Maximizing attention: New banner above Yandex search bar suggestions

June 19, 2020

For more than a year, one of our experiments has involved the limited placement of a banner above the search bar suggestions, where advertisers can instantly tell interested users about their offers. Recently, this banner has become available to everyone, so we decided it was the right time to talk about its advantages and the experiment’s results.

When a user begins entering a search query, the Yandex search bar uses an algorithm that determines the most likely next word in the query to offer suggestions that help the user formulate their question faster. Now, your ad can be one of these hints.

The banner above the suggestions is a new place to display ads in search results. It appears first in the list of suggestions for the query — for example, if a user types "Apartment in Moscow", the suggestions can show an ad for the query "Buy an apartment in a residential complex in Moscow."

This format makes it possible to get an additional +5% more traffic on top of the volume the ad received in the first place of premium impressions. Users can immediately become interested in your offer without having to look at competitors’ ads or the organic search results.

How it works

The algorithm selects an ad based on the most likely search suggestion. Only an ad highly relevant to the user's query can appear. Ads that appear in the hints can also appear in the search results. Impressions in suggestions do not affect CTR calculations for first place premium placement, so the quality coefficient will not be influenced if the increased reach is not accompanied by a change in the number of clicks.

Thanks to the minimalistic design and careful selection of ads, impressions in suggestions have a more native character as well as a positive impact on advertising performance. According to the results of our experiments, the CTR for banners in suggestions is about 16%.

How to launch banner impressions

You don't need to make any changes to your settings, this placement is fully automatic. The algorithm selects ads with the best CTR, bid per click, quality coefficient and other factors. As a result, the way to get your ad to appear in search suggestions is not only to increase your bids, but also to improve the performance of your ad campaigns.