+
