Minimum budget
In some cases, pay-per-click campaigns with the “Maximum conversions” strategy may temporarily fail to meet the cost per conversion or cost-revenue ratio limits. For example, this may occur when you've just launched a campaign, and Yandex Direct has insufficient statistical data, or if a website goal malfunctions and stops sending data. When this happens, the strategy reduces your bids. This may result in your bids becoming so low that the campaign can no longer win any auctions and stops generating ad impressions.
You can prevent this by setting a minimum budget, which is the lowest amount you're willing to spend each calendar week or over a certain period. Similar to how your strategy uses maximum bids to maintain the budget for a week or another period, for the minimum budget, it calculates the minimum bid value for each auction and never allows bids to fall below that amount.
How it works
A strategy with a minimum budget follows the same principles as other strategies, adjusting bids for each auction based on the likelihood of a successful conversion. For example, in auctions with a low probability of conversion, the bid may be close to zero, while in auctions that are most likely to result in a conversion, the bid is going to be higher.
When adjusting bids, the strategy aims to maintain the average cost per conversion or cost-revenue ratio you set. However, on average, it doesn't raise them over weekly budget bids or reduce them below minimum budget bids.
- Example 1. Freshly launched campaign
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You created a campaign with a minimum budget of 700 rubles, a weekly budget of 7000 rubles, and an average cost per conversion of 100 rubles. You launched it on Monday.
For the first three days, the strategy was still learning and trying to generate its first conversions, so it only used minimum budget bids. Over this three-day period, it spent 300 rubles.
After receiving statistics on these initial conversions, the strategy increased its bids to a level where it can generate conversions at the specified average cost of 100 rubles per conversion. During the rest of the week, it spent an additional 3700 rubles, resulting in a total weekly expenditure of 4000 rubles for 40 conversions.
- Example 2. Problems with receiving statistics
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You have an active campaign with a minimum budget of 700 rubles, a weekly budget of 7000 rubles, and an average cost per conversion of 100 rubles. The campaign is doing fine, consistently spending 5000–6000 rubles and bringing 50–60 conversions every week.
On Sunday, the goal set up on the website stops working, preventing Yandex Direct from receiving new data on conversions. The strategy reduces the bids to the minimum budget level. The website goal remains non-functional for the rest of the week, but the campaign continues to run. Because it has switched to minimum budget bids, it continues to generate impressions and useful clicks, waiting for fresh data. Over the course of the week, the strategy spends a total of 700 rubles.
The following Monday, the website goal is fixed and the data starts pouring in. The strategy increases the bids, resuming conversions. Over the course of the new week, the strategy spends 6000 rubles at an average cost per conversion of 100 rubles.
The higher the minimum budget, the higher the minimum bid threshold, the more traffic your strategy receives during training and, consequently, the more traffic your campaign can generate. We recommend increasing the minimum budget if you're will to invest more in training your strategy.
The lower the minimum budget, the lower the minimum bid threshold, and the less your strategy spends if it struggles to generate conversions or can only generate them at a higher cost. With this approach, your strategy generates less traffic than it is capable of and takes longer to train.
When your campaign runs for seven days with minimum bids, it expends an amount equivalent to your minimum weekly budget. But that's not a guarantee — your campaign may end up spending even less that. For example, this can happen if you have narrow targeting settings that result in your campaign generating few impressions.
How to configure
When setting up your strategy, under Minimum budget, either leave the default amount, which is calculated based on your strategy settings, or set your own value manually.
The default amount is the optimal amount derived from strategy settings such as your target CPA, budget for a week or another period, and goal value.
If you choose to set your own minimum budget amount, make sure you don't set it too low. Otherwise, your strategy may take longer to train when you launch the campaign. In addition, setting a higher budget allows you to keep your strategy operational when your website goal stops working, among other scenarios.
If you set a minimum budget of zero, your pay-per-click strategy may fail to meet your desired average cost per conversion or cost-revenue ratio. If Yandex Direct has insufficient data, the strategy can still forecast a minimum bid level above zero, allowing the campaign to generate a small number of impressions.
Make sure to monitor the statistics: If your campaign doesn't bring new conversions for an extended period of time or the cost of new conversions exceeds the limit, consider adjusting your settings. For example, decrease your minimum budget.
