New Yandex.Direct interface: overview of service updates

The Yandex.Direct team regularly updates the interface of its service. The latest major update has received mixed reactions. The developers even had to release a special guide to the new interface to facilitate the transition of advertisers to it.

You really need to get used to the new Yandex.Direct interface: before setting up and launching advertising campaigns (AC), you should take the time to adapt and understand the management. Even the usual simple settings can seem complicated and inconvenient. Because of this, many advertisers and PPC specialists still use the old interface, considering it better and clearer than the new one. Let’s try to figure out where difficulties may arise when working in the new interface. Let’s start in order: the first stage is adding a new ad campaign on the main page of Yandex.Direct.

Advertising campaign management

The new Ya.Direct interface has become similar to the Google Ads interface: the same principle of managing advertising campaigns and ads.

Show schedule

In fact, nothing has changed in this section, only the “Finish” button has appeared. You need to remember about it in order to save all changes for each block:

Strategy

The essence has not changed, but a new, more pleasant design has been introduced:

Experiments

Experiments is a new tool in advanced settings. It allows you to automate the A / B testing process. You can configure it via Yandex.Audience:

At the second stage of setting up an advertising campaign, we create an ad group. Group creation begins with adding a region.

Display regions

Now, when creating an advertising campaign at the first stage, we do not specify the display region – this is done when creating a group:

Then, just like in the old interface, we select the city:

Key phrases and negative keywords

This section has an additional “Forecast and Refinements” tab. This is a convenient addition: here you can see the frequency of requests and nesting, eliminate inappropriate requests. Statistics are loaded from Yandex.Wordstat.

As before, you can add a list manually in negative keywords, or you can add a list from library sets using a new tab:

Retargeting and audience selection

It has certainly become more convenient to add audience selection conditions: now you can add them immediately when creating a campaign. Previously, the conditions for selecting an audience were first set up, and only then an advertising campaign was created and conditions for selecting an audience were added.

User profile

A new tool in Yandex.Direct that allows you to set up targeting for user interests:

Rate adjustments

Just like the display region, bid adjustments from the ad settings went to the ad group setting. Nothing has changed in the settings themselves:

Contact information (business card)

In the updated Yandex.Direct interface, a business card is added directly when creating an ad. Previously, this was available in the AC settings.

Mass changes

There are several ways to do bulk editing:

1. Campaign management with XLS / XLSX. Important: when you click on this link, we get to the old interface. And here there are problems when working with files: not all columns are loaded from the table, you need to check the declarations after filling.

2. Direct Commander.

3. Tool “Bulk changes” in the new interface. You need to select the ads that you want to edit and click on the “Edit” button. In the drop-down list “Bulk changes” you will need to select the desired action:

Conclusion

Innovations in familiar systems often cause rejection and negativity, but in the case of Yandex.Direct, the new interface should be given a chance. There is no need to be afraid of changes in it: as we can see, all updates are understandable and more useful.