Optimize conversions - Yandex.Direct. Help

Optimize conversions

Use this strategy to maximize converted sessions on your website or Turbo site while maintaining your average CPA, weekly budget, or both at the same time. You can also enable paying per conversion. This strategy works well for advertisers who have a specific goal for attracting users to their website.

How it works

The “Optimize 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 conditions.

When the ad campaign is launched, the strategy is trained. It lasts up to 14 days and must produce at least 10 conversions per week. 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

To enable the strategy, make sure that a Yandex.Metrica tag or Turbo site tag is added to your campaign. For Yandex.Metrica, make sure that:

The code snippet for the tag is installed on the advertised site. Yandex recommends that you embed the code snippet on every page of your site.
Goals are configured for your tag.
You must specify the tag number or enable link tagging for Yandex.Metrica in the campaign settings. Learn more

Strategy settings

Select the criteria to get the maximum conversions for:

Pay per conversion

Enable this option so that you only pay for converted sessions. The strategy will bring you conversions at the CPA specified on strategy setup.

Learn more about pay-per-conversion campaigns.

Optimize for goal

A goal is an action you expect from a user who was exposed to your ad. You can choose to receive sessions for several goals, or just for one. The list of available Yandex.Metrica goals is updated once a day, so the new goal may not appear immediately in the strategy parameters.

What does the color of the goal mean?

Green: More than 20 conversions; Sufficient to run a strategy
Yellow: Less than 20 conversions; Ad impressions may be stopped
Red: No conversions; Ad impressions may be stopped
Gray: New or never achieved goal

If you want to specify a Turbo site as a landing page in your campaign's ad settings, select one of the recommended goals for a preset tag that belongs to your Turbo site.

List of recommended Turbo site goals

Submitting a request via the form.
Clicking a feedback button: Phone/Email/WhatsApp/Vkontakte/Instagram.
Header: Clicking a social media button (Vkontakte/Instagram).
Header: Clicking a contact button (Phone/Address/Email).
Adding an item to the cart.

Conversion cost

Available only when Pay per conversion is enabled.

Specify your CPA. CPA must not exceed 15,000 rubles. Learn more about calculating the optimal conversion cost.

Average cost per action

Not available when Pay per conversion is enabled.

Average CPA over the week: the ratio of weekly expenditures to the number of conversions. Calculate CPA yourself or use the system's recommendation. Recommended CPA is calculated as the average CPA per week for the selected goal and attribution model. If there were no conversions for a goal in a given campaign, the average CPA for that goal in other campaigns is used in calculation.

It is more common to see fluctuations in the average CPA (either up or down) if you're looking at a time span of less than a week. In the first week after launching, the strategy is still learning, so the average CPC may differ from the set price.

The minimum value for average CPA is 0.9 rubles (see other currencies).

Attribution model

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 evaluate your return on advertising investment. The bidding system uses Yandex.Metrica statistics for the selected attribution model and focuses on achieving your 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 default attribution model is Last click from Yandex.Direct. You can change it as needed.

More about attribution models.

Maximum CPC

Not available when Pay per conversion is enabled.

You can limit the CPC if necessary. If the maximum CPC is not set, by default it will not exceed 10% of the weekly budget.

It is not recommended to limit your CPC. A weekly budget should be specified if you need to control the expenditure of your funds independently.

Weekly budget

The minimum weekly budget is 300 RUB (see other currencies). If Pay per conversion is enabled, the weekly budget should be at least 20 × CPA .

The actual expenditure of a campaign using this strategy may vary by several percent from the specified budget. Accuracy may be affected when you switch between strategies, make changes to the budget, suspend a campaign, refine your time targeting or change the campaign start date.

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.

Optimize for goal

A goal is an action you expect from a user who was exposed to your ad, like calling your number, filling out a form, or opening a particular page on your site. You can use one of the Yandex.Metrica goals or enable optimization by priority goals (if they are configured in your campaign settings). To do this, add priority goals in the campaign parameters and set their value, then go to the Optimize for goal setting and select All priority goals.

The selected attribution model will apply to all the goals that you set as priority goals.

The list of available Yandex.Metrica goals is updated once a day, so the new goal may not appear immediately in the strategy parameters.

Weekly budget

The minimum weekly budget is 300 RUB (see other currencies).

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.

Attribution model

More about attribution models.

Maximum CPC

You can limit the CPC if necessary. If the maximum CPC is not set, by default it will not exceed 10% of the weekly budget.

It is not recommended to limit your CPC. A weekly budget should be specified if you need to control the expenditure of your funds independently.

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 May 1, you'll pay for all the conversions attributed to that click until May 22.
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.
Minimum balance on a Yandex.Direct account: 5000 rubles or 3 × CPA (whichever is higher).

If this amount is not met, the campaign is paused and the remaining funds are used to pay for conversions under the previous clicks.
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.

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 “Optimize 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.

Earnings per customer can be calculated using the formula:

Earnings = Conversion value — CPA

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, earnings 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 earnings 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.