Keyword insertion is popular feature available in most PPC platforms. By dynamically inserting a keyword that triggers the ad, keyword insertion, when used wisely, helps to increase click-through rates by making the ad more relevant and appealing the the searcher’s eyes.

Most search engines use the same syntax {keyword:default text}, which can be used in any part of an ad: title, ad text, display or destination URL.

Keyword insertion is just as handy for Yandex SEM as for any other search engine PPC program. However, the usage of it can be confusing for us, who are used to Google and Microsoft AdCenter interface. In this article I will try to explain Yandex keyword insertion feature in AdWords/AdCenter terms.

How dynamic keyword insertion works in Yandex

First of all, Yandex refers to dynamic keyword insertion as “ad templates“. Some short information about it can be found in Yandex.Direct help center.

Second, the syntax for dynamic keyword insertion looks like this: #default text#. Unlike Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct does not provide a possibility to choose capitalization. The inserted keyword will look exactly the way you enter it in your keyword list. AdCenter works the same way, which I find quite inconvenient.

Third, if keyword is too long and will cause exceeded character limit, the default text will be shown. The limit for ad title is 33 characters including spaces and punctuation; for ad text – 75 characters including spaces and punctuation. There is only one description like, like in AdCenter.

Example: Yandex PPC ad with keyword insertion operator

Other considerations

- Dynamic keyword insertion will not work with contextual ads, but only available for search ads.

- Inserted keywords will look exactly like in your keyword list, regardless of what work form (singular or plural) or case triggered the ad.

- Russian language has 7 cases. Be careful when using keyword insertion in ad text – if the case is wrong, the ad will not look professional or trustworthy.

- Be careful when using dynamic keyword insertion in destination URL. Spaces between words will be replaced by %20. Cyrillic characters will be encoded in UTF-8.

Dynamic keyword insertion is a very useful feature, but should be used with extreme care. Make sure all keywords associated with the ad make sense in the ad context, both semantically and grammatically. If used correctly, using dynamic keyword insertion will dramatically improve your CTR on Yandex.

I am sure many of you are successfully using Google Display network to drive sales. Yandex has an analog to Google’s display network called Yandex Advertizing Network (also refferd to as YAN or РСЯ in Russian). Until recently it was practically impossible to manage contextual ads in a good way. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, contextual ads could not be separated from search ads. The bid levels were not optimal and the keyword choices limited.

Recently, however, Yandex made a change in their way of handling contextual ads. From now on there is a possibility to separately manage and optimize advertizing on Yandex content network, which gives search marketers new great possibilities of reaching their target audiences in the Russian market.

The main advantage of this new feature is, of course, more flexible bidding. Running display ads in a separate campaign is a big improvement. Now you can adjust bid levels to achieve the desired coverage, which was difficult when the ads were running on search and content network at the same time.

Another great thing is that now the contextual ads can be used the same way as on Google’s display network. Google recommends creating ad groups as “themes” related to your business rather than just selecting keywords. Now you can do similar things with Yandex content ads.

Now, for example, an online shop selling tents could target keywords like “hiking” and “trekking” on Yandex content network to reach out to more potential customers. This was not an option before, when the same campaign had to target both search and content network, as these keywords are way too broad to bid on and would result in poor CTR and unnecessary spend on Yandex search.

Ad formats on Yandex content network

The ad formats are the same as for Yandex search advertizing:

Ad Title: max 33 characters

Ad Text: max 75 characters

No graphical ad formats are available. Yandex content network only supports text ads.

Special syntaxes, such as for example keyword insertion, just like with GDN, are not supported.

How to configure targeting for Yandex display network

Configuring the targeting is very simple. Go to campaign settings -> Strategy and select “Independent management for different site types”.

Configuring targeting for Yandex content network campaign

Then just create your ads, add keywords, set bids, and you are ready to go!

I am sure many of you are wondering how it works with match types in Yandex. They do not provide a description in their Yandex.Direct help topics, and there is no possibility to choose a match type in Yandex Wordstat keyword tool. It took me a while to figure it out as well, and here is my understanding of the whole match type system.

1. The matching option that comes by default

This is important for both interested in Yandex SEO and Yandex.Direct PPC. What Wordstat keyword tool returns as search volumes is probably the closest to what Google would return for a modified broad match.

This means that search volumes in Yandex keyword tool will include impressions for all queries containing all words of your key phrase in any order, in all forms, including plural.

Yandex kyeword tool Wordstat

The prepositions and other stop-words are ignored, like in Microsoft AdCenter, but if you would like to see the search volume for a phrase with a particular preposition, you can use the plus sign in front of it.

Example:

By default search volume for coat with a belt will actually include search volume for both coat with a belt and coat without a belt.

If you are interested in finding out search volumes for phrases containing the term coat with a belt, you would have to enter coat +with a belt into Wordstat keyword tool.

2. Exact match, the Yandex way

It is possible to set keywords on what AdWords specialists would know as exact match by using quotation marks, which is quite confusing since in Google that would indicate phrase match, i.e. the opposite of what it means to Yandex.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Russian language has 7 cases, which involves changing the endings for all nouns and adjectives depending on a case. Do not worry about that, because all cases are included into Yandex’s exact match as well as plural forms.

If you wish to only bid on exact match of a plural form, for example, you would need to use an exclamation mark in front of the word.

Exmaple:

Key phrase “cheap sofas” will trigger ads for search queries cheap sofas and cheap sofa.

Key phrase “cheap !sofas” will only trigger ads for the query cheap sofas.

3. Broad match, the Yandex way

There is a possibility to include synonyms, mistypes, transliterated words etc. and all the other stuff that Google would include in their broad match.

This feature is called “other relevant phrases” and needs to be manually activated. It is turned off by default.

Yandex.Direct, the PPC platform of Yandex, has been around since 2001 and is the oldest system of contextual ads in Russia (Google launched AdWords in Russia in 2002). Even though it displays ads to over 22 million people every day and attracts hundreds of new advertizers from Russia and overseas, the user interface is, let’s say, not the most convenient. Managing large PPC campaigns through Yandex web interface is a challenging task. But from now on it will be much easier for all search marketers. Finally Yandex launched a desktop tool for managing Yandex.Direct accounts, similar to those of Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Please meet  Direct Commander!

The tool is available for Windows and Mac, but unfortunately the user interface is in Russia only. The first version of Commander is not as powerful as AdWords Editor, but it provides all the basic options you need for day-to-day PPC optimization. With the help of Direct Commander you can easily:

- Change campaign and ad settings (targeting, budgets, alerts, site exclusion, automated campaign management features such as Autofocus etc.)

- View statistics

- Create, edit and manage ads

- Add, remove and modify keywords

- Manage your presence in Yandex Catalog

- Import data from XLS and CSV files

The interface is very convenient, in my personal opinion. Commander window is divided into 3 panels

1. Campaigns

2. Ads

3. Keywords

The panels can be minimized if needed. I really like the fact that you don’t need to switch between tabs, but can edit the campaign at all levels simultaneously.

Direct Commander window

Of course, since it is the first version, there are a lot of functions that are missing. For example, it is impossible to download campaigns into Excel. Would be also nice to have the Yandex keyword tool (Wordstat) incorporated into the tool.

I am looking forward to more features in Direct Commander, but it’s already a big improvement. The tool is going to be great help to all search engine marketers optimizing for Yandex.

In the last couple of months I have been spending a good amount of time with Russian PPC campaigns, both in Google.ru and Yandex. Even though I personally prefer Google’s interface, as it much more user -friendly and convenient, Yandex delivers more traffic and at a good cost.

Yandex.Direct provides some interesting features that automate parts of optimization tasks, such as, for example, “Autobroker” for automatic CPC management and “Autofocus” for automatic keyword refinement. Unlike most Google’s PPC automation tools, these two are actually quite useful.

The recent study conducted by Neiron.ru also showed that Yandex PPC ads have significantly better CTR comparing to Russian AdWords :

Yandex

Google.ru

To come up with these numbers Neiron.ru analyzed 5 896 473 search result pages in Yandex and 2 199 835 in Google.ru.

According to the study, ads in premium (top 3) positions receive 75,7% of all clicks on PPC ads in Yandex and 91,1% in Google.ru. 9 ads in Yandex’s right column get to share the remaining 24,3%. Google’s 8 ads on the right receive 8,9% of clicks.

Last week Yandex announced that machine learning technology MatrixNet, powering their organic search, was applied to Yandex.Direct as well.

CTR of Yandex.Direct ads increased by astonishing 20% during the first week after implementation of MatrixNet. Quite an improvement, isn’t it?

Yandex.Direct is a PPC platform for advertizing on Yandex and their content network. Yandex hold 65% of contextual ads market in Russia, so if you want to enter this market, that’s probably where you will allocate a big chunk of your advertizing budget.

Yandex.Direct ads in Yandex search results

Yandex have been working very hard for a year or so to attract foreign advertisers, not only promoting themselves at conferences in the US and Europe, but also investing into English translations of the most important tools and tutorials:

• Yandex.Direct interface in English: http://direct.yandex.com
• Yandex.Direct help center and program description in English:
  http://advertising.yandex.com/, http://direct.yandex.com/help/
• Yandex corporate blog: http://company.yandex.com/ with the latest news and features

When I first started with Yandex.Direct, there were a few things, which I had a hard time to grasp, being used to working with Adwords. Below I will list the key differences between Yandex.Direct and Google Adwords.

1. Campaign structure

Yandex.Direct platform allows you to group keywords and ads into campaigns. There is no support for ad groups. The campaigns looks like a bunch of ads with a number of keywords assigned to each ad.

2. Keyword match types

In Yandex.Direct there are no match types as such. The keyword matching works like modified broad match in Adword. E.g. adding a keyword Cheap Laptop Bags into Yandex.Direct will give you similar results to adding +cheap +laptop +bags into Google Adwords.

There is a tool inside Yandex Direct the system that allows you to broaden keyword matching and incorporate synonyms, which will make it more similar to Google’s broad match.

You can start your keyword research using Yandex Keyword Tool.

3. Negative keywords

Negative keywords can be only created at an Ad level.

4. Ads

The ad format is 33 characters for the title and 75 characters for the ad text. Dynamic keyword insertion is supported.

What is not supported is ad rotation. When working with Adwords, you usually create several ads per ad group and test different messages to maximize your CTR and conversion. With Yandex.Direct it is impossible to have several ads shown for the same keyword at the same time.

5. Display network

Yandex have an extensive content network in Russia. The selection criteria for the websites are very strict, therefore you can be sure, when opting into the network, that your ads will be shown only on respectable and good quality sites with a fair amount of traffic. This is a big advantage in comparison with Google’s GDN, where you get all those useless clicks from thousands small spammy sites!

What is different with Yandex content network is that :

- the ads will only be shown if your keywords match keywords in web page content (like with Bing content ads, really), while Google would rather match a “theme” of your ad group than a particular keyword.

- It is not possible to create a campaign targeting display ads only, which is totally the opposite of what Google recommend when working with GDN. Your ads to be shown on Yandex content network AND search results, or in Yandex search results only.

6. Conversion tracking

In Yandex.Direct there is no conversion tracking as we know it. Instead of tracking pixel you get from Google or Bing, the suggest you to install Yandex.Metrics, which is their analytics kit, in a way similar to Google Analytics. Yandex Metrics is a very good and powerful tool; the only problem with it is that it is only available in Russian at the moment.

Otherwise, you can rely on 3rd party tracking solution, but then the number of conversion won’t be shown in Yandex.Direct interface.

7. Mobile ads

Yandex.Direct does not support device targeting. Your ads will be shown on mobile devices by default if they occupy position #1 or #2.

The interface of Yandex.Direct otherwise if pretty straightforward. If you are an experienced search marketer, it won’t take you long to get comfortable with the platform.

While Yandex holds 65% of contextual ads market in Russia, Google is claiming to have exponential growth in revenues in the country. Eric Schmidt of Google said in his interview to Vedomosti during his visit to St. Petersburg that Russia is one of their top 5 fastest growing markets.

Google have been trying hard to gain market share in Russia and other Russian-speaking countries, using even not-so-pretty methods, such as buying Yandex.Direct related terms to promote AdWords:

Source: http://yfrog.com/kg362cgj

I personally prefer AdWords system and interface when it comes to PPC, and here is why:

1.    AdWords allows for better structure, which makes it easier to manage large accounts. Yandex.Direct does not have ad groups, so a medium sized campaign looks like a long and incomprehensible list of keywords.

2.    AdWords interface is better translated! While I have no problems navigating AdWords in Russian, Yandex.Direct in English I find rather confusing. Every now and then you come across items and links in Russian; some things are literally translated from Russian and do not make much sense to non-Russian speaker.

3.    Yandex.Direct doesn’t have conversion tracking as such. If you want to track conversions, you will have to install Yandex.Metrika (their Google Analytics basically), which not everyone would want.. Otherwise you’ll have to use 3rd party software.

Yandex, of course, understands semantics of the Russian better and is able to filter out unrelated queries, even when it comes to the same words having several different meanings. But to be honest, I was very surprised by the quality of Russian traffic I got from Google, even though I used broad match for all keywords. What I found interesting is :

a)    Google seemed to be able to match close synonyms (nothing totally off, like you get on broad match in English sometimes, but still..)

b)    Google seemed to understand transliteration from Cyrillic into Latin and vice versa.

c)    Google seemed to be able to match different noun cases for targeted keywords, however not for negative keywords. Had to add all cases to the negatives manually.

All in all, Google AdWords is a fairly good platform to advertize in Russian and a good point to start working with the Russian market.

I find the development of the Internet in Russia very interesting to monitor. The market is huge and continues to grow, however the numbers of Internet users do not grow in the same pace as e-commerce. People surf, people are mobile, but do people buy online?

Recently I heard and read a lot of stats about Russian Internet audience. The most general numbers you can find in this presentation, given by Preston Carey of Yandex at SMX Advanced London, which I attended last week. You can see than Internet penetration in Russia is still only 43%. Hard to imagine, right? But don’t get discouraged yet. 43% of the population is approx. 46 million people, which is double the population of Scandinavia, for example.

Another research, presented by Yandex, says that Russian Internet audience grew by 18% in 2010. Most of the growth (5.8 million users) came from the “regions”, which is the Russian definition of everything outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. This can be probably explained by the fact that the prices on fast Internet connection in the “regions” dropped by 30-60%.

About e-commerce

E-commerce is growing as well, however, in my opinion, not as fast. You can see the trend: more and more Russian Internet giants are creating their own ad serving platforms. In addition to good old Yandex.Direct, Google Adwords and Begun, Russian internet audience is going to be exposed to targeted ads in all major social networks: vKontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru and MoiMir. The simplest economic principle: if there is demand, the supply will eventually match it.

What I find interesting is the industry data. According to another Russian research agency, the most successful verticals in Russian e-commerce, based on traffic and conversion, are mobile phones, computers & spare parts, and home & kitchen appliances.

The leaders in conversion were Fifty.ru (2,95%), Techhome.ru (2,85%) and Toool.ru (2,53%). I think it is worth looking into the best practices, because, from what I’ve seen, Western best practices do not always work for the Russian Internet audience.

The largest online store in Russia Ozon.ru (sort of Amazon of the Russian Internet) in their presentation at SPBRIF (Internet conference in St. Petersburg) reported the following numbers: 1 000 000 products, 1 000 employees, and 4 billion Russian Rubles (approx. $143 000 000) in sales per year.

Ozon.ru claims to have 14 652 000 visitors per month. Surprisingly, the giant of Russian e-commerce has only 0.93% conversion. Another curious fact is something Geno Prussakov, the guru of affiliate industry, twitted from SPBRIF. Apparently 80% of Ozon’s orders are paid for by cash on delivery.

The bottom line of this: preparing to open up an online business in Russia, do not base calculations on volumes. The volumes are there, but buyers might not be just yet. Investigate local payment options, analyze the strongest players in the vertical, and conduct a thorough market research before investing, as Russia is a big, but a very difficult market.

Online Advertizing is booming in Russia, and, unlike many European markets, there are a few platforms available, that can deliver sufficient amounts of traffic.

Apart from the Market leader Yandex and their Yandex.Direct with massive search and content networks, you have Google AdWords, Begun (content ad network), social PPC on VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.ru, you name it.

Recently Mail.ru announced creation of their new ad platform, which will serve ads in their social network MoiMir. MoiMir is the 4th largest network in Russia and is bigger than FaceBook.

Mail.ru started up as a free email service and with the time turned into Russia’s second largest portal and a  major search engine (although they have not used their own search algorithm until recently, relying on those of Google and Yandex).

In late 2010 Mail.ru filed for IPO. From then on they have been recruiting talents from all over the place, including several top managers from Begun ad network.

Looks like Mail.ru are serious about what they are doing. I believe MoiMir will be able deliver quality traffic and sales, while providing good UI. This new ad serving platform is definitely something I will be looking into.

Context advertizing network BEGUN (second largest PPC platform after Yandex Direct, which belongs to a Russian search engine Rambler) published results of their price research. Price per click is measured in “conditional units” (whatever it is). 1 conditional unit is equal 28 Russian rubles or $0.90.

Among top 25 were some seo services related keywords sich as “seo prices”, “seo” and “context advertizing” (in Russian, obviously).

Generally the most expensive segments are real estate, legal services, security services, finance services, Internet services, software and cars. Top 10 looked as follows:

SEO prices (35,68)
Security alarms (35,00)
SEO (20,04)
Fire alarm (19,93)
Security videosystems (19,07)
Firm liquidation (18,43)
Real estate countryside (17,86)
Trader (16,11)
Forex (Russian spelling) (16,07)
Forex (English spelling)(16,07).

This is perhaps not the most precise translation, but you get the point. SEO, security and real estate… That’s where the money is =)