In one of my resent posts I wrote about the test Yandex was running with Yandex.Direct layout placing ads to the bottom of the page instead of the right side of the SERP. The test proved to be successful, and the CTR for the ads positioned in the bottom of the page was 2,5 times higher than it used to be for the ads on the right hand side. Given the significant improvement in click through rates, Yandex rolled out the change to all Yandex.Direct ads.
While the new layout results in better performance, there are now fewer ad slots on the page – 3 for “premium” placement ads (on the top of the search results) and 4 for “guaranteed” placement ads (previously the top positions on the right, now – the ad slots under the search results). The so-called dynamic ad slots will be moved to the 2nd, 3rd and later SERPs, and therefore will get fewer impressions.
The new ad slot in the bottom of the page received the same design and features that the premium ad slot: same background color, favicons, and site links:
In 2011 Google did a similar change to AdWords layout, and the performance of the ads in the bottom was also better.
The change was generally well received by both advertisers and Yandex audience, and will definitely help companies to improve the quality of paid traffic from Yandex.
