Cost of advertising on Yandex Direct. How much: minimum budget for Yandex.Direct Calculate direct advertising campaign

We will talk about the Budget Forecast tool in Yandex.Direct, and at the end of the article I will show you one trick, so read to the end.

What is the Yandex.Direct Budget Forecast

How to get into the Yandex.Direct Budget Forecast?

If you have advertising campaigns, then go to your account direct.yandex.ru and click on the Budget Forecast link in the top menu. If you don’t have advertising campaigns yet, then go to the main page direct.yandex.ru and in the Tools section there is a link for Budget Forecast.

I’ll say right away that you can use the Budget Forecast only when you log into your Yandex account.

Once you log in, you will see a page like this that asks you to select three steps.

How to use Budget Forecast in Yandex.Direct

1. Select a region

Let me click here and make a quick selection. We need to apply it. If the region has changed, then you did everything right.

2. Select calculation parameters

Next, in the second step, you need to Select calculation parameters. I'll click Edit and you'll see that there are several periods here, these are week, month, quarter, year, 30 days or a specific month. If you have a seasonal business, or you are just planning to start advertising on Yandex.Direct, you can set the month in which you plan to start advertising.

Next, you need to select Platforms - all or only Mobile, and you can also select the currency in which you want to receive the data. I'll leave Russian rubles. I haven't changed anything, so I can click Cancel. In your case, if you have changed something, you need to click OK.

3. Choose keywords

The third step is the most important. This tool allows you to predict the advertising budget for key phrases or keywords (let's sometimes call them KF for shorthand), for which you plan to advertise.

I’ll say right away that the data will be inaccurate, this is just an approximate calculation.

However, the Budget Forecast has many different features that keep me coming back to it again and again. For example, one of the things that I use quite often is that you can enter several CFs into this tool and look at their frequency. In this case, you will have to enter each phrase separately and record this data for yourself. In the Budget Forecast tool, everything will be presented clearly.

Window for selecting key phrases in the Budget Forecast

Now let's use the CF selection window and enter some phrases. For example, “plastic windows”. I click somewhere past or just wait, and a hint window appears.

Budget Forecast Tips

To use the hint, just click on this link. Let's say I like the hint “PVC window”. I click and you see that it is transferred to this working window, separated by a comma and a space. You can also hide the hints, or select “all fit”, so they will all be transferred to this window. Next, you can click on the More link and see more tips.

Let’s say I’m happy with the phrase “rehau window.”

Organize, Clear and Auto-Adjust

You can also see that there is a certain limit on the number of characters, but I want to warn you that for now we can exceed this limit. That is, enter here the CF above these figures.

Next you see the checkboxes Automatically adjusting phrases with negative keywords and Automatically fixing stop words. If you want the Budget Forecast to work faster, you can clear these checkboxes. However, for the feature that I want to show you at the end of this article, I will leave these checkboxes.

Single set of negative keywords

Below we can add a single set of negative keywords. Let’s enter here as an example “for free, with your own hands.”

Now if I click the Calculate button, you will see that the negative keywords will change and a sign will appear. Actually, this is why we use this tool. This magic sign appeared, for the sake of which I go to the Budget Forecast. And let's go a little lower, we see that the single set of negative words has changed - the words are written with the minus operator.

Yandex.Direct budget forecast table

Let's talk about the sign, what we see here and what we can do.

We can remove all CFs, we can remove a specific keyword, we can select all CFs, or vice versa, remove some phrases. And if I remove the key phrase here, then note that the budget forecast changes, in this case it becomes smaller.

Here we see a column, which we will return to a little later.

To quickly select a position in all CFs, we can use these links.

For example, we want our keyword to rank first in Special Placement. And what budget will we spend per month? Click here and we see that our advertising budget will be 7 million rubles. We can also change positions for each CF. Let's give all phrases Special Placement.

Data filter

We can also filter the data here. For example, we can find out which CF has a higher forecast of impressions. Click here and see what has been filtered. Or vice versa, in descending order. I feel more comfortable this way.

Projected figures

Let's take a closer look at what numbers we see, and I will mention that these are only projected numbers, that is, they are not exact, and may differ in your advertising campaign. However, the Budget Forecast is constantly updated, and it is possible that the figures here will be more accurate in the near future.

Although I doubt it a little because these numbers you spend depend on many metrics, including both the landing page and your ad. However, let's take a look at the numbers we see here.

If we want to advertise in the Special Placement position, then we will need to place the following bid - 500 rubles, and we will be charged 140 rubles. Let me remind you that we are talking about the Moscow region and the region, because I chose it at the first step. Further, our ad will have a CTR forecast of 12.39% and an impression forecast of 256,974. Our ad with such a predicted CTR will be clicked 31,838 times, for which we will pay 4 million rubles.

The budget forecast recently changed; previously there was one number in the Impressions Forecast column, but now we see that these numbers change depending on the position. That is, at the first special placement our numbers will be seen 263 thousand times, and already at the second special placement 260 thousand, and in the guarantee a total of 132 thousand.

These numbers give us an understanding that it is necessary to rank higher in order to receive more traffic. That is, it was made specifically for this purpose.

Phrase column in budget forecast

This is the data we see, and now let’s talk about this column that I promised to tell you about.

If we click on a key phrase, we see interesting information: we see ads from our competitors. If we look at them, we can take a number of ideas for ourselves that we will use in our advertising campaign. We also see here the regions in which they are advertised, we see the domains, we can go to them, evaluate the landing pages. In general, a very convenient tool for analyzing competitors.

Change, Clarify, Select

Next we see links Change, Clarify, Select. Let's click on them and see what changes. Actually, in order to change our CF, we need to click the Change button and let’s say that I want to have a singular number instead of a plural, although this will not affect the data. To apply, click OK. If we change our mind, we must click Cancel.

Now let's talk about the Refine link. This is a very cool link and I use it quite often to refine my keyword phrase. But usually I use one phrase so that other CFs do not interfere with the data. I click Specify, this window appears, and let’s say I don’t sell blinds and curtains for plastic windows.

In order to remove impressions, you need to click next to the phrase that does not suit me, for example “blinds”, “curtains”, for example, I do not repair plastic windows, and if I now click Apply, then our CF will change - to it Negative keywords will be added. And if I now close this window and open it again, then in this window there will no longer be the phrases “blinds”, “curtains” and “repair”. A wonderful tool, I also use it quite often.

And now we’ll talk about the Select link. If we click here, we will get access to our regular Wordstat, and all the negative keywords will already be applied. And let's say I want to use all these CFs. I select them and click Add. All selected CFs will be transferred to this window and I will receive general data on them. You see, a lot of keywords have appeared.

Export data from budget forecast to Excel

We have worked with our keywords, some of them may not suit us again, I remove them, and now I can use these key phrases. I click List of phrases, copy and go to our advertising campaign that I am creating. I can also export this entire forecast to myself, I select what data is interesting to me and click Export to XLS.

The promised trick

At the beginning of the video, I promised to tell you about a certain feature. The fact is that I already have an advertising campaign in this account.

And now I’ll open another account in which I don’t have advertising campaigns, and I’ll do it in the Yandex browser (in a different browser).

I will add here all the key phrases that I copied from the previous account. I'll click Calculate, all these key phrases are added here.

And if I click on the Export to xls link, you will see that there is a line like Export to an Excel file for loading into the campaign. If I export now, I will get a template to upload to my account, which will already have key phrases.

And I can work with this excel file in order to write advertisements, add links, quick links, clarifications, and so on. And already upload your advertising campaign. So I recommend that you create a separate account to work with such templates so that you can quickly select key phrases using the Budget Forecast, take ideas for your ads, and in the end you will receive an excel file with key phrases into which you can add your announcement.

This is a trick, be sure to use it. If you liked the article, then like it.

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Unlike most other channels (television, newspapers, magazines), in Yandex.Direct the budget is not fixed, it can be managed, it can be changed and adjusted during the campaign.

Estimating the budget of an advertising campaign in Direct

That is, if the cost of an advertising block in a magazine is 1,500 rubles per ad, then you will pay that much, regardless of the text of the ad, the presence of competitors and other factors. In Yandex.Direct, the situation is different - in this system you pay for clicks on your ad, that is, for clicks, but how many clicks there will be and what the price for each click will be is difficult to predict.

On the one hand, this approach is convenient - by changing the rate per click, you can reduce or increase advertising costs at any time. However, it is difficult to determine how much money you will need with this approach. For example, you want to save money and reduce the cost per click. At the same time, you automatically give way to your competitors who are willing to pay more per click. Or, on the contrary, you set a high cost per click, but your ad turns out to be extremely attractive, and as a result you pay more because it is ahead of the competition without additional costs.

To help advertisers resolve this issue, Yandex has introduced an advertising budget forecaster. This is a tool that allows you to understand how much money you should spend on a campaign. The forecast algorithm makes calculations based on data collected by the system over the last 30 days, so you will get different results at different times.

How does advertising budget forecast work?

Your first step in forecasting advertising costs will be to log into Yandex.Direct, where you will find the “Budget Forecast” option:

By clicking on the budget forecast, you will be taken to the page for estimating the budget of the advertising campaign, where you will have to enter the name of the region in which your potential customers live, the period during which you are going to display the ad and a list of key phrases.

Keywords are the words that a user types into the search bar when searching for your product. If you are selling jewelry, then this could be “buy a gold ring”, “cheap gold ring”, etc.

If you wish, you can change the display period; to do this, just click on the word “change”:

After this, a window will appear in which you can select the period, sites and currency in which you pay for advertising.

Display regions and keywords should be selected in advance - searching and selecting keywords takes a lot of time. After entering the necessary data, all you have to do is click the “Calculate” button and get the approximate amount of costs.

Specifics of the resulting forecast

Keep in mind that the amount you receive as a result of the forecast is not the final result, but only a guideline. There are several reasons for this:

• Seasonality of search queries. Considering that the forecast is based on information for the last 30 days, seasonality is a serious distorting factor.
• When making forecasts, average campaign performance figures are taken. Because some advertisers run successful campaigns and some do not, the average is not particularly accurate.
• The advertising budget forecast does not take into account impressions through the Yandex advertising network (YAN).

Taking into account all of the above, it is not worth spending effort and money on eliminating errors and obtaining an ideal forecast. It is better to take its result into account as a guideline and clarify everything in practice by conducting a little testing. If you keep this in mind, forecasting the budget for an advertising campaign in Yandex will become a useful and effective tool.

We have a service for setting up contextual advertising, and it is often used by those who only heard about this advertising channel yesterday.

The most common misconception that we encounter during the first conversation is: “Tell me EXACTLY (or even better, the application) and how much money is needed for advertising.”

It is for this reason that I have prepared instructions according to which, if you wish, you can independently make a budget forecast in Yandex Direct.

But let's be clear right away. It is impossible to accurately guarantee the cost of a click, announce the budget of an advertising campaign, and even more so name the application price.

I will not say that professionals, in principle, never give guarantees, but only operate with probabilities.

I’ll just say that even Yandex Direct itself is wrong in its forecasts. Therefore, it is possible to estimate prices using special tools. But it’s impossible to say for sure. Just accept this fact.

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN INDICATORS

If you show this article to an unprepared person right now, he will not understand anything, because it contains many unknown terms. That is why, first of all, you need to read our article

But to make the article as clear as possible, I am forced to voice the terms that we will use for calculations.

1. Number of requests– the number of users who are searching for this key phrase;
2. Position– the place where your future ad will be displayed;
3. Average CPC Forecast– average cost per click on these positions;
4. Sum– the future cost of a click, which is calculated based on the position of the ad;
5. CTR– possible conversion from seeing to clicking on an advertisement;
6. Impressions/clicks forecast– the estimated amount of ad impressions and clicks on your advertisements;
7. Budget forecast– the estimated amount that you will need to spend on this advertising campaign in Yandex Direct.

When calculating online variable indicators, the average conversion in similar areas and the same keywords is taken as a basis.

Or the calculation is based on the current Yandex advertising campaigns of your competitors.

And even here, weaknesses are already visible: the average indicator can be highly volatile, and the indicators of your competitors can be distorted due to incorrect settings.

But nevertheless, after calculating all these indicators, you will be able to understand whether you have the necessary budget for this and how many applications you can get from this budget (multiply the number of clicks by the site conversion).

Otherwise, maybe you don’t have a minimum budget in reserve and it’s easier for you to launch or the same one.

And you will also be able to see advertisements of competitors and those who advertise in Yandex.Direct.

This way, you can estimate their number and the ability to compete with you.

It will also become clear what key advantages they advertise or what prices they base on.

We definitely use this little trick when we make an order.

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STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS IN ACTION

We are all different. Aren't you surprised?! Therefore, I have prepared two detailed instructions on how to make a Yandex Direct budget forecast.

One is for those who want to do it quickly, and the second is for those who are used to approaching everything thoroughly.

But if your budget is not large or the competition is minimal, then a simple level may be enough.

Lifehack. If you want to post on social networks, you can do this using the automated Aori service. Everything there is quite easy and understandable even for beginners. Just go and register -> Aori

Simple level (basic analysis)

Budget forecast

To get started, you need to have a Yandex account by type [email protected]. If it doesn't exist, then get it.

It's literally 2 minutes. After this, move on to more complex actions. Namely, go to the Yandex.Metrica tab, where you will see 4 possible options for action. You need to select “Budget Forecast”:

Budget Estimation

After which you will be transferred to a new tab, overloaded with information.

But once you figure it out, you can independently, quite accurately and professionally determine the budget for your advertising in Yandex Direct.

By the way, it looks quite simple, even for those who see this page for the first time.

Region

The first thing you need is to determine the region of your future advertising campaign.

That is, the areas or regions where it will be shown. If you are not a professional, then I really don’t recommend watching “let it be all over Russia.” The data can be very blurry and very inaccurate.

Calculation parameters

As a rule, I leave these settings by default, but if you know from , that you only buy from mobile phones once a year, then you can turn them off.

Key phrases

And now the most important thing is what the entire budget of your future advertising campaign is based on.

Its calculation is based on the key phrases you enter. Therefore, the more keywords you enter, the more accurate your forecast will be.

To do this, hints of keywords close in meaning are shown to help you.

You can choose them, or you can enter keywords yourself. After you have entered all the necessary keywords, click the “Calculate” button.

Forecast by phrases

"Hooray! Actually, this is the entire monthly budget that I need. Oh, he’s not big yet!”, you might think when you see this table.

But its problem is that initially it loads data in what is called a “minimal configuration”.

To get real data and a real monthly budget, you need to click “1st special placement”.

Special accommodation

Tadam! And here there are completely different numbers of both clicks and budget, even with completely identical initial conditions such as display region and key phrases.

By the way, the numbers shown with the “1st special accommodation” ticked are your final budget calculation, which you can focus on and build on from.

Of course, it can be smaller (I’ll talk about this below). But at a minimum, it can be taken as the initial data.

Difficult level (detailed analysis)

The first 7 stages that you saw are called “easy level”. It's ideal when you're estimating your budget based on one or more keywords that you know.

Manual counting

To do this, you need to find in section 4 “Key phrases” and click the “Select” button, after which you will be redirected to an additional page.

For ease of understanding, we can call it a lightweight version of Yandex.Wordstat for searching and selecting keywords.

Selection of keywords

Here you also specify the region where your ad is displayed and enter the main key phrase, which will match you with all the phrases that users search for along with it.

It is advisable to enter the highest frequency word (as short as possible), so the system can provide a larger number of hints.

Hints

As you can see, the keyword selector not only gave you all the phrases for the request “buy a hammer drill,” but also tips that you can also use for analysis and budget planning.

All you have to do is select the necessary phrases and tick them. There is no need to be greedy here, take only those that really suit you.

Selection of phrases

In addition, I would like to remind you that phrases can be on several pages, so do not forget to scroll through them to remove unnecessary ones and add the ones you need (for example, remove phrases with the prefix “used”).

Then simply add them to the list and press the familiar “Calculate” button.

Calculation

In theory, everything will be the same as what you saw before, however, by refining the search phrases you will be able to form a budget more accurately.

Also, don't forget to export the data to Excel if you want to come back to it later or compare it with others (for example, when choosing between two directions).

This is quite simple to do; there is a special button for this, which will give you the following document:

Data in Excel

Important. This method of determining the budget does not take into account at all.

And then you need to multiply the number of impressions by 1% (average conversion to clicks) and by the resulting cost per click after dividing by 3.

You add this entire amount to your main budget and now you know exactly your full advertising budget.

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN THINGS

It’s not difficult to estimate your budget in Yandex; to do this you need to go to the service, select a region, platform and enter at least the most popular keywords.

Most likely, in this whole matter, you will most likely have questions with the last point - the selection of keywords.

But if you know your clients, you just need to start thinking like them and then these phrases will flow like a river and then predicting indicators will not be difficult.

And I want to immediately please those who saw unrealistically huge amounts. In practice, the resulting budget will decrease by up to 30%.

This depends primarily on the quality of the ads, the acceleration of the advertising campaign (in the first days a click is more expensive, and then the price drops) and several other factors.

In any case, it is better to lay down a bad script and leave a good one as a pleasant addition.

• Search – the ad is displayed in Yandex search when the user enters a corresponding query;
• Thematic is advertising shown in the Yandex advertising network, on its partner sites.

• Special placement (up to 3 ads ABOVE search results)

• Guaranteed impressions (up to 4 ads BELOW or TO THE RIGHT of search results)
• Dynamic displays (up to 5 ads under the search results or on the right on 2 and subsequent search pages; ads are not always shown, but alternate with competing ads)

Calculation of advertising costs in Yandex Direct

The placement price for each position depends on the competition for that keyword phrase. To determine the rate of getting to the desired position, Yandex Direct takes into account:

• your ad metrics: CTR (click-through rate), quality score, and finally your bid
• the same performance of competing ads

With equal bids, the best position goes to ads that have a high quality score and are frequently clicked on.

Yandex claims that the Productivity indicator does not affect the selection of ads for display in a specific position. However, Ad Quality Score uses the same parameters to evaluate the competitiveness of your ads:

• ad relevance to the keyword phrase
• compliance of the landing page with queries and ad text
• ad statistics

Since Direct system users cannot see the quality indicators of their ads, they can focus on the “Productivity” indicator.

If your ad is new and has not yet been shown for the selected keyword, its CTR = 0. At the same time, competitors’ ads have already received clicks and, by default, have a higher CTR. This means that in order to get to the desired position (for example, 1st or 2nd place in a Special Placement), your ad must have a very high quality score, and you must set a high conversion bid.

The higher this price, the higher your ad will be shown. In the settings, Yandex suggests a minimum cost per click to ensure that you are included in the search results for different positions.

The minimum cost of the campaign is 300 rubles, which you must deposit into your account to launch it. (This is the minimum budget for 1 campaign, not the cost per conversion).

Yandex Direct has an advance payment system: you top up your account, and for each click the system automatically debits money.

How accurate is the budget forecast for Yandex Direct?

The forecast results should be used only as a guide, but they are not very accurate. Yandex Direct is constantly changing:

• demand for a product or service (number of requests with a key phrase)
• number of competitors and their advertisements
• conversion rates

Therefore, the actual cost of a campaign always differs from the predicted one, and most often to a greater extent.

Today I will share step-by-step instructions on how to make a budget forecast in Yandex Direct using Direct Commander. I discovered this method from the guys from the ConvertMonster blog (for which I thank them very much) when I was looking for a way to receive more or less adequate expectations from Direct.

Don't forget to indicate the region in the forecast from Yandex.

So, if you did everything correctly, you will have a budget forecast from Yandex Direct on your computer. But here we are only interested in the predicted CTR by position. This is what it looks like for me:

As you can see, here I went too far and took a couple of very low-frequency keywords. You don't need to do this for budget forecasting.

Pay attention to the projected budget - a little more than 1 million rubles for special placement and almost 50,000 rubles for guarantees. Dangerous! 🙂

Step 2 - Get the current bids from the auction

Now let’s get the real bids from the Direct auction so that the budget forecast doesn’t look so threatening. To do this, you will have to create an advertising campaign, upload it to your account, and only then increase the cost per click using a special tool in Direct Commander.

Quick campaign

To quickly create a campaign, I use a special file with macros - my assistant in working with contextual advertising. Thanks for it Yuri Skachko.

We fill in the basic fields that are sufficient for loading and send the campaign to your account. I do this using Direct Commander:

Sending the campaign to your account

We place bets (any), set the desired region, and upload it to your account. Now comes the fun part.

To get current bids from the Yandex Direct auction, which are valid right now, select all ad groups and click the “Get bids, prices...” button, as in the screenshot below:

Click “Get Bets”