Retargeting and audience selection for app promotion

Retargeting is a mechanism you can use to target ads to your app's existing users. It helps businesses:

• Encourage users to complete purchases.
• Bring back inactive users.
• Increase the number of purchases and other conversion actions performed in the app.
• Nudge users to get to the next stage of the marketing funnel.

How to launch

To set up a retargeting scenario for app promotion, create a unified performance campaign and select the Retargeting goal.

Types of retargeting

• Standard retargeting: Users see relevant ads based on segments defined by the advertiser.
• Offer retargeting^β: Users see the exact products or services they viewed inside the app.

How retargeting interacts with other impression criteria

In Yandex Search

Retargeting in search results works together with keywords or autotargeting via the “AND” logical operator. Ads are served to users who meet both the audience selection conditions and impression criteria, that is, keywords or autotargeting criteria.

Within the scope of the retargeting list, the logical "OR" operator is used. If your targeting criteria include a keyword and two retargeting lists, the ad is shown to users who searched for the keyword and are part of your retargeting lists.

In ad networks

Offer retargeting^β and standard retargeting (based on segments) use the logical OR operator.

Ads in ad networks are only served to users who meet the retargeting conditions.

How to set up an audience segment for retargeting

An audience segment for retargeting is a way to describe the audience you're interested in. You can create a set of conditions based on mobile app goals in Yandex Direct or use predefined Yandex Audience segments.

Segment based on mobile app goals

Before creating the segment, set up goals for your app:

1. In the left-hand menu, select Library → Mobile apps.
2. Next to the app you need, click Edit.
3. In the Goals to use in the strategy section, add the goal you want to use when creating the segment.

You can create a segment in one of the following ways:

• In the left-hand menu, select Library → Audience segments → Add retargeting list.
• Go to a unified performance campaign and open the page for creating or editing an ad group. In the Retargeting section, click Add → Create new condition.

Sets of rules

Audience segment criteria can include up to 50 sets of rules combined using the AND operator.

The system lets you choose various criteria for rule fulfillment — All fulfilled, At least one fulfilled or None fulfilled.

Rules

Set rules using the mobile app goals.

To each of your rules, you can add users who have the behavior or interests similar to users who completed the selected goal. When creating a rule, specify:

• Selected goal only to select the users that were already converted for the goal.

• Selected goal and look-alike users to select both the users that were already converted for the goal and a new audience of similar users.

• Only similar users to select only the new audience. Users that were converted for the goal or were included in the segment won't be selected by the condition.

Similar users are identified using Crypta technology.

For each goal, set a period between 1 and 540 days. Ads will be served over that period to an audience that fulfills the criteria you specified. Segments based on mobile app goals are automatically updated on a regular basis, so they contain current user data.

You can add up to 250 rules in total. The more rules you set for the segment creation criteria, the narrower the audience reach.

You can view all your audience segment criteria on the Audience segments page. You can add a retargeting list to any ad group in one or more campaigns.

You can also edit a retargeting list that you created previously. To do this, on the Audience segments page, click the criterion name and enter your changes. You can also create a new retargeting list that keeps the changes you made by clicking Save as new.

Yandex Audience segments

With Yandex Audience, you can:

• Use dynamic segments from the AppsFlyer mobile measurement platform. Learn more about integration with AppsFlyer in Yandex Audience Help.

• Create a segment based on mobile device IDs. Learn more about this segment in Yandex Audience Help.

  Note

  We recommend that you use In-Device mode when creating a segment based on mobile device IDs.

More about Yandex Audience.

How to set up offer retargeting^β

Make sure your integration and feed are ready before you enable this option in Yandex Direct.

In Yandex Direct

1. Enable the Offer retargeting^β option in the interface.
2. Add a product ad to your ad group. Offer retargeting^β is only available for product ads.

Offer retargeting^β is powered by events sent from the mobile app via your MMP. Our algorithms factor in user interactions with products or services in the app, such as viewing a product or adding it to the shopping cart.

If you want the algorithms to factor in how users interact with your site too, install the Yandex Metrica tag on your site and specify it in your MMP settings. This way, Yandex Direct can use data signals from both your site and the app to target audiences and serve your ads.

How to add a Yandex Metrica tag:

• In the group settings, when you enable Offer retargeting^β.
• Under Library → Mobile apps, when you're in edit mode.

You only need to add the Yandex Metrica tag once, and it will be saved to the Library and automatically applied to all your future campaigns for the specified mobile app.

To edit or remove a Yandex Metrica tag, go to Library → Mobile apps and click to edit the app details.

Integrate your app with an MMP

Setting up an MMP consists of three steps:

1. Setting up data collection in the mobile app.

2. Setting up transmission of events.

3. Setting up app links.

Step 1. Setting up data collection in the mobile app

If you have already used retargeting based on in-app events in other ad networks, you can skip this step.

Checklist for setting up events in the MMP:

• Make sure that the MMP collects events you want to optimize your campaigns for or make retargeting for.

• Make sure you're tracking the following events: product view, add to cart, remove from cart, and purchase. The events include the IDs of your products.

If you don't know how to check the event configuration, contact the app developer or your MMP support.

AdjustEvent event = new AdjustEvent("VIEWED_CONTENT");
event.addPartnerParameter("offer_id", "10001");
Adjust.trackEvent(event);

AdjustEvent event = new AdjustEvent("PURCHASED");
event.addPartnerParameter("offer_id", "[\"1234\",\"5678\"]");
Adjust.trackEvent(event);

Step 2. Setting up transmission of events

Set up transmitting in-app events from the MMP to Yandex Direct to use them for strategy optimization or as retargeting criteria.

Step 3. Setting up app links

Set up tracking links with retargeting attribution in your MMP and prepare deeplinks for the mobile app.

You can use our checklist to verify that your link settings are configured correctly for retargeting.

In the feed

Add tracking links that include deeplinks and support retargeting attribution to the url element.

To make sure deeplinks open correctly on iOS devices, use tracking links that support the Universal Links technology.

Learn how to create a feed

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