Retargeting and bots: why audiences get polluted

Retargeting in the Yandex Direct glossary is showing ads to people who have already been on the promoted site. The ready-made segments are wider than “returning buyers.” Among the automatic segments, the conditions help names new visitors, returning visitors, ad traffic, and bounces. The page does not say robots have been removed from a segment. Click fraud is not built into a segment condition: the selection is whoever met the visit condition, not whoever the account separately recognized as a buyer.

An audience gets polluted where the condition is wide, robots are not removed from it, and an adjustment on the segment does not catch the person at once.

What is already inside the ready-made segments

New visitors are a first visit in 90 days. Returning visitors are more than one visit in 90 days. Ad traffic is people who arrived after a click on an ad. Bounces are one page, less than 15 seconds, and no goal action, by default over 540 days. The bounce period can be narrowed in the segment condition. Non-bounces are longer than 15 seconds, or more than one page, or a goal action that happened.

The bounce definition in the segment does not repeat the service “non-bounce” event from the Metrica glossary. A short visit with no goal falls into “bounces” under this rule, and the page does not promise to remove robots from it. Ad traffic takes everyone who arrived after a click on an ad, with no separate filter for “this was a person.”

The goal metrics such an action comes from are in most Metrica reports, and there is a separate conversions report. Goal types: a goal event via JavaScript, API, or a file; number of page views; page visits; a click on email; a click on a phone; a click on a button; a form submit; a move to a messenger; a move to a social network; a file download; site search; a return from a payment system; calls; chats; a multi-goal; and a compound goal of sequential steps. Metrica creates some goals itself. The page does not set a normal conversion and does not subtract spam from completions of the “form submit” goal. The permission “use goals in Direct campaigns” allows optimization without access to the counter, but it is not enough for retargeting and audience selection. A retargeting segment cannot be built on that permission alone.

Several goals — one visit

If a Metrica segment combines several goals, Direct’s selection includes only people who completed all of those goals in one visit. The help’s example is “visited the promo page” and “ordered the discounted product.” A person who saw the promo in one visit and ordered in another does not enter that selection. Ads for audience segments are shown on search and in the networks, the Advertising Network and external ones.

The delay of up to 180 minutes before a person enters an adjustment segment is not written on the retargeting-conditions page. It is on the adjustments page. An adjustment changes the bid, the price, or the advertising-cost share in a range from −100% to +1,200%. −100% is supposed to exclude impressions. The arithmetic example: a 40 ₽ bid and +1,000% make 440 ₽. That is an example, not the account’s bid. If an adjustment of one type sits on both the campaign and the group, the group one applies. Zero percent on the group cancels the campaign adjustment for that group.

For an audience condition, an impression under an already disabled condition is still possible: after the condition is met, the system needs up to 180 minutes to add the person to the segment. The example: −100% for people who have been on the site, and a visit at 12:00 — for up to 180 minutes the campaign’s ads can still be shown. A return at 13:00 is still treated as a new visitor, and the adjustment does not apply to them. The 180 minutes belong to an audience segment. The page does not carry them over to a device or region adjustment.

Until the segment catches the visit, −100% for “do not show to people who have been on the site” does not yet hold that person. A short robot visit, if it met the bounce condition or a click on an ad, is not removed from the segment by the page. A retargeting segment does not settle invalid clicks or whether Yandex returns the money. Who lands in a click without a purchase is in the article on who clicks ads. The difference in terms is in the article on click fraud and sklikivanie.

A retargeting audience is built from visit conditions: a first visit, a repeat, a click on an ad, a short bounce, or all the listed goals in one visit. The page does not subtract robots from those conditions. An adjustment on such a segment can still be late by up to 180 minutes.