Targeting

VK Ads has many technologies with which you can customize your ads as accurately as possible. One of them is targeting, settings that define your target audience. Those who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

By combining different settings, you can launch an effective ads campaign and reduce your ads costs.

Location targeting enables you to choose a target region for running your ads. VK Ads offers several ways to determine a user’s location.

Broad geography is used when you intend to advertise to users in an entire region: country, city, continent or the whole world. This location targeting is based on users’ IP addresses.

To select a region, use the search bar (also suitable for smaller cities).

All selected regions will appear in the grey area at the top.

To show everywhere except the selected region/area/city (exclude region):

1. In the search bar, enter the region (e.g. country or region) in which you want to show ads and tick it.
2. Next, enter the name of the location (region, city, etc.) you want to exclude in the search. This location will be ticked.
3. Uncheck the region/area/city that you do not want to show ads in.

All selected regions will appear in the grey area at the top and will be written in grey. Regions you have excluded will be written in grey and marked with a "-".

If you are adding a large number of regions, use mass uploading. To do this, click Add by list, then enter the names manually or upload as a file.

1) Enter manually

In the window that appears, enter all the necessary regions separated by commas or each on a new line.
The number of regions is not limited.
You can use the names of countries, regions, cities, numeric identifiers of regions.

2) Load from file

In the window that appears, click Upload from file and select the file.

• File format *.csv or *.txt, up to 30 kb.
• Encoding: UTF-8.
• The file can only contain numeric identifiers.
• The separator is a newline or a comma.
• The number of regions is not limited.

All lines from the file will appear in the download window. Make sure you don't add empty lines, they will throw an error.

Local geography is used to show ads in certain areas. Such location targeting is based on GPS data. To opt for local advertising, select Select on the map and pinpoint a location on the map. The default location radius is 6 km, which means that ads will be shown to users within 6 km of the pin. You can adjust the radius in the 500 m to 10 km range.

For local geography, downloading a list of points using a list file is also available. To use:

1. Start creating a campaign in the usual way.
2. Go to step “2. Ad Groups”.
3. In the “Regions” block, click “Select on map”.
4. Click the “Add list” button below the map.
5. Upload a file with the points.

File requirements:

• File format: csv or *.txt, UTF-8 encoding.
• String format is "label:radius:address", "label:radius:coordinate", ":radius:address" or ":radius:coordinate". The label field is optional. It will look like this: "Hairdresser's on Taganskaya:10km:55.741537, 37.652821" or ":500m:Tver,Shmidta boul.81".
• The radius should be specified as an integer, not a fractional number (1500m, not 1,5km).
• Forbidden characters: quotation marks ( " ) and semicolon ( ; ).
• Maximum size of the uploaded file is 300kb, maximum number of lines — 5 000.
• Maximum number of points to be displayed on the map — 200, but all uploaded points will be taken into account in targeting.

Locations are used to advertise to users who visit certain places, like a discount store in your neighborhood. The targeting is based on IP addresses, just like broad geography. To activate this targeting, enter the name or address of a place in the Places field and select the Location type: 

• Regularly visits - show ads to people who are in this place regularly: during working hours (i.e. from 9:00 to 20:00 from Monday to Friday excluding holidays) or during non-working hours and holidays;
• Visited recently - show ads to people who are in this place right now or have been recently;
• Visited anytime - show ads regardless of the regularity of the visit.

By default, a radius of 1 km is selected, which means that ads will be seen by users who have visited the specified point within a radius of 1 km. The value can be changed: from 500 meters to 10 km.

These settings allow for targeting an audience based on gender and age. The system draws information from social services, search queries, and user behavior within VK projects.

If your products or services are age-restricted, specify the respective ages in the Demography section.

Interests represent topics of search queries and content the user interacted with over the last 1–3 months. To add an interest, select it from a dropdown list in the Interests field.
If you choose multiple interests, we will show your ads to users with any of the selected interests.

You can exclude certain interests and preclude users who were interested in a particular topic from seeing your ads. To do that, click Add exclusions and choose the relevant topics.

Key phrases (or contextual targeting) are used to build the audience around users’ search queries. Search queries include direct queries within the VK ecosystem, as well as other user actions (for example, clicks on categories and product detail pages on VK platforms). In this case, key phrases are compiled based on the names of these products and categories.

Enter a phrase in the Key phrases field to add it. Input each phrase on a separate line.

The system creates a synonym list for all key phrases. You can access it by clicking Show similar to the right under the input field.

Negative key phrases serve to exclude search phrases. If a user’s query contains negative key phrases, they will not see the ad.

Let’s say you’ve entered order interior design, interior design price, interior design how much, interior design development, order apartment layout project in the key phrases field, while your negative key phrases contain courses, training, work, free, on your own, ready-made. In this configuration, your ads will be shown to users who want to order a design project from a professional and exclude those who are looking for design courses or intend to develop the layout themselves.

To add negative key phrases, click Minus-phrases and enter the phrases in the input field. Each phrase must be entered on a separate line.

Search period indicates the number of days during which users’ queries occurred (can be anything between 1 and 30 days). By default, VK Ads looks at queries made within the last twelve days. We encourage you to adjust the time frame as you see fit, depending on your product’s sales cycle.

For key phrases targeted ads, you can use the {{search_phrase}} macro in the tracking link — it returns the search query of the user who was shown the ad.

Read about other macros in the article

You can choose subscribers of communities from two social networks: VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. The system remembers users and shows ads not only in the selected social network, but also in other VK projects: if you choose a community from Odnoklassniki, subscribers of this community can see ads not only in Odnoklassniki, but also on VKontakte, Dzen, Youla and other platforms - on websites and in applications.

Algorithms analyze the interests and behavior of the audience, as well as the content of the business. The platform will only show ads to those who are most likely to take the desired action, and to users who are similar to them.

For example, if your audience is users who are members of communities of expensive car owners, then ML-models will not show ads to those who are interested in low-value cars.

If you don't want users of certain groups to see your ads, add those communities to the exclusions. To do this, click “Add exclusions” and select the groups. 

To use community targeting:

1. Start creating a campaign as usual.
2. Go to the step 2. Ad Group → Interests and Behaviors → Communities.
3. Use the search to find relevant communities on VKontakte or Odnoklassniki.
   You can also add multiple communities as a list or as a file by clicking the Add List button next to the community search bar and then selecting the desired social network. Learn more about the requirements for lists and files
4. Click Create an audience. 

The system will create a new audience and add it to the campaign settings.

You can also create an audience with a list of communities in advance using the Audiences tab.

If you need to exclude the subscribers of some community from the show, create an audience of them and use the usual rules of combination.

If you're using community targeting in your campaign, the reach estimate may be greater than the total number of all community members. This is normal: the reach includes users who are members of the community, as well as those who have interacted with the community's posts, such as like and share.

If you are promoting a music artist, label, artist, etc., you can target your ads to users who like similar music.

When setting up a campaign, select several artists whose listeners may like your music. VK Ads will then find users who have listened to these artists on VKontakte and VK Music and show them your ad.

You can exclude listeners of certain musicians from the shows. To do this, click “Add exclusions” and select them.

To use targeting by music artists:

1. Connect VK ID and start creating a campaign as usual.
2. Go to step 2. Ad Set → Interests and Behaviour → Musicians. 
3. Use search to find bands or artists. Tick their tick boxes and click Done.
4. When you have selected all the artists, click Create Audience.

The system will create a new audience and add it to your campaign settings.

You can use more fine-tuned audience settings - for example, select only users who like all artists from the Musicians list, or add exceptions. To do this, first create an audience in the Audiences block and then select it when you launch the campaign. Read more about audiences

You can target ads to users who:

• launched a mini-application or VKontakte game,
• spent money/votes in a VKontakte mini-app or game.

This setting will help creators and publishers of VKontakte mini-apps or games to promote their product through VK Ads.

If you want to exclude those who run a mini-app or game, click on the “Add exclusions” button and specify the apps and games you want. 

To use targeting on users of VK Mini Apps and VKontakte games:

1. Connect VK ID and start creating a campaign in the usual way.
2. Go to step 2. Ad set → Interests and behaviour → VK Mini Apps and games VKontakte. 
3. Use the search to find the mini apps or games you want. Tick the checkboxes and click Done.
4. If you want to show adverts only to users who have spent money or votes, tick the Count only paying users box.
5. Select the period for which user actions are counted: for example, if you specify 0 to 365 days, ads will be shown to users who have interacted with the mini-app or game at least once in the last year.
6. You can add exceptions - select mini-apps and games whose users you don't want to show ads to.
7. When you're done, click Create Audience.

The system will create a new audience and add it to your campaign settings.

You can use more fine-tuned audience settings - for example, add multiple sources and choose combination rules. To do this, first create an audience in the "Audiences" block and then select it when launching a campaign. Read more about audiences

If you are adding a large number of mini-apps or games to VKontakte, use bulk upload. To do this, click Add List, then enter titles manually or upload as a file.

1) Enter manually

In the window that appears, enter the names of all mini-apps, either comma separated or each on a new line. There is no limit to the number.

2) Download from file

In the window that appears, click Load from file and select a file.

• File format *.csv or *.txt, size up to 30 kb.
• Encoding: UTF-8.
• The file can contain only mini-application or game IDs written in Latin characters (e.g. https://vk.com/myminiapp). 
• Separator is a newline or comma. 
• The number of regions is not limited.

All lines from the file will appear in the download window. Check that you have not added empty lines: they will cause an error.

Audiences are pre-made user lists compiled based on data from different sources, including your user lists, in-app events, contextual targeting or audiences that you’ve imported from your advertising account in myTarget.

If you add multiple interests or audiences, we will show your ads to users who satisfy at least one selected condition. If you choose both interests and audiences, we will show your ads to those users who belong to the selected audience and are interested in the selected topic.

Sources of audiences. Audiences within VK Ads can be compiled based on data from various sources, including reactions to a VKontakte post.

Combination rules. Data can be combined according to different rules: AND, OR.

Own and external audiences. You can also upload audiences collected earlier in other advertising systems - myTarget and VKontakte.

You can use both your own audiences (those that you have created yourself inside your VK Ads account) and upload external audiences - those that other VK Ads users have shared with you.

More details on working with segments are described in the Audiences and Lists section.

Currently only available for mobile app and site advertising

Device settings allow you to specify in detail which devices to show your ads on.

For websites:

• Device type: desktop or mobile.

For mobile apps:

• Device type: tablets and/or smartphones.
• OS version: from minimum to maximum.
• Device brand: the brand of the smartphone or tablet.