To promote your products and services, use campaigns with the Product sales ad objective. This type of campaign is suitable both for attracting the attention of new customers and reminding those users who have already been in contact with your business.
You can promote products and services from a specially created catalog (product feed).
This article describes how to run product catalog (feed) ads for a website or mobile app.
If you want to run ads for products from the VKontakte community, go to this article, ads for products from the marketplace - to this article.
Preparation
Before creating a campaign, you need to make a few preparatory steps.
If you advertise products and services from a website or mobile app:
- For advertising sites it is necessary to set up VK Ads Pixel and dynamic retargeting events.
- To advertise a mobile app, you need to add it to the account, set up integration with the tracker and the transmission of dynamic retargeting events.
- Create and upload a product catalog.
- Match data sources and feed catalog.
- Create product groups - if you want to create different campaigns for different product types or catalog segments.
Then you can move on to creating a campaign.
Create campaign
Campaign settings
- In the Campaigns section of the Campaigns tab, click Create.
- Select the Product catalog ad objective.
- Choose what you promote:
- Site. In the Advertised site field, specify the linked pixel or enter the address of the site you are promoting.
- Mobile App. In the Mobile App field, select the connected app.
- Select the product catalog on the basis of which you will create an advertisement.
- Select the type of advertising campaign:
- New clients acquisition - if you want to get new customers who are more likely to buy your products or order services.
- Dynamic retargeting - if you want to remind users who already know about your business.
- Select the target action that you want to get:
- For sites are available:
- Views and clicks - optimization for these actions is available without additional settings.
- Other target actions (view, add to cart, buy) - optimization is available after the pixel is connected.
- For mobile apps are available:
- Views and clicks - optimization for these actions is available without additional settings.
- Installs - optimization is available without additional settings.
- Other target actions (view, add to cart, purchase) - optimization is available after configuring the integration with the tracker.
- For sites are available:
- Select a campaign bid strategy. Learn more
- Specify the budget and period of the campaign. Learn more
Ad set settings
The ad group settings will depend on the type of campaign you selected earlier: New clients acquisition or Dynamic retargeting.
New clients acquisition
- Select the Promoted products - those products that you want to show in the ads. By default, all products in the catalog will be selected.
- If necessary, set the Ad serving exceptions condition: which audience you want to exclude from the display.
- No restrictions - both new users and those who have interacted with products from the selected group will be able to see the ads.
- Exclude users who made a purchase - while showing, we will exclude users who have already purchased products from the selected group for a period from 0 to 365 days (you can set the value by yourself). By default, the period from 0 to 30 days is selected.
For the New clients acquisition type of campaign, we recommend using the widest possible audience settings: VK Ads' smart algorithms will independently determine the audience that will be interested in your offer.
After the first results, you can gradually narrow down the audience size if necessary.
Dynamic retargeting
- Select the Promoted products - those products and services that you want to show in the ads. By default, all products in the catalog will be selected.
- Select Retargeting Audience:
- All Site and App Audience - All visitors to the site or app users will be able to see the ads.
- Entire catalog audience - all users who have interacted with products or services from a specific catalog will be able to see the ads.
- Product Group Audience - Users who have interacted with products or services from the catalog group you select in the list will be able to see the ads.
3. Set the Retargeting condition - the action that users must do so that the system adds them to the audience and later shows your ads.
- Performed any action - Looked through, added to favorites or cart, or bought items
- No purchase - Looked at, added to favorites or cart, but didn't buy
- Viewed but not added to cart
- Added to favorites, but not purchased
- Added to cart, but not purchased
- Additional sales - reselling items to customers who have already made purchases
4. Set the Retargeting conditions period from 0 to 365 days - this is the period for which the system will take into account the actions of users. By default, the period from 0 to 30 days is selected.
5. For app ads with the Dynamic Retargeting campaign type, also specify an alternate deeplink path - where to redirect users if the deeplink can't be opened (for example, the app isn't installed or removed).
6. Events for the Dynamic retargeting campaign type begin to arrive in the system after the feed is created. It does not matter how you created the catalog: through the Commerce Center or advertising campaign settings.
We recommend that you start promoting the products and services with a New clients acquisition type of campaign.
For example, you have selected the setting Product group audience → Group 1, the retargeting condition Added to cart, but not bought and the period - from 0 to 14 days.
This means your ads will be seen by users who have looked at products from Group 1 of the chosen catalog for the last two weeks and have added them to the cart without making a purchase. Users who viewed products from other groups or those who not only viewed products from Group 1 but also bought them won't see your ad.
General ad group settings
After you set up your audience, you can choose other targeting: regions where ads are shown, gender and age of users who will see the ads, interests and audience, devices on which ads will be shown, and placements. Learn more about targeting and placements
If you are using the Add UTM tags manually setting, add attribution parameters in the ad group settings in the URL Parameters block. This is necessary for proper attribution of clicks in the application tracker statistics. Learn more about UTM-tags for feed catalogs
Ad settings
You can use Products in promotional video, a format that combines a promotional video with a clickable product carousel. Upload a 16:9 aspect ratio video with a duration of 5 to 30 seconds. Learn more
After setting up your groups, go on to creating your ads.
- Upload the logo for the ads. Image size - at least 265x256px.
- For website ads, you need to upload the image manually.
- For mobile apps it will be downloaded from the app store automatically.
- Fill in the title of the ad. For website ads you need to fill the title manually, for mobile apps it will be downloaded from the app store automatically.
- Fill in the text fields:
- Description for carousel - the text that will be displayed in the product carousel, up to 50 characters.
- Description for banner - the text of the ad, up to 125 characters.
- Long description - the text of the ad, which will be displayed in the social networks, up to 220 characters. Optional field.
- Add a link to the advertised site or a tracking link to the app (for campaigns with New clients acquisition type).
- Select the text on the button.
- If necessary, fill in the legal information about the company.
Go to the carousel settings.
Please note that the Carousel format is available for product advertising only if there are more than 5 products in a catalogue (or a group of products in a catalogue).
- Fill in the title of the card. By default, a product macro with the product name from the product feed is substituted in this field. It can be deleted or replaced.
- Select a card description option:
- New and old price - the product description will show the current price and cross out the previous one.
- Text description - by default, this field contains a product macro with the price of the product from the product feed. It can be deleted or replaced with another one.
- Add an introductory slide for the carousel, if necessary. Image size - at least 600x600px.
This slide allows you to place static graphic material on the first slide of the carousel to anchor the necessary information and more effectively attract the attention of potential customers.
For example, focus on events you're promoting: arrival of a new collection, promotions, certain category of products, etc.
- When advertising websites for an introductory slide, you need to fill out the title, introductory slide description, add a link, and upload a promo image separately.
- When advertising mobile applications for an introductory slide, you need to fill out the title and introductory slide description separately, add a tracking link (to attract new users) or a tracking link and a deeplink (for dynamic retargeting), and upload a promo image.
When you finish, click Publish - the ad will be sent for moderation. If everything is in order and there are funds in the account, the ad will run immediately after the moderation or on the selected start day.
You can follow the campaign statistics on the dashboard. If you advertising a site that redirects the user to an application (web2app), use the instructions to set up statistics tracking.