How to launch a campaign

How to launch a display campaign

Step 1. Go to the campaign creation page and make settings

Click Add campaign and select Display campaign in the list.

Enter the campaign name.

Enter start and end dates for your campaign and a display strategy. We recommend automatic strategies:

Decrease price for repeat impressions to launch new products and services on the market.
Maximize impressions for lowest price to promote products and services with a target audience.

You can also cap impression frequency to limit how many times your campaign ads can be served to the same user.

Step 2. Select ad type

Select banners as the ad type.

All the ads in an ad group must be the same type, although a campaign can include all types of ads. You can't change the ad type after saving an ad group.

Select the display regions.

Step 3. Add a creative

Upload the ad creative from your computer or create one in Ad Builder. You can use an HTML5 banner or image file as a creative.

To pass moderation, creatives must meet the requirements.

Create using Ad Builder

You can use Ad Builder to make a creative based on a template and tweak the design, or generate creatives automatically based on your site content.

We advise creating an adaptive creative. It automatically adapts to the appropriate ad block and is displayed on more sites. If you have creatives for image ads that you made previously using Ad Builder, you can use them.

More information about Ad Builder.

Upload from computer

You can add multiple ads to an ad group, with each ad corresponding to a single creative.

An ad creative uploaded from a computer must meet the technical requirements:


Maximum file size	150 KB
File type	ZIP (for HTML5 banners) Technical requirements for HTML5 banners JPG, PNG or GIF (for images)
Size in pixels	160×600, 240×400, 240×600, 300×250, 300×300, 300×500, 300×600, 320×50, 320×100, 320×480, 336×280, 480×320, 728×90, 970×250, 1000×120


Maximum file size	150 KB
File type	ZIP (for HTML5 banners) Technical requirements for HTML5 banners JPG, PNG or GIF (for images)
Size in pixels	160×600, 240×400, 240×600, 300×250, 300×300, 300×500, 300×600, 320×50, 320×100, 320×480, 336×280, 480×320, 728×90, 970×250, 1000×120

After you have saved your ad, you can only replace the creative with another creative of the same size. An adaptive creative can be replaced with another adaptive creative.

Step 4. Enter a Yandex.Audience pixel and impression tag

You can use the Yandex.Audience pixel to develop different scenarios of connecting with your display ad audience. The pixel is special code embedded in your advertising materials.

Create a pixel in Yandex.Audience. For more information, see Yandex.Audience Help.

Add the pixel code to the banner. After the impressions begin, the pixel starts to collect anonymous identifiers of users who have seen your ad. You can use this data when you set up your retargeting.

You can use the ADFOX tag or Yandex.Metrica pixel for counting ad impressions for display ads. The tag or pixel must include the %random% macro. They must also support HTTPS.

Step 5. Set up impression criteria

Ads from display campaigns are only served in the Yandex Advertising Network based on keywords, user profiles, or genres and subjects. You can only select one type of impression criteria per ad group. You cannot change the type of impression criteria after you save the ad group.

User profile: A user profile consists of the cumulative characteristics of the users that you want to serve your ads to. These include gender, age, and online interests. Determine what your particular audience looks like and create a profile based on that data.
Keywords: Keywords determine the site content and user interests that may trigger your ad impressions in the Yandex Advertising Network. For example, an ad about tours to Mars might be displayed on a page about traveling, or shown to a user who is interested in flights to Mars.
Genres and subjects: Ads are served on the Advertising Network sites with the selected subjects or instream videos of the specified genres and subjects. For example, an ad for skiing equipment can be displayed on a page about sports and active holidays, and a restaurant ad can be displayed in a cooking video.

Evaluate how many users will be able to see ads from a particular group by estimating reach.

Note. If you have selected an automatic strategy and targeting based on user profiles, go to the strategy settings after you have saved the ad group. The average price recommendation will be updated based on the size of creatives and impression criteria. This will ensure efficient budget spending over the period.

Create a display campaign

Estimate reach

At the audience selection step, you will see the estimated reach. This will help you evaluate the weekly number of users that could potentially see ads from a particular group. The estimate shows two values:

On the right — the total number of users. The number depends on the display regions you selected in the campaign settings, list of prohibited sites, and ad inventory adjustments.
On the left, you'll see the number of users that could potentially see banners from the group. User profile settings, uploaded banner settings, display regions set for the ad group, and ad inventory adjustments are taken into account.

The values are also affected by disabling impressions for specific users through bid adjustments (minus 100%) set for a campaign or group. Weather bid adjustments are ignored.

Any changes you make to the campaign or ad settings immediately affects estimated data so you can evaluate your potential audience reach.

The estimation might not be available if you used the following when setting up your profile:

A Yandex.Audience segment based on location data (learn more in Yandex.Audience Help).
A Yandex.Audience segment that was created less than 6 hours ago or more than two weeks ago and was not used in Yandex.Direct.
Bid adjustments for weather or traffic.

Ad moderation and launching a campaign

Click Send to moderation and confirm that you accept Yandex's terms for publishing your ad.

Moderators will check whether the ad follows the guidelines. It usually takes the moderators a few hours to review ads. On weekends and holidays, moderation may take longer than on weekdays.

Your moderation results will be emailed to the address you provided when you created the ad campaign.

Ad serving will begin as soon as Yandex receives your payment.

After you launch your campaign, you can view what your ads look like on a site.