What is an advertising campaign in VK. What is Vkontakte targeting and how to set it up: a beginner's guide

Task number 1 is to determine who to offer the product to, according to the most general characteristics: region, gender, age, social status, income, etc. You can apply the method.

The accuracy of the search results for these people on VKontakte depends on how accurately you compose a portrait of the target audience. The following questions will help you.

1) In what situation will the client use your services?

This is a way to find target audience when you don't have a clear idea of ​​who exactly to target. Moreover, these can be completely different people.

Let's take sports nutrition. When is it bought? One was advised by a trainer or dietitian. Others will be attracted by an action in a specialty store. Still others are on a diet, but at the same time they do not want to deprive themselves of pleasure, so they want low-calorie sweets. The list goes on.

The more options you come up with - including non-obvious ones - the more segments you get and the better you study their behavior.

2) What hobbies will make the client interested in your service?

Try to identify related interests: fitness clubs, swimming pools, a profession that requires you to be in athletic form (model, actor / actress, blogger), vegetarianism. This will tell you which communities your target audience "lives" in. You can find communities on a specific topic using parsers like Target hunter or Cerebro Target .

3) What types of goods / services do your customers need? (product segmentation)

The question will help you find competitors. These are all sellers who offer fat burners, products containing creatine, protein, vitamin complexes, etc.

4) What other products is the client interested in?

That is, what else are potential customers buying that is closely related to your product. A person is more likely to buy sports nutrition if he buys or searches on the Internet for sportswear, small exercise equipment for the home (dumbbells, horizontal bar), headphones for sports.

5) What should a person have to become your client?

For our example, loyalty to sports nutrition.

6) What problems / tasks does your product solve?

Here are some basic examples:

• Maintain a healthy diet;
• Controlling your diet while eating tasty foods (low in calories)
• Lose weight / build muscle;
• Improve overall well-being and sleep.

7) Who does your client look up to? ("Star", direction in the subculture, style in fashion, etc.)

Typically, these are the stars of the fitness niche.

We transfer all information to a mindmap for clarity. Here's what happened for the example of sports nutrition (clickable picture):

Be sure to test the resulting segments. Find out if all the reps are interested in your product. Will all morning joggers eat low-calorie foods? Unlikely. When it comes to professional athletes, the “warmth” of the audience is growing.

Scraping the target audience and setting up targeting

At the next stage, we collect target segments in communities according to previously defined interests. To help - audience parsers.

• Search for an audience and similar audience;
• Allocation of active public users;
• Targeting users who interacted with individual posts;
• Search for thematic communities;
• Targeting user's friends;

When you set up targeting, you choose which users will see your ad. You can narrow your audience by the following parameters:

• Geography - place of residence accurate to coordinates or address on the map;
• Sotsdem - gender, age, marital status, birthday;
• Interests - interaction with communities and external sites, subscriptions, sites on which a user is authorized through a VK account, applications, travel (logging into the social network from at least two different countries per year);
• Education and work;
• Additional parameters - mobile devices, operating systems, browsers, etc.

What are the features of VK targeting?

First, precise geotargeting by which:

• The IP address is not the main source of information. You do not pay for users who have IP in one location, but they are in another;
• It is more important where the audience visits regularly than where they are at the moment and from where they are sitting on the social network. You can advertise a store near your home even to those who are now on a business trip / vacation;
• The system analyzes user profiles, which they fill out on their own and additionally checks the data;
• A complete database of settlements and universities in the world excludes duplicates.

If you create such a campaign for a month, it is automatically renewed every day for users with a birthday in the specified interval.

Thirdly, linking impressions to the installation of applications and authorization on sites through VK:

Setting up a campaign in an ad account

Click the button:

1) Decide what you want to promote: community, app, external site, or community feed posts. Depending on this, select the required ad format:

2) Create an ad. A preview will appear in the thumbnail on the right.

Read on to find out how to choose a format and compose your creatives.

3) Configure the target audience according to the parameters that you defined earlier:

On the right - a counter with an approximate coverage of users according to the specified settings. The required minimum for the announcement is 100 people.

4) Choose a payment method and indicate the price you are willing to pay (per click or 1,000 impressions).

• Targeting settings;
• The number of ads targeting the same users;
• The cost of these ads.

When paying for impressions, ad rotation works on the principle of an auction: the more amount you specify, the more users the ad will be released. At the same time, the frequency of clicks does not affect the frequency of impressions.

In fact, you pay not per thousand, but for each impression separately with a small margin of error, in accordance with the current CPM.

CPC ads compete with each other and with CPI ads. For them, the estimated cost of 1,000 impressions is calculated taking into account the specified cost per click and CTR.

5) Assign a name to the campaign and click "Create ad":

6) Replenish the budget to start showing you need to replenish the budget - at least 10 rubles for 1 ad.

Now you can change the ad status to "Running".

7) Wait for the moderation results.

If everything is OK, impressions will start automatically. They can be tracked in statistics:

If there are violations, the ad gets the "Rejected" status. When you try to run it, you will see what needs to be fixed, for example:

After - you resubmit the changed ad for moderation.

You can change: design, cost per click / thousand impressions, targeting settings.

Choice of formats

First, let's consider what formats the VKontakte platform offers and how to use them.

Advertising carousel

Then select the community on behalf of which you are creating the post:

Write text without links (up to 220 characters) and create 3-10 cards. They will appear in the order of creation, which can be changed in the editor window.

You can add to each card:

• Links to navigate, including phone numbers;
• Image (from 400 pixels wide);
• Title (3-25 characters);
• Prices - current and old (up to 10 billion rubles) - either on all cards or none;
• One of the available buttons is either on all cards, or on none.

This is a format with which you can show popular products of an online store, a line of one brand, or offer related products to the main one (headphones for a phone, a tie for a shirt).

Universal recording

Select a community in the same way.

Add text (can contain up to 5 graphic emoticons) and content (up to 10 any attachments - photos, videos, polls, tags on the map, etc.):

Record with button

In the clickable ad area (snippet), you can upload an image of at least 537 x 240 pixels, edit the title (from 3 to 80 characters) and select the button:

Promo post with an active link to the site in the brand name

Advertisements on site pages

Users see only in the full version of the site on the left under the menu.

Each object has its own formats:

• External site: "Image and Text" or "Large Image";
• Community (group, event, public page): "Image and text", "Big image" or "Promotion of communities";
• Application: Image & Text, Large Image, Square Image, Custom, or Application Showcase.

"Image and text" includes:

Announcement "Square Image" includes:

Which format to choose for a small business or a newbie

VK traffic expert Vladimir Kazakov advises to build on the budget and the number of segments.

If you have no more than 5,000 rubles, but a lot of audiences, start with teasers. Create 3-4 options: one is creative, the other is about solving a problem, the third is for head-on sales, and so on.

So you will check several segments at once - on average, 3 teasers per 5 target audience - and find out which approach brings more clicks, and which one - applications.

If you are checking 3 audiences, you can use promo posts in the news feed: “text + picture” and “text + video”, “text + picture + button” formats. Which one works better - tests will show. Unscrew each promo post for each target audience up to a maximum of 100-300 rubles.

The carousel format is usually suitable if you need inexpensive clicks.

Attention! Each target audience needs its own approach. For example, if an ad with a video went to segment # 1, it is not a fact that it will go to all the others. But it is worth starting the test of segment 2 with video, and then connecting other formats.

Test campaign launch

The conversion rate from impressions to clicks will show how correct the messages in the ads you made for your audience. How much does your USP meet the needs of this audience - conversion from conversions to target action (calls / requests / orders on the website or joining the community).

As already mentioned, it is better to start testing with teasers and promo posts. A completely budget option for offline establishments such as fitness clubs - questionnaires, when the user enters the application form in a special VK application.

• Adjust the rate at least once an hour. You can start with 1/3 of the recommended one;
• When you have 500 - 1,000 impressions, you can turn off ads with a CTR below 0.7;
• Draw the following conclusions for 2,000 - 5,000 impressions. When an ad reaches 2,000 impressions, VK gives its rating on a 10-point scale.

Before turning off ads, take a look at Metrica: what if a low-conversion ad is selling!

VKontakte allows you to set up retargeting for social network users who have visited the site or bought a product earlier, as well as dynamic retargeting, which returns customers to make purchases using the most relevant offers in ads. We will write about this in detail in the following articles.

Drawing up creatives

Situation 1 - you are selling products that are understandable to the user. He realizes the need and chooses among several brands. To increase your click-through rate:

What if it doesn't work? How to stand out from the competition and interest a sophisticated user? Obviously, get creative. What if there are no ideas, or are you writing ads for the first time?

Pain is an advantage

The method is useful if you have:

• Bulk goods;
• High competition.

As the name implies, the method consists of 2 parts. In the first part, we need to write down the key "pains" of the clients separately.

For example, almost any online customer (for example, clothes) is worried that:

• You cannot see the product live before placing an order;
• He will be deceived and not sent the goods;
• The product will lose its appearance during postage.

We add 30-50 such points (ideally) and cover them with advantages:

• You cannot see the product live - the courier will demonstrate it before receiving payment from you;
• Do not receive the goods - cash on delivery;
• Deformation in transit - secure packaging.

You can include these characteristics in your ad.

Forbidden tricks

VKontakte does not allow:

• Explicit, frightening or aesthetically unacceptable images (naked or provocatively dressed people, illness, injury, disaster, etc.);
• Show in advertising alcohol or tobacco products and the process of their use;
• Address the user by name, refer to age, beliefs and other personal characteristics, for example: "Are you 25?", "Anna, just for you!").

High conversions for you!

Hello! If you decide to set up targeted advertising on Vkontakte, then a lot of questions immediately arise. How much money do you need to start an advertising campaign? Which settings should I choose and which ones to ignore, given my individual project? How do I find images? What is the best image format? What is CTR and what is CPM, what is the difference and which one to choose? What is retargeting and how to use it? In order to save you from unnecessary fuss, we will consider all these issues and not only in this article.

Skeptics will say, “I've tried it! Targeted ads don't work! I spent a lot of money. " Dear comrades, the violin will not play in the hands of a hippo! Tried it - it didn’t work, it doesn’t mean at all that it doesn’t work. Means somewhere wrong. Thousands of companies on Vkontakte use this tool and get clients every day. It just takes a little patience and skill.

In the meantime, I will give this infographic:

I also want to warn people who are just trying online advertising. First of all, I recommend you such an advertising channel as, you should first work in that direction. Targeted advertising means longer traffic and in some niches it can still compete with contextual advertising in the rate of conversion of a visitor to a buyer. But in most cases it is better to start with contextual advertising, and only then connect targeted advertising. And the use of a combination of contextual advertising + targeting Vkontakte will help to significantly increase efficiency. I will talk about this in the next article, because now it will be difficult to talk about all the subtleties, but I will give you some guidelines. So, let's begin.

To make it easier to navigate, let's conditionally divide the whole process into 2 stages. Namely:

1. Preparation: basic terms, preparation for testing ads, creating an advertising office.
2. Setting: Let's go through the main targeting settings, ad formats, test images and headings, and choose strategies for impressions or clicks.

Preparation and terms

A bit of theory and numbers:

CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions, measured as a percentage. For example, from 1000 impressions, you received 20 clicks. 20/1000 * 100 = 2%. This indicator is important to consider when choosing an ad format by impressions. In per-click advertising, it is not that important because it does not affect the cost per click.

СPC - cost per transition. It is important to always take into account, otherwise you can go into the negative.

We create an advertising account

Open "Settings" in the menu on the left and look for the link "Advertising" at the bottom.

Click on the "Targeted ad" button. "Create ad". The first step is to create an ad, not an office. I propose to simply create an ad now, without setting any settings, just so that you have an ad account.

Cooking pictures

There are two options to choose from. The first is to look for pictures yourself on all the resources available to you (from photo banks to a banal search for pictures in a search engine), and then prepare pictures in Photoshop. Or you can use by this mega-convenient service, for a start the free version will be enough. I will not dwell on the service now, you can figure it out if you want, it is intuitive.

Testing images and titles

To customize your campaign more effectively, it is important to test images and headlines. For the test, we need to prepare. The test runs as follows.

• We select at least 5 pictures. We test five pictures with the same title.
• And we come up with at least 5 headings. We test five titles with the same picture.
• After you test which images and headings were the most clickable, we combine the most clickable title and the most clickable image. This way we get the most effective ad.

Ideally, you need to test at least 15 images and at least 15 headlines. But for understanding the first time, five is enough.

Customization

Today there are 5 options for the ad format for the site and the group.

• image and text. They are used mainly when you need to clearly explain what it is about in the announcement;
• great image. This format is good because it attracts attention much better than the previous one. But there is a significant disadvantage - the limitation on symbols, only 25. You can also write text on the image, which significantly expands the capabilities of this option;
• Exclusive format. In this case, your ad will be broadcast to the user in a single copy, without competitors. The downside is that it is twice as expensive;
• Community promotion. This format is only suitable for communities, you cannot advertise the site using it. The key difference is that a user can join your community without following a link. There will be a button "Join" right in the ad;
• Finally, a special format! If your target audience is over 100 thousand, I recommend trying it! It is broadcast not in the left column, like other formats, but in the user's news feed, which significantly increases the CTR. This option also only works for communities.

Choosing the subject of your ad

You can skip this step in principle, but it is useful to choose a topic and subsection. When the topic and subsection are set, moderation is faster.

Choosing the geography of our target audience

In this block, you can select the cities to which you want to advertise, districts, metro stations and even the streets of your city. This is necessary if you have a local business, for example, a cafe. In this case, you need to tune in to a narrow circle of people who do not need to travel across half of the city to you. You can also cut out irrelevant ads here. For example, you are selling some rare product, having previously purchased it in China. In this case, it will be very useful to cut off large cities, since they already have a pretty good choice, and they may well buy the same product with delivery in their city, and even often cheaper. To do this, you need to select in the column "except" the cities that you want to exclude from your advertising campaign.

Setting up demographics

With gender and age, everything is clear. But there are very interesting settings in this block, such as birthday. We can tick the birthday box. And write in the ad, for example: "In honor of the birthday, a 10% discount." These ads increase the click-through rate because we personalize them. Choosing a marital status, you can also improve the relevance of your RK. For example, it makes no sense to advertise a dating site to family people. Well, at least often)

Interests

Well, finally we got there :) In my opinion, this is the most important and useful block in traditional targeting. Therefore, let's talk about it in as much detail as possible. So let's go.

Categories of interests

The Vkontatke algorithm constantly counts the engagement of each specific user in certain categories of posts. For example, if a person constantly likes, comments, views a specific topic, for example, goods and services. With the help of this setting, we will just be able to age our advertising to this segment of users! Great really ?! :)

Communities

We can tune in to a segment of the audience that is in the groups of our competitors! That is, in fact, take customers away from competitors. Well, that's not all! A person who is a member of communities of interest can also be our potential client (for example, people who are in business communities are potential clients for the b2b services industry). But here you need to carefully select the communities that you are tuning into.

App and site targeting

By targeting specific applications, you can also achieve good results in specific cases. For example, advertising a toy, you can target people who already play similar games.

Exception

You can, for example, exclude people who are already your subscribers.

Worldview

I do not use this block because there was no need. Perhaps it will be useful for you.

Travelers

If you check this box, the ads will be broadcast to people who tag their photos in different places. This increases the chances of finding a more solvent audience.

The next block "Education and work"

By tuning in to the profession, you can also additionally tune in to the audience who will be interested in your product or service. For example, people who studied for a high-paying specialty in one of the elite universities are much more likely to have a high income than primary school teachers. The same applies to people holding a certain position or working in a certain company.

Extra options

• Retargeting groups. This setting is worthy of a separate article. In short, you can collect a separate user base to which your ad will be broadcast. This can be done either with the help of certain software, or by pre-installing the retargeting code on your website.
• With the exception of. We can also exclude people on whom we do not want to show our ads. For example, people who are already subscribed to our community.
• Devices. If we choose here owners of Apple technology or owners of smartphones, then we can even more accurately tune in to a solvent audience.

I usually ignore the rest of the settings in this block, simply because I haven’t come across such advertising campaigns yet.

Setting price and location

For impressions or for clicks?

We need to choose the price per impressions and per clicks. When properly configured, ads for impressions are often more effective than ads for clicks. But there are exceptions, for example, if your audience is over 500 thousand, it makes sense to test ads for clicks. I recommend choosing advertising platforms only on Vkontakte.

Transition cost.

The main mistake of newbies is that they leave the price that Vkontakte offers. That is why many consider Vkontakte advertising to be unreasonably expensive. In fact, you need to be guided by a simple formula: divide the proposed amount (clickthrough or per 1000 impressions) by about 10 or so. That is, if the price for 1000 impressions Vkontakte recommends 12 rubles, you can set 1.2 rubles. and if the impressions will be unscrewed normally (at least 1 impression per second), then we leave it as it is. If not, we set the price a little higher, and so on until the impressions are unscrewed normally.

Click "Create ad", and then launch the ad for moderation.

Best regards, Vladimir Kondratenko

We will consider here a real case of launching an advertising campaign on the VKontakte network, which brought me 1,000,000 rubles. net profit.

"Pros". The main "advantage" of this type of advertising is the ability to clearly select (target) the audience to which this advertisement will be shown. We can set the gender, age, interests of users for whom our advertising is intended, and thus we will immediately “reach” the audience that is the most target for us.

"Pros".

• Advertising in VKontakte communities is much cheaper than targeted advertising.
• It is much easier to launch an advertising campaign in VKontakte communities than on external websites.

"Minuses". There is no targeting option. In order to "get" into your target audience, you need to carry out independent work - to select exactly those communities to which people are subscribed who may be interested in your goods or services. For the optimal choice of a group or "public", it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of the statistics of the community. I talked about this in great detail in the course. Today, as a bonus, I will reveal to you a few "tricks" about what you need to pay attention to first of all when you start advertising on VKontakte.

We launch an advertising campaign for 1,000,000 rubles in VKontakte groups.

Step # 1: who is our target audience?

At the initial stage, we must understand who our target audience is and what our potential buyers are interested in. The main rule that you need to learn here: do not advertise children's products in humorous groups! The main mistake of novice advertisers is that they are looking for the cheapest place to launch advertising. As a rule, placement of advertising posts in humorous groups is cheaper. But let's look at this process from the inside, as it were. Let's say we have a humorous group with 500,000 members. Usually in such groups 60% of subscribers are under 25 years old. This audience is unlikely to be interested in childish things; besides, she is insolvent.

But such a community would be ideal for us for advertising.

First of all, look at the statistics of the community and only then - at the cost of advertising in it. Remember: there are no expensive advertising, there are effective and ineffective advertising. Your task is to make sure that for every 3,000 rubles invested in advertising, you earn twice as much. For example, you spent 3,000 rubles and earned 6,000. Total 3,000 rubles. "Plus".

Step # 2. We are looking for sites to launch an advertising campaign.

The most optimal way to promote is to immediately place ads in large communities, and even better - in a network of large communities. There are several "pluses" here.

• If you run a massive advertising campaign, then when working with a network of communities, you can often agree on specific results, for example, work on subscribers. The price can vary from 2.5 to 40 rubles. per subscriber - depends on the topic of the group.
• The network is always interested in regular customers! If you want to work on a permanent basis and are ready to invest at least 50,000 rubles in advertising at the initial stage, then the network management will meet you halfway and make every effort to ensure that the effect of your advertising is amazing. As a rule, these are individual consultations and additional customer support.
• Working with a network of communities, you immediately find yourself in a team of professionals, thanks to which you yourself will begin to understand all the intricacies of SMM, and this will happen dozens of times faster than if you tried to study all this on your own.

Case No. 1. Launch of an advertising campaign on VKontakte, through our network of communities

Project: I am a great hostess, wife and mother
The community network through which the project was promoted:SMM agency
Task: Creation of an information project for housewives

Monetization methods:

• sale of advertising;
• sale of goods through the Biggon affiliate program;
• creation of an online store.

At the time of publication, there were 127 thousand subscribers in the community.

The cost of one subscriber to the public: RUB 2.5

Net profit of the project: RUB 30,000 per month

Case number 2. Training launch

Task: Collection of a subscription base for participation in the online intensive
Promotion: Carried out at once through several large networks of business publics
Main source of subscription: Public page "Anatomy of Business"
Cost per subscriber: RUB 30

What was done.
Initially, in each business group, we bought one ad for the test. A tagged link was placed in the group, which made it possible to track the conversion of each "public". If the test results were satisfactory, negotiations began with the owner of the group regarding the purchase of advertising in bulk (10–20 advertising posts). The minimum discount for which we agreed is 30%, sometimes we managed to bargain up to a 50% discount. Thanks to this strategy, in some cases we were able to reach a subscriber cost of 15 rubles (this is an extremely low cost per subscriber in the info business).

Case number 3. KluvaKids children's clothing showroom

Promotion: via the SMM agency of webmaster Alexander
The target audience: housewives with small children
Net profit of the project: RUB 30,000 per month

Step # 3. Preparing an advertising post and launching a massive advertising campaign

2) Use bright headlines that will magnetically attract your audience. For example:

"SALE! Summer dresses with 80% discount "

The Secret Diet! Minus 15 kg in two weeks! "

“Business in social networks. How to reach an income of 100,000 rubles a month? "

3) Use high quality pictures.
4) Use MOJO symbols:

5) Use a call to action:

6) Analyze the posts of competitors on related topics! Identify the "chips" that are used by other market participants and test them.

In this example, we looked at how an advertising post should look if you are selling a product.

It is worth noting that the algorithms and scripts for creating posts for various topics are completely different. However, this scenario can be taken as a basis by making your own changes.

In any case, the effectiveness of an advertising post should be assessed only after the launch of an advertising campaign. Ads are launched first. If it paid off and made a profit, then the post was written correctly. If not, then you need to finalize, and sometimes completely redo the ad.

What to choose: "target" or "public"?

In my opinion, if you are launching an advertising campaign on VKontakte for the first time, then it is best to do this through public pages. Due to the fact that setting up targeting is a rather laborious process, the cost of an error can be high. In addition, when launching targeted advertising, the VK administration will not give you any specific recommendations for setting it up. When launching advertising through "publics", you can always ask the administrator of the community where you are submitting your advertisement for advice.

Almost every person reads the news, and reading the news of friends on Vkontakte is a matter of principle. Here's how to use this moment to promote your community - in the advertising office you have the opportunity to launch a special campaign to advertise in the news of other people. What is news and how do I set it up? You will find the answer to this question in this detailed instruction..

1. When promoting goods and services costing from 4000 rubles.
2. During the promotion of complex niches: real estate, legal services, construction.
3. Working with a cold audience that needs to be told in more detail about the project.

Advantages and disadvantages

1. The ability to create records with large text accompaniment.
2. The tape looks more natural. This increases the reach of your ads.
3. The most effective method of promoting Vkontakte.
4. The recording is available for distribution on all devices.

1. Lack of payment for clicks.

How to start: 7 steps

Without further ado, let's list 7 basic steps.

Step # 1.

Step # 2

Click on the button "Create an ad".

Step # 3

Step # 4

The feed is published on behalf of your community.

Step # 5

Choosing the subject of your ad.

When advertising products for a specific age category, you need to put a special label.

Step 6

We set up the target audience. We select the required country or countries, city.

The item "Birthday" is useful when advertising goods as a gift.

In the next section, specify the category of interests of the target audience. For example, when advertising women’s clothing, you might include “Beauty and Fashion,” “Shop Online,” “Home and Family,” and so on.

In the communities, indicate publics and groups related to your topic.

Apps and sites. We indicate Vkontakte applications or third-party sites related to the subject of the advertisement.

The item "Travelers" shows entries to users who often visit Vkontakte from different IPs.

Education and work. If your target audience is students or representatives of a certain profession, then this tab will be very useful.

Extra options. Here you can add your base retargeting, collected from your site or using parsers.

Save settings. Here you can add the audience that took some action with your ads to the retargeting database.

Step 7

We adjust the price and location. In the "Advertising sites" section, select where the entries will be shown: on mobile devices, in the full version, or on all sites.

The cost is indicated for 1000 impressions. The system automatically sets the amount. It can and even should be reduced to save budget. If coverage falls, then the cost should be increased.

We limit impressions to 5 per person.

At the end, click on "Create ad".

How to get the most out of your ads in the news: 3 tips

1. Customize your ads for each audience segment.
2. Choose bright and catchy images.
3. Show ads on web and mobile devices separately.

Segment your audience. You don't need to run one ad campaign for all segments at the same time. This will save your budget and increase conversions.

If you are one of those people who think that VK advertising does not work, that you will waste a lot of money and get nothing, then this article is for you.
In this article, you will learn: how to create an ad on VKontakte, what are the settings and functions.

The audience of VKontakte is 90 million people, of which more than 68 million are active users. From here you can understand that this social. the network provides a great opportunity to find the audience you want.

Types of advertising on VKontakte

Targeted advertising on Vkontakte

Creating an ad on Vkontakte

After that, click on the "Create ad" button. This is where the fun begins :)

Creating an ad starts with choosing the format that suits you.
Let's take a look at what they are and what goals they fulfill.

• Text-graphic unit (TGB)

It is located on the left under the main menu in the form of short blocks with an image and text.

Benefits of TGB (Objectives):

• many transitions
• low CPC
• placement - desktop only

TGB includes advertisements for communities, external sites, and VK apps or games.

Technical requirements for ad formats:

TTs for these formats are approximately the same: the title of an ad can contain from 3 to 33 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces. Description - 3 to 70 characters. Image weight up to 5 MB, formats: JPG, PNG, BMP, TIF or GIF (no animation). The text on the image should occupy no more than 50% of the total area of ​​the photo.

2. Cross-device formats

Cross-device formats are formats that are displayed in the news feed on all platforms: in the desktop and mobile versions of the site, as well as in all official VKontakte mobile applications.

• Advertising record

Announcements are published in the news feed or on community walls.
An ad post can be called a native format that fits into the user's news feed and does not cause rejection.
Users see them along with the familiar content they follow and posts from friends.

Let's analyze each of them separately.

For each card, you can add a title, a short description, an image, a button, a link, as well as two prices, for example, to show a discount.

This format is suitable for selling goods or services, for example, online stores.

Advantages of the Carousel format:

• Multitasking
  - Attracting users to the site to make a purchase or other targeted action;
  - Increasing brand awareness;
  - Attracting new subscribers to the community.
• Cross-device
  
• Comfortable
  Format payment is available for both clicks and impressions.

- one or more images, GIF-animation or video.

With the help of a universal record, you can promote records that allow you to cover 90% of the Internet user both in the full version of the site and on mobile devices.

Advantages of the "Universal Record" format:

• Native
  Brand content automatically adapts to the ad format.
• Point
  All targeting settings are available, as well as retargeting.
• Fair
  You can connect third-party pixels for tracking statistics.
• Cross-device
  Ads are displayed on all available devices of users.
• Accurate
  How often ads are shown to a person, not a device.

is a great tool for generating traffic. The button prompts you to perform any action, for example, a transition to a website or community.

Peculiarities:

• visually noticeable;
• contains a call to action;
• intuitive for users;
• leads to a specific page specified by the advertiser;
• you can choose the text of the button depending on the purpose of the advertisement.

is an application for collecting contacts of those who left you an application.

The application allows you to:

• create convenient forms for applications in the VK interface;
• in the fields of the questionnaire, auto-filling of user data works, due to which, the level of conversion of the filled data increases.

The profiles can be flexibly configured so that users share exactly the information that you need.

Technical requirements for ad formats:

• You can add from 3 to 10 cards to the carousel containing information about goods and services.
• Post text can contain up to 220 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces. The text should not contain links, hashtags and mentions.
• The title of the card must be between 3 and 25 characters long.
• The size of the image in the carousel must be at least 400x400 px.
• Supported image formats JPG, PNG or GIF (no animation).
• The text on the image should occupy no more than 50% of the total area of ​​the photo.

• Post text can contain up to 16,384 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces.
• In the text of the post, it is allowed to use no more than 6 emojis.

for image

• You can add up to 10 images to a recording in JPG, GIF, TIF or PNG format.
• The text on the image in the advertising post should take up no more than 50% of the total area of ​​the photo.

for GIF animation

• The GIF animation must be attached as a document.
• The size of a file with GIF animation can be no more than 50 MB. Autoplay GIF-animation works for files weighing no more than 10-12 MB.
• Each side of a GIF image must be no more than 1000 px.
• GIF-image must contain more than 1 frame, interval between frames from 0.01 to 1 second.

for video

• The maximum allowed video file size is 2 GB.
• Supported video formats: AVI, MP4, 3GP, MPEG, MOV, FLV, F4V, WMV, MKV, WEBM, VOB, RM, RMVB, M4V, MPG, OGV, TS, M2TS, MTS.
• The maximum video recording resolution is 1080p.
• Horizontal, square and vertical videos are supported.
• The ability to embed videos from other video hosting sites (Youtube, Rutube, Vimeo, etc.) is available.

• The post text can contain no more than 220 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces, no more than two line breaks (use of links in the text, including hashtags, is not allowed).
• In the text of the post, it is allowed to use no more than 6 emojis.
• The snippet image next to the button must be at least 537x240px.
• The text on the image in the snippet should occupy no more than 50% of the total area of ​​the photo.
• Supported image formats: JPG, PNG or GIF (no animation).
• The snippet text next to the button can be up to 80 characters long, including punctuation marks and spaces.
• The label for the button can be selected from the list provided. The list of available captions depends on the landing page of the ad.

Settings and targeting

After you have selected the form you need, go to the targeting settings.
Immediately, I note that the target audience and the recommended price will vary depending on your settings.

SO

Choose the subject of your ad and the age label, if needed.
You can learn more about the rules for placing advertisements. 2. Geography

You can select a country, cities, regions, and also exclude those you do not need.

In addition, there is a convenient function for setting points on the map. Using the "Location Type" setting, you can choose which of the users to show ads to - those who regularly visit, live, study, work, or are in a specified location right now.

Great for businesses where the target audience should be near the office.

3. Demographics

Gender, age, marital status are understandable.

But the “Birthday” function is well suited for an action in the style of “Happy Birthday! Only for you...".

Birthday information is updated daily, so it is enough to set up an ad once and the ad campaign will remain relevant. This is especially convenient when you have a permanent birthday discount.

4. Interests

Interests are a very important section of your settings.

Here you select a group of users who are interested in a particular topic. VKontakte classifies users as audience segments by their social activity. networks and external sites.

5. Education and work

This section does not work quite correctly, since many users do not indicate their place of study or work in their profile.

Targeting users by education is best only if you are interested in graduates from specific educational institutions or recently graduated from educational institution.

Job targeting is best for advertising equipment like dentists. Of course, there will be few people, the information may not always be fresh, but sometimes it is at least something.

6. Additional parameters, or retargeting

Retargeting is an easy and effective way to generate more customers and repeat orders.
You can show ads to users who have already shown their interest in your brand - they came to your site, put something in the cart, made a purchase, or just saw your ad.

You can also exclude audiences, such as users who opened a form and submitted a request, in order to no longer show them your ad.

To select a retargeting audience in the settings, we first need to create it, or more precisely, install a pixel on your website.

Pixel retargeting setup

First, you need to create a retargeting pixel. To do this, go to the "Retargeting" section on the left in the menu. Next click "Pixels" and then "Create Pixel".

A window will appear where you will need to write the name, the allowed domain and select the site theme.


After that, a window will appear with a code that will need to be put on the site, and an explanation of how to do this.

When you install the code on the site, you will need to check whether it works or not.
This can be done in the same pixel settings.

Now that you have a working pixel, you can create an audience.
To do this, click on the "Audiences" tab and the "Create audience" button.

A window will appear where you can choose a convenient option for creating an audience: using a pixel or from a file.

The "Load from file" option assumes that you have your own customer base of contacts. Creating such an audience will be a plus, since you can exclude your customers from the ad audience so as not to spend your advertising budget on them.

Also in the "Retargeting" section there is a tab "Similar audiences", or look-alike.
Here you can find VKontakte users whose behavior is similar to your customers.

You can use any source retargeting audience with a reach of at least 1,000 users.
To create a LAL audience, click on the Find Similar Audience button.

Next, in the window that appears, select the desired audience from the list, for which you will create a similar one.

The search can take from 30 minutes to several hours, so come back from time to time and check the status.

After you've finished creating audiences, go back to creating your ad and select your audience from the list.

7. Audience saving settings

This is where you can collect the audience that interacted with your ad. And also choose the events on which she interacted: watched the post, went to the community, hid the post from the news, and so on.
Multiple audiences can be added.

8. Price and location settings

In this section, you can select the sites where the advertisement will run, the method of payment - for clicks (CPC) and for impressions (CPM), as well as limiting impressions per user and ad campaign.

Cost of targeted advertising

Targeted advertising on VKontakte works on the principle of an auction, which allows you to optimize costs. You decide how much you want to spend on advertising.
But I will note right away that if you greatly underestimate the recommended price, then the ad will be shown, but will cover a small share of the audience, or will not be shown at all.

CPM (cost per mille) is a payment model where you pay for 1000 impressions of your ad.
CPC (cost per click) is a payment model where you pay only for user clicks on your ad.

Vkontakte auction

1. The principle of formation of the cost of the transition

When paying for referrals (CPC):

• Your ad's CTR affects your bid.

When paying using the CPC model, the cost of clicks is inversely proportional to the CTR of the ad: the lower the CTR, the higher the CPC.

The minimum transition cost is 5 rubles. (technically the minimum value of the rate) when paying using the CPC model.

2. The principle of cost formation per 1000 impressions

When paying for 1000 impressions (CPM):

• the bid is influenced by the number of advertisers for a given target audience in the auction;
• your bid is NOT affected by creative (ad CTR).

When paid using the CPM model, the cost of the transition does not depend on the CTR of the ad.

The minimum transition cost is 30 rubles.

• Advertising campaigns
  This section displays a list of ad campaigns and ads within them. This is your main working interface, here you can carry out any actions related to the creation and management of advertising.

  You can see the remaining budget, how much was spent today and yesterday, as well as small statistics of advertising campaigns.

  Be sure to set limits!
  Otherwise, VK can "eat" your budget for a month per day.

Clicking on the name of a campaign will take you to the Advertisements section, and then clicking on the name of an ad will take you to the section of the ad itself.

Here you can see all the information about the ad: how it looks like, how many clicks, complaints, etc. It was.

• Budget
  Here you can view and top up the balance of the advertising cabinet.

How to top up Vkontakte balance?

Go to the "Budget" section and click on the "Replenish" button.

You will be prompted to select a payment type.

If you decide to make a payment convenient for individuals. persons, then you select the payment method, indicate the amount and make the payment. The minimum payment amount is 500 rubles.
If for legal entities. persons - just enter your bank details.

Setting up and creating an ad on Vkontakte

With its help, you can automatically negotiate with the administration of the communities that suit you about placing your ads in them.
There are no more complicated processes for coordinating a post with the community administration, it is enough to indicate the budget and dates of the campaign - the system itself will offer the optimal list of groups with the maximum coverage within the budget.

1. Create an ad post and submit it for moderation.
2. Indicate the budget and period of placement.
3. Check out the list of communities selected by the platform.
4. Confirm the placement.

Let's take a closer look at each step.

In the pop-up window, you will be asked to select the post type - a post with text and attachments, or a repost of another post - write a text, a short title, and also select an advertising campaign.

"A post with text and attachments" can be called a "regular post" on the community wall, and a "repost of another post" is more suitable for promoting your community or VK page.
Up to 10 attachments can be added to each new recording: photos, videos, audio recordings, etc. Only one attachment can be attached to a "repost".

In the "Short name" field, you can write a name that will be used to designate an entry in your personal account and SMS notifications. No one but you will see it.

2. Specify the budget and the period of placement
Click on the button "Post a record" and select the parameters you need to search for suitable communities.

3. Explore the list of communities selected by the platform
Based on the above data, the market platform will offer you a list of those communities that meet the stated criteria.

If some of the communities do not suit you, you can exclude them by clicking on the corresponding button.

4. Confirm the placement
After you have finished the selection of communities, click on the "Submit" button.
The seat reservation will be made automatically in the time range that you specified.
Information about your applications will appear in the "Awaiting Publication" section.

Application statuses

Vkontakte advertising campaign statistics

After publishing your post, you can monitor its performance.
You can view detailed statistics for all posts or for a single post in a separate community.

You will be able to find out the total reach of users who viewed the ad post, the number of clicks on the link, the number of joining the group, if you are promoting it, and so on.

This data will help you analyze the impact of ads placed in different communities and adjust your ad campaign for the best results.

Conclusion

Thus, we can conclude that thanks to the simple interface and many settings options, it is easy and simple to find the target audience of VK you need. In addition, it does not require a large budget.