Recommendations

Where to see recommendations

In the menu on the left, go to Recommendations.

You'll see recommendations and notifications for all your campaigns and a forecast of how the number of clicks or conversions and expenditures will change after the recommendations are applied. The forecast is calculated using your campaign statistics and the specified settings and limits. Each widget contains tips of a certain type.

You can view recommendations from the campaign page. If the icon appears next to a campaign, ad group, or ad, this means that Yandex Direct has a recommendation for you. Click on the icon to view it.

Types of recommendations and notifications

Change settings to get more conversions or clicks

If the campaign ran into a limit over the past calendar week, Yandex Direct will show you how to change it and calculate a forecast of useful actions depending on the settings. For example:

• Increase the daily budget (for campaigns with manual bid management).

• Increase the weekly budget (for campaigns with automatic strategies).

• Increase the average CPC or the average CPA.

• Increase the maximum CPC.

The forecast is based on campaign settings, historical data, assessment of the competitive situation, and other relevant information.

Adjust budget limits on the shared account

If your campaigns reach the daily budget limit of the shared account, Yandex Direct will show a recommendation with a forecast of useful actions.

Fix an incorrect URL in ad links

Yandex Direct checks only the link to a landing page in ads. Sitelinks are not checked. If the link is broken, the ads won't be served. Links are checked regularly with a frequency of several hours to two days.

Enable autotargeting

The recommendation is shown if the campaign does not use autotargeting.

When you apply the recommendation, autotargeting is enabled in all campaign groups except the archived ones. Examples of selected queries are also shown.

The recommendations are color coded:

• Red: Something went wrong, the setting critically affects the work of your campaigns. You should view such recommendations first to fix how your ads are displayed.

• Yellow: There are restrictions in the work of your campaigns, errors should be corrected. 

• Blue: Recommendations for improving the campaign performance. 

The application of recommendations is displayed in the Сhangelog.

See recommendations

Notifications in pay-per-conversion campaigns

If your pay-per-conversion campaign does not use the optimal settings, the following notifications may appear:

Check the campaign performance

With the current settings, Yandex Direct does not bring conversions and no longer shows ads. We recommend switching to a pay-per-click strategy or creating a new campaign with different settings for a pay-per-conversion strategy.

Change the campaign settings

With the current settings, Yandex Direct does not bring conversions, so the campaign will stop soon.

We recommend switching to a pay-per-click strategy or changing the settings: the goal for optimization or its cost, budget, and targetings that limit the reach of the campaign.

The campaign has become less effective

We recommend checking the settings: the goal for optimization or its cost, budget, and targetings that limit the reach of the campaign. Update the settings if necessary.

What else you can check in a campaign

1. Goal for optimization. Check how it works using the instructions. Try to trigger a conversion yourself. Then make sure that your Yandex Metrica tag has recorded it. If the goal doesn't work, adjust its settings or select a different goal to optimize the campaign.

2. Achievability of the goal. According to statistics, the selected goal should be achieved at least 10 times each week. If there are fewer goal completions, select a goal higher up the funnel, or increase the budget or the cost of conversion.

3. Payment model. If there are not enough goal completions, you can try to switch to the pay-per-click model. This way, the algorithm will have more freedom to conduct tests and bring more conversions. You can return to the pay-per-conversion model after a few weeks if the required number of goal completions is achieved.

4. CPA. Your CPA should be high enough to receive conversions in your subject. You can calculate the optimal CPA based on historical data or the performance indicators for your business. More.

5. Weekly budget. It should cover at least 10 conversions for the most expensive goal (if there are several of them). If there is not enough budget, increase the limit.

6. Targeting settings that limit the campaign reach: Bid adjustments, negative keywords, time targeting, blocked sites, geotargeting, and impression criteria.

7. Moderation statuses. If some ads or parts of the ads are rejected or restricted in impressions, make the necessary changes and re-submit them for moderation.

When checking your campaign settings, see the Yandex Direct recommendations for improving its performance. These are marked in blue. Yandex Direct can give you a hint on which CPA or budget limits should be specified to ensure your campaign is effective.

Automatic application of recommendations

The settings recommended by Yandex Direct for Text & Image ads can be applied automatically for specific advertising campaigns. When creating or editing the “Text & Image Ads” campaign, enable the Allow Yandex Direct to automatically apply recommendations for this campaign option at the bottom of the page. The algorithm adjusts the campaign settings as soon as enough statistics are accumulated for the campaign and optimization points are found.

Here's what can be changed:

• Ad placements. For example, the list of ad placements can be increased or the list of sites where impressions are disabled can be modified.

• Audience and targetings. For example:

  • Autotargeting settings can be adjusted.
  • Geotargeting restrictions for an ad group can be disabled if this group's geotargeting settings are narrower than the campaign's.
  • The audience can be expanded using retargeting segments.
  • Advanced geotargeting settings can be edited.
  • Bid adjustments can be added.
• Strategy settings. For example:

  • Achievable goals were added to the “Maximum conversions” strategy with pay per click.
  • Achievable goals can be added to the “Maximum clicks” strategy with a weekly budget limit. In this case, the strategy is changed to “Maximum conversions” with a weekly budget limit.
  • Attribution models were changed in the “Maximum conversions” strategy.

  The settings of the “Maximum clicks” strategy with manual bid management didn't change.

Additionally, you can limit the application of recommendations when managing bids and budgets. If the Manage bids and budget option is enabled, the weekly budget can be increased by a maximum of 3% per week. The budget can be changed if it allows Yandex Direct to bring more clicks or conversions at a given price. In this event, the following settings don't change:

How do I know that the settings have changed?

When Yandex Direct changes any settings, the interface element gets blocked from editing. A mark will appear next to this element to inform you that Yandex Direct changed the setting with your permission. You won't be able to adjust this setting yourself.

You can click the blocked setting and cancel the automatic application of recommendations for the given campaign. After that, you'll be able to edit the setting again.

How can I revert the changes?

You can disable the Allow Yandex Direct to automatically apply recommendations for this campaign option at any time. But the changes made by Yandex Direct won't be canceled automatically. You'll need to edit the setting manually.

All changes made to the campaign settings as a result of the automatic application of recommendations are tracked in the changelog.

How to tell whether the recommendations helped

To find out what impact the recommendations had on your ads, analyze the campaign statistics. Compare indicators for the periods before and after the recommendations were applied. Remember that statistics can be affected by other changes in your campaigns and by external factors, such as seasonality, website improvements, competitors, and so on.

Why don't I see any recommendations?