In about a month, advertisers using manual bid management strategies will notice a change: the “Serve in the lowest possible position” option will no longer be available.
I’m currently using this option. What should I do?
Yandex.Direct will use your current bids and other campaign settings to bring the maximum amount of traffic available.
This does not mean that you will be paying the maximum CPC, however — ads with good CTR make it to higher positions, and get noticeably more traffic, without significant increases in CPC.
- As the proverb says, “Forewarned is forearmed.” If you significantly raised your bids thinking that you wouldn’t ever have to actually pay this price, you might be unpleasantly surprised. We recommend setting realistic bids that you are actually ready to pay.
- These changes will also affect the Direct API, which will respond to attempts to set any variant of “Lowest cost” (LOWEST_COST, LOWEST_COST_PREMIUM, LOWEST_COST_GUARANTEE) as a strategy with an error. Therefore, it’s a good idea to fix applications ahead of time.
Why are you disabling this strategy?
After Yandex.Direct switched to the new VCG auctions, which are structured so that CPC remains as low as possible for a given position, this strategy decreased in effectiveness and made managing impressions difficult for all advertisers in a given block. As a result, many of its previous fans fell out of love with it and searched for other bid management options.
Today, the most popular approach to placing search ads is to aim for the highest position available and to set a daily budget limit if necessary.
To find out more about how auctions in Yandex.Direct work, read the help section.
Should you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them. We will send another reminder as we approach the launch date.