Statistics: evaluate efficiency of your ads

Questions about ad impressions

Display problems

Ad is not displaying

An ad that has passed moderation is usually not served because:

No money on the shared account or campaign account

Check the balance on your shared account or campaign account.

Perhaps your account ran low or ran out, although the statistics doesn't show any spending. The report statistics and account balance are updated at different times, and the values might differ for an active campaign, especially if the campaign spending is high.

Statistics in different Yandex Direct reports are also updated at different times. Report Wizard provides the most up-to-date information.

Hence when you viewed the statistics, you could had already spent the money, but the data on impressions, clicks, and costs hadn't been updated in the reports yet.

Before starting to analyze costs using reports, be sure that the data is up-to-date: the data update time is shown in the lower-left corner of the report (Updated label).

Activation is not complete

If you changed settings for your campaign, strategy, or ads, impressions will follow previous settings during the activation period: the system needs some time to apply the changes. The activation can take up to 180 minutes, see clause 4.1 of the Ad serving rules.

Activation also starts after money is credited to the account if the balance was zero and the campaign was inactive.

Here are some causes for activation to begin:

Paying an invoice at zero balance.
Enabling a campaign or individual ad.
Changing the campaign settings, ad group settings, or strategy.
Changing these settings may affect impressions:
- Start date: If the start date was set to a later date, and you set the current date.
- Impression schedule: If there were no impressions at the checked time before, but now there should be impressions.
- Display regions: If you enabled new regions and are testing ad impressions in one of the regions.
- Strategy: If the impressions were disabled on search, but now you have enabled them.
Passing moderation.

If you changed the ad, the search results will show the new version only after moderation is successful and activation is complete (up to 180 minutes under clause 4.1 of the Ad serving rules).
The activation process begins after the ads are checked and approved.
Any ads that are stopped or belong to a stopped campaign are only sent for activation after they are enabled. For example, if the campaign was moderated at 12:00, but the ads were enabled at 13:00, the activation time must be counted from the time the ads were enabled.
Stopping or resuming impressions using site availability monitoring.

If you made such changes over the past 180 minutes, wait until activation is complete.

Bids are too low

Impressions on the first page might not run if you manually set bids for keywords at a level below the minimum CPC (the “Manual bid management” strategy is running) or the system set bids that low when running automatic strategies (see clause 3.10.1 of the Ad serving rules).

You can check if the ads are served on other pages. To do this, go to the search section with the number of results and click Show all (next to the Place ad link). This will open the page with all the ads shown for the query.

The ratio of your daily budget or account balance to the bids is too low.

Evaluate the ratio of your daily budget or account balance to the bids. If they are used up in only a few clicks, impressions might be unstable.

It's better to increase your budget or decrease your bids.

The ad failed moderation or passed it partially

The ad won't be served until it fully passes moderation.

If you made changes to an ad and it was submitted for moderation, but didn't pass moderation completely yet, then the old version of the ad is displayed (even if you can see the new ad version in the interface).

Until the new version of the ad fully passes moderation and activation is complete (up to 180 minutes under clause 4.1 of the Ad serving rules), the previous version is served, and the Yandex Direct interface shows the warning under the ad or group: “Previous version of the ad is running”.

The ad is stopped by site availability monitoring

Site monitoring tracks the site availability by only requesting its home page. Ads are suspended if the site is unavailable for at least 15 minutes or more. Impressions resume automatically when the site is back online.

The home page is monitored several times a day automatically. The frequency of checks depends on the site traffic. You can't manually specify their exact number or timing.

If the site is unavailable during the check, it's not disabled until the bot returns to the page to make the second check. If the site is still unavailable at that time, impressions are stopped.

After the ad is disabled, site monitoring continues. If the site becomes available at a future check, impressions resume.

If your site becomes available but impressions are not resumed, please wait: the bot will crawl the site and resume impressions.

If the site is back online for a while already, but the bot doesn't resume impressions, you can disable monitoring in the campaign settings.

If you suspect that site availability monitoring made the wrong decision, namely, stopped impressions when the site was available or didn't resume impressions when the site became available, contact the customer service department using the feedback form, and we'll check our monitoring. Attach the Access logs of your site's response to the Yandex bot. The bot's useragent is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexMetrika/2.0; +http://yandex.com/bots yabs01). This information is needed so our technical experts can discover the causes of the situation.

What are Access logs

Access logs are text files used by web servers to record the site access requests. One server request is recorded per line in the file.

Logs are used to collect the site statistics and detect possible site abuses.

To get this information, please contact your webmaster.

Impressions were suspended by the daily or weekly budget settings

Check if the campaign has any warnings:

“Your weekly budget has temporarily suspended impressions for this ad”
“Impressions paused by daily budget restrictions”
“Impressions suspended by shared account daily budget limit”

If you see these warnings, change your campaign budget settings to resume impressions.

You stopped the campaign or ad manually

Check the status of your campaigns and ads. You may have manually stopped the campaign or ad, which is why the ad is not served. Click Resume impressions.

Ads in the campaign are stopped by moderators

Check the status of the ads on the campaign page: perhaps, all or part of your ads are on the Stopped tab. According to clause 3.5.8. of the Yandex Direct service offer, the bot may stop the ads while they are being moderated.

After the ads are approved by moderators, they remain on the Stopped tab until you manually resume impressions.

Campaign impressions are suspended according to the time targeting schedule

Check the time targeting schedule based on the time zone you selected in the campaign settings. To do this, go to the Edit campaign page and expand Impression schedule.

A later date of campaign start is entered

Check the campaign start date in the settings and change it if necessary.

The ad is found similar to others

If a keyword has a bid sufficient for serving on the first page, but you can't find your ad in the search results for the query, your ad might be similar to another ad (see clause 3.11 in the Ad serving rules).

Ads from the same or different advertisers can be recognized as similar if, at the same time:

They promote the same or similar products and services advertised and sold in the same region.
They are placed with the same or overlapping keywords.
They contain links to the same or similar advertiser sites.

If your ad is found similar to others, it might not be shown. The search results show the ad that has the best combination of click-through rate (CTR), quality coefficient, and bid per click.

If you suspect that your ad was found to be similar to other ads, you can check it by sending a request to the customer service department using the feedback form.

Campaign has many invalid clicks

Yandex Direct protects ads from fake clicks. Those clicks that are identified as invalid at the first stage of checking (online filtering) are filtered automatically. You don't pay for them.

Campaign statistics are always double checked (offline filtering): the system analyzes the clicks previously counted in the campaign statistics after the online filtering. Some clicks may also be filtered as a result of the second check. You can view the number of clicks filtered by the anti-fraud system over a certain period in Report wizard (Invalid clicks) row.

If any invalid clicks are found at the second check, you get refunded for them. You'll be notified about this at the email address specified in the campaign settings.

Clicks are analyzed for a large number of parameters, so the decision about their integrity is made with a small delay. While checking validity, the system "reserves" the amount equal to the cost of the click that is being checked. Yandex Direct interface shows no debit transaction at this point.

In the case of fraudulent activities, the number of "bad" clicks can be many times higher than "good" clicks. Therefore, at some points the total "reserved" amount reaches the campaign's account balance. At this point, the system decides that the account ran out of money and stops impressions. After all the fraudulent clicks are checked and invalidated, the money is released and impressions resume.

Open Report Wizard and estimate the number of registered and filtered clicks for a given day. If the number of filtered clicks is much higher than the number of counted clicks, evaluate the expected cost of those clicks. To do this, multiply the number of filtered clicks by the average CPC. Compare the balance on your campaign account or shared account with the expected spending on filtered clicks.

To minimize the number of stops due to invalid clicks, try to reduce the bid or top up your campaign account with a higher amount (you may also set a higher limit for the shared account daily budget, if any). This way you can ensure that you have enough balance to continue impressions in case of temporarily reserved money.

Incorrect use of negative keywords

Negative keywords used for a keyword, ad group, or campaign have stop words (most often, a preposition) used in the keyword

For example, you set the keyword homes for sale and the negative keyword -!for. In this case, you'll have no impressions for homes for sale, but still have impressions for home sales (without the preposition).

We recommend that you remove prepositions from your negative keyword list.

If the negative keyword -!for is among shared negative keywords in a campaign or ad group, instead of deleting it, you may use "+" in front of it: homes +for sale. In that case, the negative keyword -!for is ignored for this keyword, and the impressions for keywords with this preposition will run as expected.

Negative keywords contain numbers with two or more delimiter points

Yandex Direct processes only the first point inside the digit sequence, and the next points are replaced by a space.

For example, the keyword protective sleeve -6.236.003 is equivalent to the keyword protective sleeve 003 -6.236, and you'll have impressions for the query protective sleeve 003.

Negative keywords contain operator-modified words or keywords that exactly match the advertiser's keyword

For example, you set the keyword Moscow exchange and the negative keyword -"Moscow exchange". In this case, you'll have no impressions under the exact query Moscow exchange. However, you'll have impressions under Moscow exchange schedule.

Or you set the keyword chop saw and the negative keyword -"chop chop". In the negative keywords using the operator " ", repeated words are merged together (into -"chop" in this case), and you'll have no impressions for the query chop saw.

The keyword contains the name of the region, but it's not included in the display regions

Check which display region is set in your campaign or ad group settings.

For example, if the keyword is: buy house in Moscow Region, and only Moscow is set as the display region (without the Moscow Region), then the ad is not served.

Make sure to check whether you enabled Advanced location targeting in your campaign settings. If it's enabled, we recommend that you disable it.

For more information about the effect of combined location settings on ad positioning, see the post.

Negative bid adjustments exclude certain audiences

In your campaign or ad group settings, you can use negative or excluding bid adjustments for specific audiences. Probably you are subject to such adjustments and can't see your ads in search results.

The checked region is not included in the campaign's geotargeting

Check that the region that is set or selected in your browser settings is included in your ad display regions.

Check that your city is not excluded from the campaign's geotargeting.

For example, if you check impressions in Moscow, and the impressions are set for the Moscow Region that excludes the city of Moscow, you'll have no impressions in Moscow.

You get warnings about restrictions

There might be warnings about restrictions under the ad group:

Legal restrictions on ad serving: both the impressions on search and in ad networks are limited.
Restrictions for tragic or adult subjects: no impressions in ad networks.
Restrictions on impressions based on user interests and audience selection criteria: no impressions in ad networks based on behavioral targeting and retargeting.

Keywords are related to tragic subjects

Check whether the keyword is related to a tragic subject.

If yes, then enclose all the keywords in quotes. In this case, the ads will be served on search, but only for queries that exactly match the keyword (without any additional words). For more information, see this section.

Ad subject is related to betting offices

Ads with the subject “Betting offices” are not served in search results in Russia, only on content sites.

In the Republic of Belarus and Republic of Kazakhstan, ads on this topic can be served.

If your ad subject relates to betting offices and impressions are targeted to Belarus or Kazakhstan, but your ad is still not served, send a request to the customer service department using the feedback form.

Ads are disabled in search results.

Make sure that with the Manual bid management strategy your impressions are not disabled in search results.

Campaign has ads with the same keywords, but with a link to a different site

In this case, ads or groups can be recognized as similar to other ads or ad groups (see clause 3.11 of the Ad serving rules).

If your ad is found similar to others, it might not be shown. The search results show the ad that has the best combination of click-through rate (CTR), quality coefficient, and bid per click.

Keyword contains typos or random letters

Check your keywords.

For example, if the keyword contains a Latin letter and the query is all-Cyrillic, the ad is not served (most often this occurs with the Cyrillic letter С).

If the above reasons don't apply to your case, contact the customer service department.

We added a new status: “Not enough statistics to forecast traffic”

Ad groups marked "Rarely served" have very few impressions or are not being served at all.

Before assigning the “Not enough statistics to forecast traffic” status, the system evaluates the accumulated impression data for the ad group. This process updates automatically. The system periodically tries to serve ads from this group. If the number of impressions in an ad group increases, then it becomes active again.

Bid forecasts and statistics for ad groups with this status are not available for 28 calendar days. Accumulated statistics can be seen in Report Wizard.

You can increase impressions by improving your ad group settings. Below we listed our recommendations, from the most important to the least important one.

Select different keywords: Perhaps your keywords aren't used often in search queries or are too specific for impressions in ad networks. Try adding other keywords or make sure that operators or negative keywords are not limiting your keywords more than necessary. We recommend that you use Keyword planner to create a list of keywords. You can see how many people search for a given keyword every month, and look up similar queries.
Combine keywords: Keywords that are not used frequently can be combined into one ad group so that together they can receive enough traffic to remain active. Using templates, you can create unique ads for each keyword. With the use of URL parameters like {keyword} or {param1} and {param2}, you can create separate landing pages for users that come to a site who clicked through on one ad but searched for different keywords. Learn more
Edit your retargeting list: Your retargeting list may be too narrow. Very few users click through to your site due to your settings. Try changing your settings and broadening your target audience.
Check your geotargeting settings: If you selected a particular city in your geotargeting settings, ads can only be served to people located or interested in that city. In some cities, there may not be impressions for a given keyword or Retargeting & Audiences option. Try adding nearby cities, or selecting the whole region or district.
Increase maximum bids: Your competitors may have raised their bids, so your ad groups are losing auctions due to low bids or negative bid adjustments. For your ads to win auctions and get selected for impressions more often, increase your bids or cancel your adjustments.

Select different keywords: It is possible that your selected keywords do not appear frequently in search queries, or are too specific for impressions in networks. Try adding other keywords or make sure that operators or negative keywords are not limiting your keywords more than necessary. We recommend that you use Keyword planner to create a list of keywords. You can see how many people search for a given keyword every month, and look up similar queries.
Combine keywords: Keywords that are not used frequently can be combined into one ad group so that together they can receive enough traffic to remain active. Using templates, you can create unique ads for each keyword. With the use of URL parameters like {keyword} or {param1} and {param2}, you can create separate landing pages for users that come to a site by clicking through on the same ad after having searched for different keywords. Learn more....
Edit your retargeting list: Your retargeting list may be too narrow. Very few users click through to your site due to your settings. Try changing your settings and broadening your target audience.
Add different mobile app categories: Yandex research shows that most of the users are interested in multiple categories at once.
Check your geotargeting settings: If you selected a particular city in your geotargeting settings, ads can only be served to people located or interested in that city. In some cities, there may not be impressions for a given keyword or Retargeting & Audiences option. Try adding nearby cities, or selecting the whole region or district.
Increase maximum bids: It is possible that ad groups are not winning auctions due to low bids or decreasing bid adjustments. By increasing bids and removing decreasing bid adjustments, you can ensure that your ads win auctions and are selected for display more often.

How to get more impressions

To increase the number of impressions for your ads:

Enable impressions in ad networks.
Change your impression schedule and expand your geography.
Check that your keywords are working. If you use operators incorrectly or have a lot of negative keywords, this will limit your impressions.
Enable autotargeting. Yandex Direct will use your ad text and the advertised site page to select relevant search queries and serve your ads to users who enter them.
Adjust your bids. Raising your bids allows your ads to win auctions more frequently and get selected for impressions.
Change the settings of your chosen strategy. For example, increase your budget if the limit you set doesn't allow you to win auctions.

You can also follow Yandex's recommendations for improving advertising performance.

Favicons in ads

Your site's icon (favicon) can be added to Yandex Direct ads on the Yandex Search results page.

What is a favicon?

A favicon is a small image displayed in a snippet in Yandex search results (including the ad section), next to the site address in the browser address bar, next to the site name in the Favorites or Bookmarks of the browser.

How do I install a favicon?

The image from your file named favicon is automatically uploaded as the favicon. This file is usually located in the root directory of the advertised website or is embedded in its HTML code.

Important. For search results, Yandex loads the favicon from the HTTPS version of your site. If the favicon is not available, it's not displayed.

Note.

After you add a new favicon, it may take some time to update the information. This means that the changes are not immediately displayed in the output.

What are the requirements for a favicon?

Size: 16 × 16, 32 × 32, or 120 × 120 pixels.

Format: ICO (recommended), GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP.

Why is my site displayed without a favicon in the ad?

In Yandex Direct, the favicon is added automatically from the organic search results. Check whether the favicon is in the root directory of the site. Otherwise, install it.

Attention.

If you replaced the favicon that was installed previously or added a new one, it may take some time to update the information. This means that the changes are not immediately displayed in the output.

Why does my site have a favicon in search results, but no favicon in the ad section?

In Yandex Direct, the favicon is added automatically from the organic search results. If the favicon is installed on the site and shows up in search results, but not in the ad, make sure that it's the same for different versions of the site:

At the URLs both with and without www.
On the hosts with HTTP and HTTPS.

If you can't figure out how to install a favicon, please contact Yandex Webmaster support.

Favicon fails to display or is wrong

Check the favicon in the search results. To do this, enter the site domain in the search bar and look up search snippets.

If the organic search results (snippets not labeled as "Ad") show no favicon for the site, or the favicon is the same as for the ad and you want to display another favicon, contact your webmaster. After the desired favicon starts showing up in the organic output, the data is updated in Yandex Direct.

The favicon may fail to display if the site hasn't been indexed yet.

The favicon is set up correctly but is not displaying

Yandex Direct does not guarantee that favicons will display for all ads (even if the favicon is correctly configured). Ads can be displayed without a favicon, this is normal.

Attention.

If you replaced the favicon that was installed previously or added a new one, it may take some time to update the information. This means that the changes are not immediately displayed in the output.

If the favicon is installed correctly on every version of the site, and search results show the correct favicon for the site, but no favicon is shown for ads on search, contact us using the feedback form.

SERP layouts

The SERP layout technology makes a decision about the search results in each case regarding how the ads will look and be placed. The resulting version of the search results depends on the user and advertising subject. Each option for showing search results is a separate layout.

The SERP layout is matched to the user and ad subject. In each case, the system shows the variant of search output that strikes the balance between the user satisfaction and effectiveness for advertisers.

Questions about SERP layouts:

Regular format

Ads are shown with all their extensions (sitelinks, contact information, display link). Callouts are only shown for the ad displayed in the top position.

Exclusive placement

The largest and most noticeable ad format in search results. An exclusive placement ad occupies a single advertising spot above the search results,

For ads to be served in exclusive placements, they must include:

Sitelinks with descriptions (we recommend adding the maximum number of sitelinks with descriptions to improve your ad performance).
Condition is met: Your bid and ad quality let you get the traffic volume of more than 100.

Advertising in suggest

The ad appears under the list of suggestions when the user enters a query in the search bar. It's selected algorithmically based on the most likely search suggestion and displayed only if the ad message is highly relevant to the user query. After being shown in suggestions, the ad can also be displayed in the search results.

Minimalist format

Ads are displayed without additional elements (sitelinks, contact information, display link). This design reduces the cost of an ad unit entry.

Copying the ad from the top position

The ad selected for the top position in the Premium placement section may be also shown at the top of the Remaining positions section.

No, you can't disable specific SERP layouts. Impressions in layouts depend on additional elements in the ad: sitelinks, their descriptions, address and phone number, images, videos, and more. The more elements you add, the higher the chance that your ad shows up in every SERP layout.

Impressions in layouts depend on additional elements in the ad: sitelinks, their descriptions, address and phone number, images, videos, and more. The more elements you add, the higher the chance that your ad shows up in every SERP layout.

You can use bid adjustments to increase the probability of being served in the premium single template or in autofill suggestions.

Yes, you can view statistics on impressions in the premium single template or in autofill suggestions using the Type of placement cross-section in the Report Wizard.

Displays stop in distributed mode

In distributed mode, ads are served in a way that spends the daily budget evenly throughout the day or during the period specified in time targeting. If your budget is not enough for continuous impressions, your ads will get paused periodically.

You can see the distribution of sessions itemized by hour in the “Yandex Direct, summary” report of Yandex Metrica. If the report shows that ad impressions are irregular, with very short periods, and you run out of the daily budget fast, it means you can't distribute your impressions in an optimal way with the current system settings. Increase your daily budget, change bids, or switch to a weekly budget.

Can I display a Search banner and a Text & Image Ad at the same time?

If the “Search banner” and “Text & Image Ads” campaigns use the same keywords, both ads can be displayed for the same search query.