Contextual advertising: results of 2015 and forecasts 2016

The outgoing 2015 was marked by a number of important events for contextual advertising: “Yandex.Direct” changed the auction scheme and canceled discounts for advertisers, and Google stopped supporting Flash banners and completely made the transition to HTML5. Anastasia Bulanova, director of work with key clients of ArrowMedia (Kokoc Group), told in a column for Sostav.ru about how these events affected the development of contextual advertising and what awaits it in the future.

Yandex
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The main reformer of 2015 in contextual advertising was Yandex.Direct, with a change in the auction and the cancellation of discounts for advertisers.

Recall that before September 1, ads were selected in the main blocks according to the ratio of CTR to the rate, and inside were placed on positions in descending order. Advertisers were satisfied with the two-month tests of the updated Yandex.Direct: the cost of clicks returned to average values, their number in special placement was higher.

However, according to our estimates, in reality, the price of a click nevertheless increased by about 10% and only for a small number of clients, for example, in the telecom / home Internet segment decreased by 70-100% with the same amount of traffic.

No less welcome innovations from Yandex are: the ability to change the rates for smartphones, the creation of mobile ads and the recording of search requests from mobile devices. Now, the adjustment of rates for display on mobile phones can give up to 20-30% efficiency gains, for example, the result may be an increase in calls from smartphones or a reduction in mobile traffic, as less conversion.

Yandex introduced bid adjustment features for working with audiences by socio-demographic status and remarketing scenarios for segments from Yandex.Metrica 2.0. They provide an opportunity to work more actively with each specific segment. For example, if, according to statistics, it is known that the conversion of female visitors between the ages of 25 and 34 is higher by 20% compared to other users, you can increase the display of ads specifically for this group and thus increase the effectiveness of advertising.



Another innovation is the function of dynamic ads for e-commerce, which helps to improve the quality of advertising and reduce labor costs for creating campaigns. Now this option is being actively tested by advertisers and is becoming more and more popular.

The description of quick links for navigation queries makes the ad unit minimally different from organic output, which increases the context click through rate. At the same time, the importance of advertising quality with every change in Yandex, including the description for quick links, becomes higher and higher.

Google

Innovations Google were not so ambitious. In contrast to Yandex, which predicted an increase in traffic at a constant price per click, Google cited data on the annual growth of the average cost per click in contextual advertising on average in all segments.

As opposed to Yandex, the search engine has long allowed for adjusting bids for display on mobile devices. By the way, Google recently conducted a large-scale study on the use of various types of devices in the regions of Russia. Statistics show that, for example, in the Primorsky Territory since the beginning of 2015, the share of smartphones exceeds 60%, and in the Tomsk region the figure is reduced due to the unstable mobile Internet and the unwillingness of users to wait for the download of search results.

Google is closely following global trends, for example, in accordance with the widespread rejection of the use of Flash technology, Google has stopped supporting YouTube video playback (in January 2015) and banners (in August 2015) in this format in recent versions of Chrome and announced the transition on HTML5. This will give Internet users the ability to open more tabs at the same time and not wait for banners to load during a slow connection.



Contextual advertising was in this and will remain next year one of the most effective tools of Internet marketing. According to ACAR, amid a general decline in the advertising market, the “context” grew by 17% in the first 9 months of 2015. According to GroupM experts, the channel will continue to grow in 2016 and will show a dynamic of 6%. At the moment, the "context" takes up to 80% of the total cost of advertisers on the Internet.

Google regularly works to improve operational efficiency and improve the assessment of results. So, video ads in the True-View format can now be run through AdWords, which helps manage campaigns and see statistics in one interface.

Also, the search engine is constantly expanding opportunities for advertisers. For example, in September, Native Gmail Ads - Gmail Sponsores Promotions, which allows to show ads in personal mail, became available to all users. This type of advertising can be regarded as an additional platform with ample opportunities to transmit a marketing message. Gmail also has a remarketing feature for email addresses and a search for an audience similar in interests to existing customers. Unfortunately, the function only works for users of Google mail, which in Russia is not unpopular enough.

Plans for 2016

All the innovations listed in 2015 will not disappear anywhere and in 2016 they will only develop. But it is worth mentioning separately those changes that are worth waiting for in the coming year.

The first thing that Google announced was Place Actions microdata. At the user's request, a block of a picture with text will appear in the local issue, where you can, for example, book a hotel, compare mortgage conditions or car models without going to the site’s page. Advertisers benefit from this feature, because the micromedia view will distract users from other search results and have high clickability.

The second is that Google auction only registers vCPM (visible advertising hits). At the moment, the effectiveness of ads is difficult to calculate, because most often they are placed at the bottom of the page, where the user rarely reaches. Nevertheless, this advertisement is considered a show, but in reality few people see it. After the updates, the number of real impressions will be known and it will be possible to assess the real attractiveness of the ad.

“Yandex” already in July of this year revised the visibility count in the “South” block and now only cases when the user has scrolled to the end of the page are included in the display statistics. In addition, it is worth hoping that the search engine is planning to develop towards the optimization of mobile advertising: if this year there is an opportunity to adjust the rates on smartphones and tablets, then it is quite possible that their management will be simplified next year.

It is necessary to say about the development of call tracking, which is directly related to contextual advertising and helps to increase its effectiveness. During this year, call tracking tools have advanced greatly and have evolved into analytics. This corresponds to the general trend of the market for the development of technology analysis and management. After all, the basis of marketing and its result are the numbers and data; the platforms, services and agencies will continue to work on their improvement in the coming year.

Contextual advertising has been and will remain in 2016 one of the most effective tools for Internet marketing. According to ACAR, amid a general decline in the advertising market, the context grew by 17% in the first 9 months of 2015. According to experts of the British company Group M, the channel will continue to grow by 6% next year. However, based on our experience and the demand for this channel among customers, we expect a more active growth in the share of contextual advertising.

Source: Sostav.ru .