Why the click price rises on the same budget
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The click price can rise on the same budget without a fraud column appearing. Yandex Direct’s predicted bid already includes a CTR forecast and how the person behaved after the click. Clicks Direct has classed as invalid are not in that bill: they are removed from the reports and not charged.
Below is what the bidding guide actually puts into the bid, why a worked average of spend divided by clicks does not name a culprit, and which column you must not fold into the price. The traces of a paid empty click are in signs of click fraud.
The bid already includes a click forecast
The Yandex Direct bidding guide says two short things. The CTR forecast takes part in the predicted bid. The quality coefficient takes into account how the person behaved after the click.
CTR is clicks divided by impressions, not rubles. How not to treat one campaign figure as a niche norm is covered in what a normal CTR is. For the price, the neighboring fact matters: the bid Direct predicts already looks at how likely a click is and at behavior after it. An empty visit can enter the quality coefficient. That does not turn it into a separate “bot” line in spend.
The guide does not publish the coefficient’s weights. This article does not say how many rubles one empty visit moves the bid. That figure is not in the sources.
Same spend and fewer clicks is an average
Say spend is 20,000 ₽ in each of two weeks. Week one has 800 clicks, week two has 500. Divide spend by clicks and you get 25 ₽ and 40 ₽.
- Worked example, ₽
The numbers are a worked example. They show how the average rises when there are fewer clicks on the same spend. The Direct pages checked for this article do not define an “average click price” column as that fraction, so the chart is not a screenshot and not proof that bots clicked in week two.
Click fraud starts where a click stayed in spend. That boundary is set in what ad click fraud is. Until the spend row is open, a rising average is arithmetic, not a name.
Cost per lead is counted from leads, not from clicks. Why it rises when the buyers did not is covered in how to calculate CPA. Tuning the lead price to treat the click price means turning a different field.
A removed click does not lift that average
Traffic Direct has classed as invalid is deleted from the reports, and Direct does not charge for it. The spend for it goes back to the shared account balance. The removed events sit in the “Invalid traffic” report in the report library. The number there can grow later, when filtering catches up.
What that column holds, and which clicks it deliberately leaves, is covered in invalid clicks. For the price the consequence is narrow: a removed click is not sitting in spend. Growth in the column is the filter working, not a surcharge on the clicks that stayed on the bill. If what you pay for got more expensive, look at spend, not at the refund.
A script on the site does not set the bid and does not count money. It collects data in the browser and receives one decision for the visit: let the visitor through, set a computational task, or refuse entry. If a Yandex Metrica counter is set, the result can be sent there too. That mark is not Direct’s click price and does not rewrite the Direct report. If there is no answer, the visit is let through.
Until the cause is named, three checks are enough:
Open the same week in spend and in Invalid traffic. Do not carry the removed clicks into the price of the clicks that stayed.
Do not read a rising average as a bot’s signature. The CTR forecast and post-click behavior are already in the bid. The guide does not give the size of the shift.
Check the lead price separately. It is not the click price.