Contents:
- What advertising formats are available in myTarget and which one to choose
- Where does myTarget get information about users?
- How can you work with your target audience?
- How to set up advertising in myTarget: goals, target, rates
- Why you shouldn't rely on the forecast in myTarget?
- Why ads get few impressions and what to do about it?
- Briefly about the main thing
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Learn moremyTarget is an advertising platform designed for placing ads on social networks such as Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, as well as on resources such as Yula and Mail.ru projects. The myTarget ecosystem includes various websites and applications, including Opera Mini, 360 Security, Peers.TV, and many others. Thanks to its extensive network, myTarget provides advertisers with effective tools for targeting and audience analysis, which allows you to optimize advertising campaigns and increase their effectiveness.
In this article, we will cover the basic principles of advertising in the myTarget system. This material was prepared using recordings of the webinar "It's Time to Use Targeting in myTarget. Ad Launch Algorithm," held on March 29, 2022, by Nikolai Smirnov, Program Director at Skillbox and Development Director at Active Traffic. The full webinar can be found at the link provided. We will discuss key aspects that will help you effectively launch advertising campaigns, set up targeting, and improve advertising performance in myTarget. We will provide information on how to effectively use various tools and methods to achieve the best results. Learn best practices and strategies to help you optimize processes and increase productivity. We will also cover current trends and tips to help you stay ahead of the game in your field. Use our recommendations to improve your skills and achieve success.
- What advertising formats are available in myTarget and which ones are used most often;
- Where does the platform get user data;
- How to work with the target audience on the platform;
- How to set up goals, targets, and bids in myTarget;
- Why you shouldn't trust the reach and bid forecast;
- What to do if your ads are getting few impressions.
What advertising formats are available in myTarget and which one to choose?
MyTarget offers a variety of advertising formats, including banners, videos, carousels, teasers, and multi-format ads. A full list of available formats can be found on the website. Multi-format and carousel ads are the most popular, as they are the most effective at achieving target actions. Other formats, such as banners and teasers, focus on reach, delivering a high number of impressions at a low cost. Let's take a closer look at the main advertising types to understand their advantages and intended purpose. Desktop and mobile multi-format ads are universal advertising solutions that automatically adapt to various platforms. The convenience of this format lies in the fact that you only need to upload creatives once, and the system automatically optimizes ads for different platforms. Multi-format ads can be placed on social networks such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as in the myTarget partner network. This allows you to effectively reach your target audience across devices and increase user engagement. Multi-format ads come in three main types: teasers, in-feed ads, and display ads. Their visual features are demonstrated in the illustrations below. These formats provide a variety of approaches to advertising, allowing you to effectively attract the attention of your audience and increase conversions.
Multi-format ads include an image, headline, and body text. The headline is limited to 25 characters, and the text is limited to 90 characters. Payment can be made per click or per 1,000 impressions. Multi-format ads are effective for promoting websites, apps, online stores, and games, allowing you to attract a target audience and increase engagement.
This ad format is the most popular among advertisers, which leads to high competition. As a result, the cost per click in this format is higher than with other advertising options.
Carousel is one of the most effective ad formats in myTarget. It allows you to place up to six images, each of which can contain links to different products or sections of your app. Using carousel ads in advertising campaigns helps attract user attention and increase ad click-through rates. It's a great way to showcase your product range and direct potential customers to the right sections. High-quality carousel content can significantly improve the effectiveness of your myTarget advertising strategy.
Carousels can be activated on Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Yula, and other myTarget platforms. They will appear in news feeds on both desktop and mobile platforms. This allows you to effectively promote content and attract the attention of users on popular social platforms.
Carousel ads are an effective tool for promoting websites, mobile apps, and online stores. Advertising campaigns can be configured for both pay-per-click (CPC) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions), allowing for flexible strategy and cost optimization. Using carousel ads helps attract the attention of your target audience and increase conversions through visually appealing content and interactive elements.
Carousel ads in myTarget are often more cost-effective than similar ads in the VKontakte advertising account. In certain niches, the cost per carousel click through myTarget is only 10-30 rubles, while on VKontakte, prices range from 40 to 70 rubles. This makes myTarget an attractive choice for advertisers looking to optimize their advertising costs and increase their return on investment.
Desktop and mobile video advertising is an effective tool for promoting products and services. It's placed before the main video on platforms such as Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, and the myTarget advertising network. The optimal video length is up to 30 seconds, allowing for quick delivery of key information to viewers and retention. Using video advertising on these popular platforms helps increase audience reach and improve brand awareness.
Desktop and mobile video advertising Aimed at maximizing audience reach, it's used to make a product or company known to as many users as possible. Effective video advertising helps attract attention and increase brand awareness, which is a key element of a successful marketing strategy.
Supervideos are commercials up to 30 seconds long that appear before the main video in social media ad units and the myTarget advertising network. The main advantage of this format is its automatic adaptation to various platforms, eliminating the need to upload multiple creatives. This approach not only simplifies the advertising process but also increases its effectiveness, allowing you to reach a wide audience with minimal time and resources.
Supervideos allow you to set a cross-frequency for a single user, meaning the ad will be shown to that user a specified number of times across all platforms. For example, if you set the frequency once, a user who saw an ad on VKontakte on a smartphone will not see it again on Youla when they access it from a computer. This approach helps avoid excessive ad serving and improves user experience.
Supervideo, like traditional video advertising, is primarily aimed at broad audience reach. However, achieving a significant number of clicks on such ads can be difficult.
Audio advertising is an effective tool for promoting products and services, played before the main audio content. Payment for audio advertising is only made if it is listened to at least 75%. This allows advertisers to maximize their budgets and guarantees high audience engagement. Audio advertising is becoming increasingly popular due to its ability to capture listeners' attention and create memorable advertising messages.
Audio advertising is traditionally an audio file describing a product. However, the advertising capabilities of the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki apps allow you to enrich this format by adding an image and an active link to the advertised product's website. This significantly increases audience engagement and improves ad perception, transforming standard audio into more interactive and engaging content. Using visual elements in combination with audio makes advertising more noticeable and memorable, which contributes to increased click-through rates and conversions.
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Where does myTarget get its user information?
myTarget offers a significant advantage thanks to unique metrics not found in other advertising accounts. The advertising network accumulates data from multiple sources, allowing it to store information even on aspects such as the number of cups of coffee users consume per day. This data can be used for precise audience targeting, making advertising campaigns more effective and personalized.
The myTarget platform analyzes user data provided during registration on social networks and various websites. Key parameters such as gender, age, marital status, as well as information about work and place of residence, allow you to effectively customize advertising campaigns. This makes myTarget a powerful tool for targeted advertising, ensuring more precise engagement with the target audience.
When a user subscribes to specialized communities or actively explores articles on a specific topic, advertising algorithms analyze their interests and form assumptions about their financial situation. For example, if a person is interested in business-class real estate, this may indicate that their income is above average. This approach allows advertising systems to more accurately target ads to audiences that meet specific economic criteria.
By enabling geolocation, the user allows the myTarget platform to determine their location. The system records where they live and work, and also tracks their visits to stores and recreational venues. This allows myTarget to provide more personalized advertising offers and improve the quality of service.
myTarget collects user data from various sources, which allows it to create precise profiles for targeted advertising. The platform uses information from social networks, the Mail.ru search engine, as well as popular message boards and other sites connected to the advertising network. This ensures more effective engagement with the audience and allows advertisers to achieve their goals.
How to Work with a Target Audience
There are two main approaches to defining a target audience. The first approach is based on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income level, and education. This method provides a general understanding of a consumer group and their needs. The second approach is more focused on psychological aspects, including interests, values, and behavior. It allows for a deeper understanding of the target audience's motivations and the creation of more personalized marketing strategies. The correct choice of approach to selecting a target audience contributes to the effective promotion of goods and services.
The first approach involves classic segmentation of the target audience, in which we develop marketing campaigns aimed at different narrow groups. For example, this may include creating specialized offers for young people, families with children, or retirees. This method allows us to more accurately target messages and meet the needs of each group, which in turn increases the effectiveness of advertising activities and conversion. Segmentation of the target audience is a key element of a successful marketing strategy.
- we indicate the gender, age, and interests of users;
- we indicate the communities to which our potential clients are subscribed;
- we additionally display ads for search queries of interest to the target audience.
Advertising can be customized using individual parameters, or we can combine various settings to achieve the best results. Using different approaches allows us to optimize advertising campaigns, increasing their effectiveness and audience reach.
The second approach, known as arbitrage, is aimed at maximum audience reach. We set several key parameters to filter out non-targeted impressions, such as city, age, and gender. This allows us to select one impression per person, which helps optimize the budget. As a result, myTarget displays ads to the maximum possible number of users at a minimal cost. This method ensures efficient distribution of the advertising budget and increases the chances of attracting the target audience.
This approach will be effective for businesses with a large target audience and a clearly defined offer. An example would be a hair salon offering a 30% discount on services this weekend. Using limited-time promotions helps attract customers and increases their interest in services.
How to set up advertising in myTarget: goals, targeting, bids
Setting up advertising in myTarget involves four key steps: defining the goal, setting up targeting, choosing a payment model, and creating ads. Let's look at each of these steps in more detail.
The first step is to clearly define the goal of the advertising campaign, be it increasing sales, attracting new customers, or increasing brand awareness. The right goal will allow you to effectively set up further steps.
The second step involves setting up targeting. It's important to define the target audience, taking into account parameters such as age, gender, geographic location, and interests. Precise targeting helps achieve maximum advertising investment efficiency.
The third step involves choosing a payment model. myTarget offers various options, including cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM). The choice of model depends on the campaign's goals and budget.
The final step involves creating ads. Here, it's important to focus on the creativity and appeal of the content, as this directly impacts the interest of the target audience. Make sure your ads align with your goals and clearly convey your key messages.
Effective advertising setup in myTarget requires a careful approach to each step, which will ultimately help achieve the desired results.
All goals in myTarget can be divided into two main groups: goals aimed at increasing brand awareness and goals related to conversions.
Goals related to increasing awareness assume reaching a wide audience. However, the number of clicks and sales may be insignificant, making such strategies more suitable for large brands or companies that are just starting out and looking to attract a mass target audience. This is especially true for real estate developers, television channels, and grocery store chains. Increasing awareness helps lay the foundation for further growth and increased sales by attracting customer attention and strengthening brand identity.
Conversion goals help achieve targeted actions and use advertising budgets efficiently. They are suitable for most advertisers, including small businesses such as coffee shops and beauty salons. The most common conversion goals include driving traffic and engaging on social media. If you're promoting an app, you can set an app install goal. Optimizing conversion goals can increase ROI and improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.
myTarget offers a wide range of audience targeting settings. Let's look at the key parameters that will help optimize your advertising campaigns and achieve maximum effectiveness.
The platform allows you to customize ad targeting by selecting the audience gender—male or female. If your goal is to reach both genders, we recommend creating separate advertising campaigns for each group. This is because selecting both male and female audiences may include users whose gender cannot be determined. Such users can negatively impact your advertising campaign's results, reducing its effectiveness. Creating specialized campaigns allows you to more precisely target your audience and increase engagement rates.
Age settings have two key features. First, it's important to consider that age may affect the availability of certain features and content. Secondly, it's important to set age restrictions correctly to comply with safety and legal requirements. These aspects will help ensure an optimal user experience and protect user interests.
- First, a large reach of users over 75 years old. This audience includes people who have indicated their age as 100 or 200 years old on social media.
- Second, the ability to target users whose age is unspecified will allow you to reach a larger audience.
It is not recommended to enable the option to target close ages, as this may negatively impact the algorithms. It is better to leave this setting disabled for more accurate results.
Choosing the geography for your advertising campaign is an important step. Specify the specific cities where you want to show your ad, and be sure to disable countrywide display. By default, advertising covers all of Russia, so it's important to remove "Russia" from the list so that your ad is shown only to residents of the cities you select. This will allow you to more precisely target your audience and improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.
Once you've set up the basic parameters, you can move on to additional ones. These include behavioral and social characteristics, user interests, and contextual targeting. These elements allow you to more precisely target your ads and improve their effectiveness by improving engagement with your target audience.
Behavioral and social characteristics represent important aspects such as social and marital status, as well as user habits and behavior. This can include targeting people with and without children, as well as users with high and middle incomes. For example, you could target accountants or IT professionals. The myTarget platform offers a wide range of settings, allowing you to simultaneously select multiple characteristics for more precise targeting and effective engagement with your target audience.
Interests represent users' hobbies, and they are what ads are targeted to. For example, ads about cars or games will be shown to those who have shown interest in these topics in the last 1-3 months. It is recommended to select one interest for each advertising campaign, as combining interests does not produce results. The myTarget platform displays ads either to users interested in real estate or to those who love pets, but not to those who combine both interests. Choosing the right interests can improve the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and reach your target audience.
Contextual targeting is a method of displaying ads based on the search queries used by the target audience. This approach allows you to accurately reach potential customers based on their recent interests and needs. To collect relevant search phrases, you can use tools such as Yandex.Wordstat, which provides data on popular queries. The myTarget service, which offers tips and recommendations for targeting, can also be useful. Effective use of contextual targeting helps increase conversion and ROI of advertising campaigns.
myTarget offers the ability to upload custom audiences, which allows you to use user IDs or MAC addresses. This allows you to target ads to people already subscribed to your communities, as well as those who have placed orders. Additionally, the system can find lookalike audiences, including users whose online behavior is similar to your customers. This significantly increases the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and helps achieve better results in attracting your target audience.
It's important to set the correct ad delivery settings. If your business isn't open 24/7, be sure to specify the days and hours when ads are active. These timeframes should align with your business hours. Customers don't want to wait two days to get a response, especially if your business is on holidays. During this time, they may turn to competitors or change their minds about an order. Properly setting your ad delivery time will help you avoid losing potential customers and improve the efficiency of your business.
myTarget offers five advertising pricing models, the most popular of which are CPC and CPM. These models are suitable for a variety of advertising goals and formats. CPC, or cost-per-click, allows advertisers to pay only for actual clicks on their ads. CPM, which stands for cost per thousand impressions, focuses on audience reach. The main differences between these models lie in the budget planning method, advertising campaign effectiveness, and the impact of the click-through rate (CTR) on the number of impressions. Choosing the right model allows you to optimize costs and improve the results of your advertising activities.
The CPC (cost-per-click) model reduces the risk of budget waste, since you pay only for actual clicks on your ad. At the same time, the CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) model will be effective if you are confident in your targeting settings and are showing your ads to the right audience. Choosing the right payment model will help you optimize your advertising costs and achieve your business goals.
The optimal choice is to use CPC (Cost Per Click) as a payment model for contextual advertising. This approach allows you to effectively manage advertising costs, as you pay only for clicks on your ads. CPC provides more precise budget control and allows you to focus on attracting your target audience. Choosing CPC helps increase the return on investment in online advertising, making it the preferred solution for many advertisers.
In both payment options, the result depends on the set bid, which determines who will see your ads. Setting a low bid can lead to losing the auction, where competition for ad space with other advertisers increases significantly.
We recommend setting a bid of 15 rubles per click and adjusting it in increments of two rubles. If you observe an insufficient number of impressions, you should increase the bid. If you have a high number of impressions, but sales are disappointing, you should lower the bid. This approach will help determine the optimal cost per click, which will ensure wide audience reach and achieve the desired sales level.
Choosing a format and creating creatives is an important step in the advertising process. Upload images or videos, and write headlines and text. This works similarly to other advertising platforms, which simplifies the process of setting up advertising campaigns. Use attractive visuals and compelling texts to improve the effectiveness of advertising.
myTarget differs from other advertising systems in that it requires mandatory legal information about the company. This platform automatically inserts the provided data into ads when required. This makes myTarget a unique tool for advertisers, ensuring legal compliance and increasing the credibility of advertising materials.
Why you shouldn't rely on the forecast in myTarget
When setting up an ad, you will see a forecast that displays the audience size, recommended bid, and reach percentage. However, you shouldn't rely solely on this data, as it may be inaccurate. It's better to use the forecast as a guide, but make decisions based on deeper analysis and other available metrics.
By default, the myTarget platform aggregates users across different advertising systems. This means that if one person has accounts on platforms like Youla, VKontakte, and Mail.ru, they will be counted as three unique users. As a result, the platform can claim a reach of up to 213 million users per week, despite the fact that Russia's population is only 145 million. Therefore, user data may be skewed, which is important to consider when analyzing advertising campaigns.
The cost-per-click forecast is often inaccurate. For narrow audiences, the system may estimate a bid of 2-3 rubles per click. However, in practice, such a bid will prevent you from running an ad, as you won't be able to win the auction. Effective bid management and an understanding of auction dynamics are key to successful advertising campaigns. It is important to consider real metrics and adapt your strategy based on the competitive environment and specifics of your target audience.
Why Ads Are Getting Few Impressions and What to Do About It
The number of impressions depends on your bid, click-through rate (CTR), and the size of your target audience.
If your bid is significantly below the market rate, your ads will not win auctions and will not be shown to your audience. We recommend increasing your bid. The higher your bid, the greater the chance your ad will be seen by your target audience. This will improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaign and help you achieve your goals.
If your ad CTR is less than 0.6%, it's worth experimenting with your creative. Consider changing the image or video, as well as replacing the call to action or text. Run several different ad variations simultaneously to determine which one has the highest click-through rate. This will help you optimize your advertising budget and focus resources on the most effective ads.
When choosing targeting parameters, it's important not to limit your target audience too much, as this can make it difficult for algorithms to find the right users. To increase the number of impressions, it's recommended to run multiple ads. For example, one ad can be customized to match the interests of your target audience, while another can be tailored to specific search phrases. This approach will maximize the reach and effectiveness of your advertising campaign.
Incorrect use of the operators "and," "or," and "not" in retargeting audiences can lead to a narrowing of your audience. This can negatively impact the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns, limiting the number of potential customers. It's important to configure your targeting conditions correctly to maximize your reach and increase conversions. Optimizing these operators will allow you to create more precise and effective audience segments, which in turn will lead to improved advertising strategy results.
Briefly
The myTarget platform offers a variety of advertising formats, among which the most popular are multi-format and carousel. These formats are effective for lead generation, making them popular among advertisers. Multi-format allows you to combine different types of content, which increases audience reach, and carousel allows you to present several products or services in a single ad, which helps increase user engagement. Using these formats on myTarget helps you achieve high results in advertising campaigns.
The platform offers extensive targeting options thanks to the collection of user data from all associated platforms. This allows you to more precisely customize your advertising campaigns, ensuring a high level of personalization and effectiveness. The data obtained helps us better understand the interests and behavior of our target audience, which in turn helps increase conversion and optimize advertising costs.
There are two main ways to engage with your target audience. The first approach involves developing specialized campaigns for narrow market segments, allowing you to more accurately meet the needs of specific consumer groups. The second approach focuses on promoting a powerful offer to a broad audience, which can lead to increased reach and attract more customers. Both methods have their advantages and can be used depending on your business goals and strategies.
To successfully set up advertising, you need to define your goal, select targeting, establish a payment model, and create the ad itself. The optimal goals of an advertising campaign are to increase traffic and boost social media activity. Targeting should be selected to maximize reach of your target audience. We recommend using the CPC payment model, as it allows you to effectively control costs and achieve the desired results.
Forecasts in myTarget are not reliable. The platform offers inaccurate data, making it an unreliable source of information for analysis. Users should exercise caution and be aware of the possibility of forecasting errors.
If your ads are not receiving enough impressions, it's important to determine the reasons. Perhaps you've set a low bid, are targeting too narrow an audience, or your click-through rate (CTR) is poor. Conduct analysis and optimization to improve the visibility and effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.
Skillbox Media's advertising resources are a valuable resource for professionals seeking to deepen their knowledge of marketing and advertising. On our website, you'll find articles, research, and analytical reviews to help you stay on top of the latest trends and innovations in advertising. We cover a variety of aspects, including strategy, creativity, and technology, making our materials useful for both beginners and seasoned professionals. Learn about best practices and examples of successful advertising campaigns, and get helpful tips for improving the effectiveness of your own projects. Skillbox Media is your reliable partner in the world of advertising.
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