Maximum conversions

Use this strategy to bring maximum converted sessions to your site while maintaining the cost-revenue ratio, average CPA, or weekly budget. You can also enable paying per conversion. The strategy is good for advertisers who have defined the goal of attracting users to their site or know the optimal cost-revenue ratio for their ads.

  1. How it works
  2. Prerequisites for using the strategy
  3. Strategy settings
  4. Specifics of pay-per-conversion campaigns
  5. Report on conversions
  6. How to calculate the optimal conversion cost

How it works

The “Maximum number of conversions” strategy aims to increase the percentage of clicks on ads and keywords that are most likely to result in conversions on the website. Bids are automatically selected in order to achieve the best result while remaining within the set criteria and limits.

We recommend evaluating the result in 7 to 14 days: at the beginning of your campaign, the strategy might need some time to accumulate initial statistics. If you failed to get enough conversions during the training period, check the strategy settings based on the interface tips.

If you change the attribution type or goal, the strategy will need some time to re-learn.

Learn more about strategies

Prerequisites for using the strategy

You need a Yandex Metrica tag to enable this strategy. For Yandex Metrica, make sure that:

  1. The tracking tag is installed on the advertised site. Yandex recommends that you embed the tracking tag's code snippet on every page of your site.

  2. Goals are configured for your tag.

  3. To limit the cost-revenue ratio, set up the transmission of ad revenue (the amount and currency of the goal value) to Yandex Direct. There are several ways to pass it:

    • Add conversions in the campaign settings and set a value for them. Besides the conversions that bring you direct income, you can also choose any other goals to optimize your ads, such as registering on your website or consenting to participate in a promo.

    • Specify the revenue by goal in the Yandex Metrica interface. You don't need programming skills or precise financial indicators. Enter your average order value or estimated revenue per request or submitted form.
    • Use the method reachGoal with the goal ID and preset value.
    • Enable ecommerce and pass the product price or order amount. For the “eCommerce: Purchase” goal, the goal ID is automatically transmitted by Yandex.Metrica. For any other goal, the ID must be passed in the goal_id field.
      Example of passing the product price and goal ID
      dataLayer.push({
                                        "ecommerce": {
                                        "purchase": {
                                        "actionField": {
                                        "id" : "TRX987",
                                        "goal_id": "123456"
                                        },
                                        "products": [
                                        {
                                        "id": "25341",
                                        "name": "Men's hoodie Yandex style",
                                        "price": 1345.26,
                                        "brand": "Yandex",
                                        "category": "Clothing/Men's clothing/Hoodies and sweatshirts",
                                        "variant": "Orange color"
                                        },
                                        {
                                        "id": "25314",
                                        "name": "Women's hoodie Yandex style",
                                        "price": 1543.62,
                                        "brand": "Yandex",
                                        "category": "Clothing/Women's clothing/Hoodies and sweatshirts",
                                        "variant": "White color",
                                        "quantity": 3
                                        }
                                        ]
                                        }
                                        }
                                        });

    If you use a non-monetary revenue indicator, pass the payment currency you have set in Yandex Direct.

To select this strategy, you might need to confirm your phone number. Make sure that a correct number is specified in the user settings.

Strategy settings

  1. Select the criteria and spending limit to get the maximum conversions for:

    Weekly budget

    The minimum weekly budget is 300 RUB (see other currencies). We recommend that the weekly budget is at least 10 ×  CPA .

    The strategy will try to maintain the specified weekly budget. However, your actual expenditure may differ from the predefined budget if you apply changes to your strategy.

    Budget distribution depends on your time targeting settings. For example, if you limit ad impressions to two days a week, your budget will only be distributed over those two days.

    If the budget cannot be spent, you will see an alert in the interface and get a notification sent to your inbox. This usually means that the keywords selected have a low CTR, a low budget or a low maximum bid.

    CPA

    If you limit the “CPC”, the strategy will bring you conversions at the specified cost. Learn more about pay-per-conversion campaigns.

    Specify the CPA when selecting a goal. CPA must not exceed 15,000 rubles. Learn more about calculating the optimal conversion cost.

    The specified CPA is also affected by the selected adjustments.

    Cost–revenue ratio
    The strategy will bring you conversions at a fixed cost equal to the specified percentage of the revenue transferred for the goal, with adjustments.

    This strategy is best suited for campaigns that use E-commerce or send information about the conversion revenue to Yandex Metrica. This strategy can also be used for campaigns where revenue is specified as the conversion value.

    Specify the expected ratio of ad costs to the resulting ad revenue, expressed as a percentage.

  2. Add a Yandex Metrica tag.

    If you don't have access to the Yandex Metrica tag, you can request access only for the goals configured for this tag. To do this, specify the tag, then click Request access. Next, ask the tag owner to enable the Allow optimizing campaigns for goals option.

  3. Select conversions and set the CPA or conversion value for them.

    A goal is an action you expect from a user who was exposed to your ad. You can choose to receive sessions for goals set in Yandex Metrica:

    • For a single goal: with pay-per-conversion limited by “CPA” or with pay-per-click limited by “Average CPA”.
    • For multiple goals: under other criteria. Specify their value manually or select a value: “Dynamic” (recommended for eCommerce goals).

    To choose an optimization goal, see the colored dot next to each goal:

    • Green indicates that the goal has enough conversions for all traffic sources. We recommend using this goal.
    • Gray indicates that the goal has few conversions for all traffic sources. Reaching this goal with ads may be challenging, making the campaign ineffective. Choose this goal if you are sure you have enough conversions to run the strategy.
  4. Select the attribution model in the advanced settings, if needed.

    An attribution model is a rule that determines which click is assigned as the source of a session on your site. The model helps you more accurately identify how advertising contributes to business growth. The bidding system uses Yandex Metrica statistics for the selected attribution model and focuses on achieving the desired result.

    You should select a model based on your business type, the method you use for attracting traffic, and what information you need to obtain from it. The Automatic attribution model is set by default. You can change it as needed.

    More about attribution models.

Attention. Analyze campaign performance and enter relevant parameter values. Unattainable value for average CPA, insufficient budget, or a low maximum CPC may adversely affect the strategy performance. In this case the system cannot raise the bids on effective keywords and you will get significantly fewer converted sessions.

Specifics of pay-per-conversion campaigns

  • You pay for the converted sessions that occur within 21 days of the click.

    For example, if a user clicked on an ad on April 20, you'll pay for all the conversions attributed to that click until May 11.

    Learn more about attribution models in CPA campaigns.

  • Your weekly budget spending is counted continuously without a restart, if you change any strategy settings other than the weekly budget itself.

    Let's say you set a weekly budget of 7,000 rubles. By Thursday you spent 3,800 rubles and decided to change the CPA. In this case, the remaining budget is not recalculated: 3,200 rubles remain until the end of the week.

  • If you change your weekly budget, the maximum expenditure on this day can be +100% of the old budget plus 100% of the new budget.

  • When a campaign has few or no conversions, a warning appears in the interface. To get more conversions, follow our Tips.

  • If you set an overly high CPA with a small budget, the weekly budget may be unevenly distributed. It may be used to pay for conversions at the beginning of the impression period, but the campaign will continue to run until the end of the week.

  • We don't recommend the Pay per conversion option if you use the daily budget on a shared account. Otherwise, your daily budget would be overspent by 30% or more or underspent significantly. To avoid overspending, it's better to limit the weekly budget at the campaign level.

Statistics for the money debited for each conversion is available in the Report on conversions.

Report on conversions

Use the report on conversions to analyze the actual amount debited per conversion by date over the last 365 days. Download it using the Report on conversions (.csv) link on the Report Wizard page, next to the menu on the right.

The report is only available for campaigns with the “Maximum conversions” strategy enabled.

The report shows the following data:

  • Date
  • Goal
  • Attribution type
  • CPA
  • Number of conversions

Unlike Report Wizard, where conversions are linked to clicks and shown by the click date, the report on conversions breaks them down by conversion date.

For example, the click was on July 3, the conversion occurred on July 5, and the conversion fee was debited on July 5. In regular reports generated in Report Wizard, the conversion is linked to July 3, but in the report on conversions it's on July 5.

How to calculate the optimal conversion cost

The optimal conversion cost is the value that provides the maximum total profit.

Profit per customer can be calculated using the formula:

Profit = Conversion value — Conversion cost

To estimate the total profit, multiply this difference by the number of conversions:

Earnings = (Conversion value – CPA) × Conversion count

The conversion value is the profit to the business from the conversion. For example, if 100 requests brings you 50,000 rubles, the conversion value for the goal “Submitted an online request” would be 500 rubles.

The selected conversion cost affects both earnings per customer and the number of converted sessions. When the conversion cost is low, profit per customer may be high while the number of converted sessions may be low. On the contrary, if the conversion cost is high, it may reduce profit per customer but lead to a larger number of conversions. Find a value for the conversion cost that would maximize your total profit.

The dependence of the number of converted sessions on the conversion cost is nonlinear. Starting from a certain threshold value, a further increase in the conversion cost does not essentially increase the number of converted sessions:

Use Report Wizard to find out the current conversion cost by selecting Conversion rate (%), Goal cost, and Conversions. You can calculate the optimal conversion cost through an experiment. Specify different conversion cost values in experimental campaign settings. The experiment must run long enough to accumulate sufficient statistics for proper result analysis (at least a week). Use the statistics to estimate how the change in the conversion cost affected your profit.

When comparing the statistics, consider the statistical error, i.e., possible deviation of the data obtained from the true value. The table shows the relative error depending on the number of conversions.

Conversions Deviation from true value
Conversion rate (%) CPA
25 ± 20% ± 40%
100 ± 10% ± 20%
400 ± 5% ± 10%
2500 ± 2% ± 4%
10,000 ± 1% ± 2%
Conversions Deviation from true value
Conversion rate (%) CPA
25 ± 20% ± 40%
100 ± 10% ± 20%
400 ± 5% ± 10%
2500 ± 2% ± 4%
10,000 ± 1% ± 2%

Learn more about how to create a report and make decisions based on statistics

Have questions?

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