What is contextual advertising. Pros of contextual advertising How contextual advertising works

Contextual advertising - text and graphic advertising materials that are placed in search engines next to the search results, or on partner sites of contextual advertising systems. The subject of advertising messages depends on the subject of the visitor's search query.

Being one of the types of online advertising, contextual advertising has such advantages as a large audience coverage and the ability to provide a potential client with maximum useful information about the offer. But these advantages and pluses of contextual advertising are not exhausted. Let's consider them in more detail.

9 MAIN ADVANTAGES OF CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING

1. POSITIVE ATTITUDE OF THE AUDIENCE TO CONTEXT ADVERTISING

This attitude of the audience is achieved due to the principle of "contextuality" of advertisements, i.e. ads are shown only to those users who have shown interest in the relevant topic.

Contextual advertising does not bother and does not irritate, unlike other types of advertising. it advertises what is sought to the one who seeks it. It is perceived by potential customers not as advertising, but as useful information.

For example, if a user made a search query “buy a car”, then in context, advertisements for car dealerships that sell new cars or used cars, banks that issue car loans, and companies that provide car audit services can be shown to him in the context.

2. GOOD SELLING EFFECT OF CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING

Due to the fact that contextual advertising is interesting and useful to the user, it is not perceived as spam, and by clicking on an advertising link, a person demonstrates his readiness to take advantage of the offer. This is the reason for such an advantage of contextual advertising as a selling effect.

3. LOW COST AND FLEXIBLE PAYMENT FOR ADVERTISING

A huge plus of contextual advertising, from the point of view of the advertiser, is the pay-per-click scheme and auction pricing, i.e. The advertiser himself determines how much money he is willing to spend on an advertising campaign. At the same time, there is one pleasant surprise, the more effectively its ads are shown, the lower the cost per click.

You pay not for impressions or the time of placing an ad, but only for clicks on it, i.e. for visits by potential customers. An auction allows you to set an acceptable price for a click and get potential customers on your own terms.

A very small initial advertising budget (in Yandex Direct, for example, 300 rubles) makes contextual advertising a popular promotion tool for companies of any size - from small businesses to corporations, and allows you to effectively compete with other advertisers within the available budget.

4. CONTEXT ADVERTISING HAS A LARGE AUDIENCE REACH

Today, more than 60% of the Russian population are Internet users, and this figure is constantly growing. Many entrepreneurs have moved their business online. An increasing number of people connect their work, education and leisure with the Internet.

Therefore, one of the advantages of contextual advertising is, along with other advantages, a large audience coverage. Contextual ads are displayed in search engines and in thematic networks, which include thousands of popular sites, some of which have a multi-million audience.

5. POSSIBILITY OF AUDIENCE TARGETING IN CONTEXT ADVERTISING

A significant advantage of contextual advertising is the ability to target the audience (the ability to select an audience for displaying advertisements according to geographical, socio-demographic, temporal, and other parameters). This allows you to focus the advertising message very precisely, and therefore increase its effectiveness.

Geographic targeting deserves special attention. It allows regional advertisers to significantly reduce the cost of contextual advertising and not pay for "random" visitors who are unlikely to become their customers, living in other regions remote from them.

6. POSSIBILITY TO EVALUATE THE EFFICIENCY OF THE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

Each service has its own statistics collection system. For example, for Yandex.Direct - Yandex.Metrica, for Google Adwords - Google Analytics. Moreover, the statistics data are reflected almost in real time (the delay time between the user's action and its reflection in the statistics is about 10 minutes).

The data of these statistical systems enable us to determine:

most effective queries
attendance by day and by time of day
page relevance to the query
the cost of clicking on a contextual ad for certain key queries
the most effective keywords and phrases for your ads
technical problems of the site (correct display of the site in different browsers, etc.)

With statistical data, an advertiser can track the number and quality of visitors that came from an advertisement, make changes to the current advertising campaign to improve its results, and plan their advertising campaigns more intelligently.

Moderation - checking your ads and site pages for compliance with the rules. It usually takes place within two hours.

8. QUICKLY ACHIEVING RESULT IN CONTEXT ADVERTISING

Even if you do not have your own website on the Internet, Yandex.Direct makes it possible to create a page where contact information, opening hours, information about the company and goods / services will be located.

The list of contextual advertising advantages can be expanded further (a variety of placement formats, almost instant response to advertising, etc.), but it is especially important that the benefits of contextual advertising are obvious not only for the advertiser, but also for the client who receives the necessary information at the moment when he needs it, and can choose the most attractive offer from the many available.

Hello dear friends. Today we will talk about contextual advertising in the form of a review.

From the article you will learn what is contextual advertising, its types, advantages and disadvantages, what is its cost and effectiveness - let's look at real examples.

The material below will help you understand the features of contextual advertising and visually see how it is placed on the Internet.

1. What is contextual advertising and what is its peculiarity

If you are an active Internet user, then most likely you have seen such ads in search results and on different sites. Increasingly, marketers and entrepreneurs are using it to promote products and services.

2. Types of contextual advertising

2.1. Search advertising

Appears after a person clicks the “search” button by entering their query in the search bar.

For example, "plastic windows in Moscow":

2.2. Thematic advertising

These ads can be either similar in subject matter (close to the context of the page) or different from it.

If it is disabled, then only ads corresponding to its content will be shown on the site.

(The figure shows the correspondence between the content of the site and the advertisement)

If behavioral targeting is enabled, then the site visitor will see those ads, the topics of which he requested earlier in the search engine.

For example, a site about culinary recipes will broadcast ads for cameras if a person recently searched the network where to buy a camera.

3. Dynamics of the contextual advertising market

Over the past 5 years, this market has been growing at a gigantic pace and ranges from 10% to 60% per year. In monetary terms, the account goes to tens of billions of rubles.

Companies that used to spend their advertising budgets on TV are moving to the Internet. Banners, SEO articles, teaser ads have become popular tools for attracting customers online.

But here, too, the alignment of forces has changed towards the use of contextual advertising, and this is due to its obvious advantages, which I will discuss later.

I am index- Yandex.Direct system
G o o g l e- system Google Adwords
Rambler- Begun system

Google and Yandex are now noticeably ahead of Begun due to their popularity and efficiency.

Possessing a number of features and advantages, contextual advertising today allows thousands of people to conduct their business from anywhere in the world, working in those markets that are geographically remote from the entrepreneur himself.

For example, you can be located in Novosibirsk and at the same time sell cement in Moscow, while earning money based on Moscow prices.

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising

The benefits of its use are obvious both for advertisers and for ordinary Internet users who are looking for goods and services here.

Let's analyze them in more detail.

Benefits of contextual advertising:

Accurate hit on the target visitor. The user himself searches for those goods and services that are shown in ads (this is beneficial for both advertisers and visitors to search engines);
Quick return on ads. You launch an advertising campaign and within a few hours you receive the first applications (sales);
Minimum advertising budget. You can start advertising with a budget of 300 rubles. Contextual advertising can be used both separately, by increasing the amount of funds for it, and in combination with other tools (banners, seo-articles, teaser advertising);
Flexibility in setting up an advertising campaign. The big advantage here is the flexibility to customize ads based on your budget, geography, time of day and other parameters to achieve maximum effect;
Powerful analytics. After conducting an advertising campaign, you will have all the necessary data on its effectiveness and will be able to “tweak” any settings in order to get better results in the future;
Relevance (correspondence) to the interests of the user. As they say, you wanted to party - here you go! :) We were looking for an iPhone, you will only see ads with iPhones. Thinking of building a house and want to compare brick prices? No problem! Contextual advertising will help you navigate the huge number of proposals on this topic;
Convenient format of perception. No pop-ups, annoying sounds and flashing pictures in full screen! Neat, pleasant to read, short advertisements - all this makes this type of advertising both effective and unobtrusive;
Informativeness. Despite their compact size, contextual ads have all the necessary components to convey the necessary information: a picture (pictogram), a main semantic heading, an explanation, and a link leading to the advertiser's website.

However, they are not so significant compared to the benefits of its use.

Disadvantages of contextual advertising:

Short duration of action. The quick effect of such advertising does not last long, all the time it is required to replenish the advertising budget and adjust the settings of the advertising campaign. This is especially noticeable in comparison with SEO promotion, which allows you to provide a stable flow of traffic over time;
Danger of budget overruns if configured incorrectly. If you set up your advertising campaign incorrectly, then the probability of losing money will be very high. For example, if you sell cell phones online and it costs you $500 to acquire one customer and your profit is $2,000 - $3,000, then this type of advertising is a good investment. But if the cost of a click is unreasonably high due to incorrect advertising campaign settings, one client can cost you 3,000 thousand rubles or more, which will eat up all your profits;
Uselessness of use in some areas of business. Contextual advertising is a good marketing tool on the Internet, but sometimes even it turns out to be useless. There are niches in business where such advertising will not work. These are large grocery chains, oil and gas monopolies, as well as all other business areas where customers buy goods or services based on recommendations or look for them exclusively offline.

How to use the advantages and deal with the disadvantages of contextual advertising

When you have little experience in launching contextual advertising, you do not feel confident or just want to try running a campaign on your own, we suggest using contextual advertising automation services without fail.

They will help you avoid mistakes in setting up campaigns, eliminate cost overruns, and allow you to use the maximum potential of this type of attraction. Such services can practically replace a professional contextual advertising agency, and for free.

6. What determines the cost of contextual advertising

One of the most important indicators when using contextual advertising is the cost per click.

Cost per click is directly affected by:

A niche in which contextual advertising is placed. For example, traditionally expensive and competitive niches are: business, finance, medicine, construction. In these topics, the cost per click can be from 10 to 1,500 rubles ( 25 $ ). Niches with lower competition are: hobbies, entertainment, cheap goods (consumer goods) with an average price per unit of goods from 100 to 1,000 rubles. Please note that contextual ads in a particular niche are shown according to auction principle. That is, whoever paid more for their ad will be promoted by the search engine to the most clickable (effective places). The cost of contextual advertising in this case is the sum of the total price for all clicks of your advertising budget;
How to set up an advertising campaign. Usually contextual advertising systems, when creating an advertising campaign, by default offer you to use the strategy “maximum efficiency”. This means that your ads will appear in the most expensive places in the SERPs and appear where they are most likely to be clicked on. Accordingly, the cost of a click will be at the same time maximum. This is not always justified, since for the same money you can get more clicks by simply optimizing the advertising campaign settings when creating it. To reduce the cost of a click, you need to know how to properly set up contextual advertising. Then in any, even the most expensive niche, you will be able to receive clicks to your site at the lowest possible price. At the same time, the quality and volume of traffic will be preserved.

In order to find out the cost per click for various key queries for Yandex, I recommend using the service

So, today I have an introductory article on contextual advertising for you. I will tell you what this type of advertising is in general, what types of contextual advertising are, platforms where you can advertise, and I will also write about the benefits of contextual advertising. This is currently one of the most effective sources, so you need to pay due attention to it.

It turns out that contextual advertising acts selectively and is shown only for specific requests, therefore, if the ads are set up correctly, the ad will have a high quality score, which means there will be customers and sales. Therefore, you need to understand that contextual advertising is a tool aimed at increasing sales and attracting new customers via the Internet.

The main feature of contextual advertising is information and the uniqueness of the sales offer. If these two factors are properly built and skillfully presented to potential customers, then there will always be a large number of sales. Therefore, there are so many people on the Internet who make little money, and few who make big money. And based on this, I set my main task so that the readers of this blog begin to skillfully use their online advertising, thereby increasing their profits.

What are the types of contextual advertising

1) Banner advertising is a fixed or animated picture. This type of advertising is quite common, because it is noticeable and has a high conversion, which favorably affects the result of placing a banner on the site;

2)Video advertising is a type of advertising that uses video. To date, a very common method of promoting goods and services and every day is gaining even more popularity. Most often, this type of advertising can be found when watching regular video clips, when a 15-20 second video with an ad pops up at the beginning of the video. There are also various kinds of viral videos, when some large company, using its product or service, creates a short video, and in a few weeks it becomes a hit on the Internet.

3) Text advertising is the most common type of advertising that is found absolutely everywhere. This type of advertising is a regular text ad, sometimes with a picture, and the obligatory presence of a link to the advertised resource. Text advertising is of two types: search and thematic. Search ads appear in search results on the site when there is a specific search query set by the user. A search query can be carried out both on search sites and on ordinary sites that have a search string, so the search can be carried out both throughout the Internet and on a specific site. An example of a search ad is shown below.

Thematic ads are shown on the page of a particular site if the subject of the ad meets the user's needs. Such advertising is shown not in the search results of search sites, but on the most ordinary sites and is an addition to the content of the site pages. Thematic advertising is also called behavioral, because it corresponds to the interests and needs of users.

What are the sites for contextual advertising

In order to place a search or thematic site, there are quite a few services, but all of them are mainly aimed at working through two Internet search giants - Yandex and Google. These two search engines have special services for contextual advertising, namely Direct and Adwords, respectively (I will describe them in detail in subsequent articles). Everything that appears in the SERPs on these two sites is search advertising, and everything that is placed on partner sites is classified ads. All advertising is configured through the interface and after moderation and account replenishment, your ads start showing.

I will not write why you need to use these two sites to advertise your products or services. Firstly, Nikolai already wrote about this, and secondly, you should be well aware that these are the two most leading search engines in Runet, which means that the entire population of our country uses these sites when searching for something they need. Therefore, it is when working through these two sites that all the main traffic is concentrated.

How contextual advertising works

Contextual advertising is quite simple. There is always something that needs to be advertised (product, service, website or something else). There will always be those who need what is advertised. And there is always an intermediary - in this case, these are online advertising platforms. The person who advertises, either himself or through specially trained people, places advertisements on these sites. The final result in the form of applications or calls will depend on how well the advertising is set up. Therefore, I constantly tell everyone that if there is no knowledge in this area, then it is better to entrust your advertising to professionals, thereby saving not only time, but also money.

After the ad has passed the test, it is launched. And as soon as the user's query in the search line matches the key phrase of your ad, the potential client will see your ad (although it often happens that ads are not shown in the right positions, but I will talk about this in other articles). And if your ad is of interest to a potential client, then he will definitely go to your site. Further, everything depends on the quality of the site, the trade offer and, of course, the price. Much depends on the price of a product or service. Therefore, when the ads are well-configured, the site is well-designed and the USP (unique selling proposition) is well-designed, then I am more than sure that your business will always go uphill.

Benefits of contextual advertising

1) Attracting only the target audience - as a rule, ads are shown only to potential customers who are already interested in your product or service. At their request, your ads are shown, thereby visitors go to your site, who will definitely buy your product or use your service. At the same time, only you decide for which queries your ads will be shown, and for which not. And I'm not talking now about complex advertising setup schemes that are focused not only on the absolutely target audience, but also on those who are not particularly looking for what you offer. This is a separate category of clients, the so-called "warm" and "cold". For them, setting up advertising is completely different (I will definitely write about this in subsequent articles).

2) Geo-targeting - when launching ads, you can choose the countries, regions and localities where your ad will be shown. And it does not matter here that you are in a completely different region or even country. Thanks to this, boundaries are erased and you can easily scale your business.

3) Pay only for users - no matter how many times your ads are shown. You only pay for specific ad clicks to your site. This is very beneficial for your business, as the efficiency of this only increases. I also want to note that advertising sites have a system of protection against invalid (unfair and erroneous) clicks, the so-called ad clicks, thus your budget is safe. And if the system notices that there was a click, then the money will be returned to your account.

4) Full control of advertising - the entire advertising process is under your personal control. All detailed daily statistics are available to you. You are always aware of how much was spent for each transition to the site, how much each application cost you, how many users came to the site, what is the conversion rate of advertising and the site. And if something suddenly does not suit you, then you can stop showing ads and make adjustments to improve efficiency and re-launch ads, thereby saving your advertising budget. It turns out that advertising is completely dependent on you and the tasks that you set by launching this advertisement.

5) A small budget to start - launching advertising does not require many thousands of infusions of funds. Sometimes 500 rubles a day is enough to receive daily applications that flow into customers. Of course, the budget depends on the goals and objectives that you want to achieve from advertising. But the big plus of contextual advertising is its availability. This is especially important for start-up entrepreneurs. The only thing I want to note is that it is very common that people, having no experience in contextual advertising and limited by a budget, begin to create an advertising campaign themselves and after 2-3 weeks they have neither money nor customers. Unfortunately, this is quite common. Therefore, approach the setting of advertising very responsibly.

6) Quick result - you can create and launch an advertising campaign within 24 hours, provided that the advertising is not large in volume. All you need is to competently and efficiently create ads and replenish your personal account, and on the very first day after the start of the impressions, receive the first visitors to the site and applications. Therefore, this type of advertising has an instant exhaust. If the advertising campaign is large in volume (usually these are online stores), then the creation and launch can take up to 3-4 days. In this case, you will receive the first visitors after 4-5 days.

Conclusion

Contextual advertising has huge advantages over other advertising tools. Currently, without contextual advertising, you are losing a large flow of potential customers, which ultimately affects your profits. It doesn't matter if your business is online or offline. Contextual advertising is ideal for any type and sector of business. Advertising is the engine of commerce. And how you use it will determine the performance of your business. But the final decision is always yours.

I wish you all a large flow of customers and huge profits. To be continued.

05/17/14 28K

What is contextual advertising?

Context in Latin means connection or connection.

The display of contextual advertising is always relevant to a person's request or area of interest that intersects with the subject of the advertised service or product. This method of selecting ads greatly increases the likelihood of a response to an ad.

Why do you need contextual advertising?

Context is very common in situations such as:

Promotion of goods;
Advertisement of services;
Increasing sales;
Bringing new products to market;
As an effective addition to the main channels of advertising outside the Internet.

Contextual advertising on the Internet is an ideal and unobtrusive variant of cooperation between the buyer and the seller. It is worth “telling” the search engine about the desire to buy something or order a certain service, as you can immediately get an answer with the phrase: “order from us”.

Accordingly, the main task in compiling a selling advertising campaign is the selection of keywords and anchors that will attract interested buyers to the site, saving money for an advertiser who is only interested in the target audience.

Services such as Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrika and Yandex.Wordstat will help to study and understand the audience, as well as select key phrases for contextual advertising.

Contextual advertising of any format is widely and massively used to increase brand popularity. It can easily make a very recognizable brand out of a novelty.

In this case, it makes sense to order contextual advertising and pay not for each click received, but for the number of impressions. For such advertising campaigns, such a contextual advertising service as Begun is perfect.

Advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising

Contextual advertising giants such as Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct and Begun have already gained immense popularity and are ready to provide their audience with a wide range of ads on various topics and work with automatic detection of interests, as well as page topics.

When displaying contextual advertising, the interests of users are taken into account in terms of entering a request, browsing pages, personal interests and history of search activity;
Ability to use geo-targeting and select when ads are shown to users. Thus, the contextual advertising ordered by you can be shown at a strictly defined time of the day;
Large coverage of the audience and Internet resources of various directions.

The most tangible disadvantage of contextual advertisements is their constant click-through. Such actions are performed not only by advertiser competitors, but also by unscrupulous webmasters whose goal is to earn extra money. Such actions lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of advertising and to additional costs;
The cost of a click in a really highly competitive topic can reach $10 or even more. Some advertisers are not willing to spend that kind of money in pursuit of getting the best ad position. As a result, everyone loses;
Recently, when sites are spammed with ads, it has begun to terribly annoy users. Moreover, it greatly hinders the search for the necessary information;
Many users install various programs and plug-ins for blocking contextual ads, so not all users will be able to see your ads.
Links from contextual advertising systems are encrypted or work using a redirect, which does not bring any benefit to the site in terms of promotion. It is quite obvious that such links do not affect the position of the advertised site in the search results.

The most popular contextual advertising services (Yandex.Direct, Google AdWords, Begun) - basic information for beginners

The above pros and cons apply to all three of these contextual advertising systems, although each has its own principle of operation.

Google AdWords contextual advertising has a very good ad selection system that takes into account the interests of users, their preferences and activity when typing certain queries.

If there are no relevant queries for issuance in the search, the advertising context is selected taking into account personal interests. This is perhaps the main advantage of contextual advertising in Google.

Yandex.Direct has a narrower direction of issue, focused exclusively on search phrases, and if there is simply no advertising for a certain query, it is not displayed in the search.

On the selection of ads, like Google, Yandex has just begun to experiment, but it will take a very long time to go to the full implementation of such a system.

Setting up contextual advertising - basic information for beginners

There are a lot of secrets for setting up advertising campaigns, and on the net you can read not only something really important, but also heaps of thoughts that for several years have not even had minimal effectiveness, confirming their significance.

We will focus only on the main points of setting up contextual advertising, which can really help reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of an ongoing advertising campaign:

The right approach to the selection of keywords that will be used in compiling contextual advertisements;
Geographic indicators are very important so that ads are not clicked by citizens of another country or a distant region;
Setting the time of impressions;
Setting the budget for an individual ad and daily spending;
Disabling unscrupulous sources from which ads are clicked;
demographic features.

Yandex.Direct - advantages, disadvantages, features

Yandex.Direct existed back in 2001 as a service for low-budget companies and was designed only for impressions. After 2 years, the system was completely improved and pay-per-clicks were introduced:

Advantages :

Availability of geotargeting;
No additional targeting fees;
A huge proportion of advertising is designed strictly for search traffic, and not for advertising on the site.

Flaws :

Cumbersome statistics interface;
It is not possible to show ads for queries that include more than 5 words;
There is no effective automatic bid management;
Too limited in the size of the title bar and text of the contextual advertisement;
It is not possible to export advertising campaign statistics to Excel.

Runner - advantages, disadvantages, features

Advantages :

original design;
Convenient usability;
Huge audience coverage;
Ability to automatically manage rates;
9 ways to pay for advertising services;
Detailed information on any ongoing advertising campaign;
Convenient preparation and uploading of reports;
Plenty of space for ads;
Availability of an affiliate program.

Flaws .

Do you want me to tell you what your employees are doing right now? Collect manual reports in spreadsheets. How much time are they wasting by ignoring automation? It’s easy to see the real picture: calculate the number of man-hours spent on reporting and multiply by the average cost of an employee’s working hour.

In this article, I will tell you why to implement a BI solution for business, what tasks can be solved with the help of automation, and what Netpeak got by developing its own BI solution for the contextual advertising department.

business intelligence(BI) - Methods and tools for translating raw information into a meaningful, usable form. This data is used for business analysis. BI technologies process large amounts of unstructured data to find strategic business opportunities.

How long did the implementation take?

It took about 5 months to implement the project - from setting the task to completion.

What have we been doing all this time?

1. Pre-project preparation.

1.1. Defined the main and additional goals of BI implementation.

1.2. The sources from which the necessary data should be obtained were identified. Google Ads was chosen as the primary sources, Google Analytics, Yandex.Direct and Facebook. The vast majority of the entire advertising budget for our clients' projects goes to these sites. Also, the source was the internal ERP and a number of Google tables that employees fill out.

1.3. Based on the goals set, we determined a list of reports, charts and filters necessary to solve business problems.

1.4. We have developed a database architecture that will store the information necessary for visualization.

1.5. Picked up the tools to implement the project at minimal financial cost.

2.1. We studied the documentation on working with the API of all previously selected sources.

2.2. We got access to the API of all the necessary sources.

2.3. We wrote function packages in the R language for working with the Yandex.Direct API and Facebook :

2.4. We studied the documentation of function packages for working with the Google Analytics and Google Ads APIs, as well as for converting monetary data into one currency.

2.5. Wrote scripts in the R language to collect and write data from all sources to the database.

2.6. Set up visualization of all reports and diagrams.

2.7. Differentiated levels of access to reports for employees.

And now - to the details.

How to define the goals of BI implementation?

How to understand what your business needs, and not the manual collection and processing of data in spreadsheets?

Analyze:

how much time it takes to manually collect and manipulate data;
what kind of tasks do you want to solve with the help of BI.

At the time of writing, Netpeak employs more than 30 PPC specialists. Each of them regularly collects and analyzes campaign data from various systems. To free up time for specialists to analyze data and optimize advertising, we decided to collect all the necessary information “in one tab”.

Monitoring the key performance indicators of advertising campaigns on all advertising platforms and for all projects.
Finding ways to scale advertising campaigns without losing effectiveness.
Growth of budgets without reducing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
General increase in the effectiveness of advertising campaigns for all projects.

How to determine what tables and charts are needed to achieve the goals?

It's simple. When you have clearly formulated the goal, understanding what information and in what form you need to receive automatically appears.

After talking with specialists and department management, we determined a list of reports, charts and key indicators that employees rely on when analyzing advertising campaigns, and management - when evaluating the effectiveness of a department consisting of more than 30 people.

As a result, 60 visual elements and a number of filters were described (for the convenience of working with them).

How to find tools for project implementation at minimal cost?

When choosing tools, it is best to rely on the opinion of a specialist who owns at least several BI platforms and databases, and also knows how to work with large amounts of data.

Another guideline when choosing a BI platform is the annual Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

Leaders in the BI industry have not changed for quite a few years. This is Microsoft Power BI), Tableau Software (Tableau), and Qlik (QlikView, QlilSense). These are the decisions you need to pay attention to.

When choosing a BI platform to solve a specific problem, consider:

from what sources it is necessary to obtain data for visualization;
whether you need online access to reports;
what budget do you have.

I have chosen the following tools:

Google Sheets- to store reference information on projects, as well as information that company employees enter manually on a daily basis. As a rule, these are small tables that consist of a maximum of several hundred rows. This tool is free and ideal for collaborating on the same document online.
R language— to collect information from the API of advertising systems. This tool is also free and is designed to quickly process large amounts of information.
MySQL- A DBMS for storing collected information that does not need to be changed in any way in the future. We wrote aggregated data to the database, so MySQL performance is more than enough to solve our problem. Approximately 300,000 rows of data are received monthly - with a properly configured database configuration and proper indexing of MySQL performance tables, more than enough to process this array of data. Like the previous tools, MySQL is completely free.
Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization tool. The available functionality is enough to solve the problem. In addition, Power BI for desktops is completely free, and the online version will cost less than competitors (no need to buy a separate server, all data is stored and processed on Microsoft servers).

Technical implementation should begin with a description of the process of collecting, cleaning, aggregating, storing and visualizing data.

how often reports need to be updated;
how much data is expected to be stored;
to what volumes the base will grow during the year.

Scheme of work

Every month, all marketers enter data on their projects into a Google spreadsheet. This is how we assemble a directory that contains all the information necessary for the scripts to work.
After updating the directory, R-scripts are launched that collect information using the API from all advertising sites, link it, aggregate it, and write it to the MySQL database.
Within a month, company employees fill out many other documents in Google spreadsheets: with information about project performance evaluations, new and departed projects, and so on. All of these documents are connected to Power BI Desktop using the R connector.
Once a month, after collecting all the information for the past month, with the help of a single button "Refresh" in the Power BI Desktop interface, all reports and charts are updated.
The data is published in the Power BI Service for online access by specialists, team leaders and department management.

How do PPC specialists use a BI solution?

Let's start with the fact that in Power BI you can distinguish between roles. So each employee got access to a certain set of data.

Department structure:

D.H.(Department Head) - leadership. Employees with this access level see information on all projects, which helps them control the work of the department and promptly respond to a negative trend in key team indicators.

TL(Team Leaders) - team leaders. They have access to information on projects of specialists included in their team, but do not see data on projects of other teams.

IM(Internet Marketer) - experts in contextual advertising. They have access to information exclusively on their own projects and do not see data on the projects of other specialists.

We have clearly separated access to data. Each employee has access to the information he needs and can make decisions at his own level of responsibility.

In BI reports, you can see general information on KPIs that need to be controlled by the management of the department and teams:

department performance,
different segmentation of projects and specialists
the dynamics of changes in the number of active projects and so on.

Let us consider in detail how specialists use the developed tool when conducting advertising campaigns.

The first table that a specialist sees displays data on the amount of funds spent, the number of impressions, clicks, CTR and cost per click by project, traffic source and channel.

With this data, deeper analytics of each project begins. The specialist can move on to studying charts showing the volume of lost transactions, income and conversions, and based on these data draw conclusions for a particular project or advertising campaign.

The amount of lost profit is shown on the diagram, broken down into losses by budget and by rating.

The specialist immediately sees:

projects and advertising campaigns where you can raise the budget without reducing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns;
projects and advertising campaigns where you need to pay attention to the Quality Score and cost per lead in order to minimize losses due to low ad rank.

a specialist can also analyze using a special table. For each project and advertising campaign, it provides data on how much funds were not enough for the maximum possible coverage and how many transactions were not received in connection with this.

The specialist also has access to a chart that reflects the share of the budget that could potentially be spent without loss of efficiency.

After looking at the charts and reports listed above, a specialist can write a letter with recommendations for increasing the budget, as well as immediately indicate the amount of income or the number of transactions and conversions that will be received as a result of the budget increase. So the specialist will know in which projects and for which advertising campaigns it is possible to effectively increase the advertising budget and bring more benefits to customers.

3. Analysis of lost conversions due to rankings

The next step is to minimize lost revenue due to low ad rank. In this case, there are two ways.

First of all, you need to pay attention to the quality indicator, as this will optimize the cost of the transaction.

There are six diagrams available for a specialist to work on a quality indicator.

The first two charts show general information about the quality score of the projects. You can also go to the ad campaign or ad group level.

The chart on the left breaks all the keywords in the account into three groups:

High (marked in green) - keywords with a high quality score, from 8 to 10 points.
Middle (indicated in yellow) - keys with an average quality score, from 5 to 7 points.
Low (marked in red) - keywords with a quality score below 5 points.

The chart on the right shows the average Quality Score by account, campaign, or ad group.

Using these charts, a specialist can see problematic accounts, advertising campaigns, ad groups, and can immediately determine which keywords need to be optimized.

The next three charts show each component of Quality Score by account, campaign, and ad group.

Each graph shows the ratio of keywords with different ratings. Green indicates the proportion of keywords with a score above the average, yellow - with the average, red - with a score below the average.

In the chart on the left you will see the keyword score ad relevance. For keywords with a low score, the specialist needs to create ads that contain keywords in the title or ad text.

The central chart reflects the keyword score by expected CTR value. This component affects the Quality Score more than others, but it is quite difficult to change its assessment. If the group has a high proportion of ads with a low expected CTR, the specialist needs to make the ads more visible and attractive: check if ad extensions are enabled, be more creative with the ad texts and headings.

The chart on the right shows the score landing page quality. In this case, the specialist should try to change the landing page in the ad to a more relevant one or recommend that the client rewrite the text of the landing page so that keywords from the ad group occur more often.

After the specialist has worked out the quality indicator and pulled it to the maximum level, the cost per click decreases. Consequently, the number of clicks and transactions is growing within the same budget.

If you're still losing impressions due to low ad rank after Quality Score optimization, look at your bids. So that a marketer can assess whether he can raise bids, we have added a graph that displays the cost of a transaction in the context of advertising campaigns.

In each project, the specialist knows the allowable cost per conversion and can compare this data with how many conversions were lost. If the cost of the transaction is below the allowable value, and at the same time there is a loss of income due to a low rating, it is worth raising the rates. In this case, the number of lost auctions will decrease, and the specialist will be able to attract more interested users and, as a result, increase income.

4. Campaign scaling

The BI solution has added a number of reports on the cost of a click in Google Ads in the context of different topics, as well as countries and cities. Based on this data, a marketer can evaluate whether it is worth scaling advertising campaigns to specific cities and regions, and do it as efficiently as possible, depending on the capabilities and specifics of the client's business.

At the moment, information on the cost of a click is available:

in 188 countries;
25.7 thousand cities;
broken down into 27 topics.

A similar report is also available on the cost of a click by topic and country on Facebook.

Demo version of a part of the finished solution on a randomly generated data sample

You can view a demo version of the described solution on a test data sample at this link.

conclusions

How we implemented BI analytics for the contextual advertising department:

We determined the goals, sources and list of reports necessary to solve business problems.
We developed the database architecture and selected tools for project implementation.
We got access to the API of all the necessary sources and developed the necessary function packages in the R language.
Visualized reports in Power BI.
Differentiated access to data depending on the role of the employee.

What is the result?

1. Manual:

monitors the implementation of the KPI of the department;
receives data for the distribution of projects between specialists depending on their workload.

2. Marketers based on the received data:

estimate the amount of lost income; analyze lost conversions in connection with the rating;
optimize advertising campaigns and quickly identify growth areas;
scale advertising campaigns by connecting new sources and regions.

THE BELL