How to limit impressions in Yandex Advertising Network mobile apps

Yandex Advertising Network mobile apps are not turned off with a single “no apps” checkbox. They are entered in the campaign’s placement ban. In Direct you can block impressions on selected Advertising Network placements and in external networks. You cannot block impressions on Yandex search projects. This ban does not diagnose click fraud: it stops showing the ad in the places you named. The help warns that excluding placements can narrow the audience.

A smartphone adjustment solves a different task and reaches beyond apps. Below is where an identifier goes, which limit to use, and why −100% on smartphones is wider than an app list.

Where the app is written

In the campaign parameters, the block “Placements where impressions are banned” excludes sites and apps, entered separated by commas. You open the campaign through the menu → “Edit.” In the extra settings of an app-promotion campaign, the ban takes domains, mobile-app identifiers, or names of external networks. The identifiers and network names are written out on the app-campaign creation page. In both places the help warns that an exclusion can make the campaign work worse and cut off audience.

These pages do not describe an account-wide list: the list is set on the campaign. You can switch several campaigns at once from the “Placements” report. Until the entry is in each campaign or switched from the report, a second campaign does not inherit the app.

What ceiling the list has

The blocked-placements page counts domains: up to 1,000 for banners, up to 100 for video ads. A site on the list closes both its thematic pages and search on that site. An external network cannot be blocked as a whole, only individual placements.

The networks FAQ counts places: no more than 1,000 impression places, and that ceiling includes sites, apps, and external networks. Impressions on Yandex search projects cannot be blocked. While the help pages diverge, banners and video take the blocked-placements page, and apps take the wording about 1,000 places.

Apps take places in the same ceiling as sites and external networks, if you follow the networks FAQ. That wording does not let you add “all apps” as one line: the list holds individual places, and there are no more than 1,000 of them together with sites and networks.

Minus 100% on smartphones is not an app filter

To turn off impressions on mobile devices, the impressions help suggests an adjustment of −100% for smartphones. One system can be removed on its own: −100% for iOS or for Android. You cannot set −100% on both systems at once. The page does not guarantee impressions on only one system: other mobile operating systems remain, and the example names Windows Phone. Impressions on mobile only means −100% for desktops.

That is every impression on smartphones, including mobile search, not turning off Advertising Network apps by identifier. A person in Yandex mobile search falls under the same adjustment as an impression inside an app. If you need only some apps, write their identifiers into the placement ban. If you need every impression on smartphones, set −100% and accept that search on a smartphone goes away with the apps.

A place ban does not answer whether clicks were invalid or whether Yandex returns the money. Who clicks without meaning to buy is covered in the article on who clicks ads. The placement help does not separate the words “click fraud” and “sklikivanie” — the difference is in the article on click fraud and sklikivanie.

Limiting Advertising Network apps means entering their identifiers in the campaign ban, staying inside the place ceiling, and not mixing that list with a device adjustment. Yandex search is not excluded by a placement ban. A smartphone adjustment removes mobile impressions as a whole, including that search, and does not pick apps by name.