The first real campaign campaigns Yandex Direct in Adwords

The question of transferring and converting advertising campaigns from Yandex Direct into Google Adwords came to me almost immediately, as I began to engage in contextual advertising. And as practice shows, it is not I who have such a need. Why it is from Direct to Adwords, and not vice versa? Yes, everything is simple - to create a campaign in excel for Direct is much easier.

What we have at the moment from the tools for this task:

1. Table converter to Google Docs from the Adwords community.
2. Excel file with customized macros (similar in functionality to the previous one) link
3. Free converter from the agency "Tochno"
4. And our new service Synapse-transfer.ru
   

For simplicity, hereinafter, I will call the first three tools by their position in the list: “first”, “second” and “third service” service, respectively.

Recently, Adwords has introduced a new text ad format - “Expanded Text Ads”. Its main differences from the standard: two fields "Title" (up to 30 characters each) and one long field "Description" (up to 80 characters). And from January 31, 2017, AdWords will not be able to create or edit standard text ads. When creating ads you will need to use the new format - expanded text ads. This is a big problem with the current versions of the "table" converters - they do not support it. That is, from February 2017 you will not actually be able to use either the first or second converter from the list above.

But this is not their only problem. Even if they add support for the new format, there are a number of problems that have been reaching for them for quite some time:

• Even with the old ad format, converters do not work well - they do not handle the headers of more than 30 characters and suggest rewriting them with their hands. And if you have unique headers generated on the basis of keys, you will have to rewrite a lot.
• The types of matching keywords they work or bad or not as. At best, all signs will be removed from the keys and “+” will be left at the prepositions. At worst - leave everything as is. And the types of compliance in Yandex.Direct are not equal to those in Adwords, and again they will have to edit everything by hand.
• Lost campaign structure. If suddenly you have several ads in the group, again, without manual intervention is not enough.
• Ad extensions have to be transported by hand. Adding quick links and updates can take much time, even if you have 5-10 campaigns. And if you transfer campaigns on a regular basis - you probably already had enough.
• Campaign settings are not migrated. Each postponed campaign has to be customized - set a strategy, region of display, bids, and so on. Time takes a little, but it's a routine that tires.
• Negative keywords are not transferred or processed at any level. A good campaign with a high CTR without negative phrases as you know will never get. But for some reason, current converters (1-3 on the list) are either extremely bad or do not handle negative words at all. There is a "minus" at the level of the campaign, ad group and cross-minus. At least campaign negative keywords need to be moved before declining, as Adwords does not.

In order not to be unfounded, I took one of my most recent campaigns created, and tried to transfer it through all available tools. (The campaign shortened, changed the url and replaced parts of the text (preserving the original number of characters) to preserve confidentiality.). Download campaign file .

What came out of it:

• Ads. Instead of 118 ads in the campaign, I received 84 and 116 when loading in the Adwords Editor for the first and second converter, respectively. Which groups got what ads - go figure it out. The third handled the number correctly, but the problem with the length of the headers. When converting, I chose a new Adwords ad format and added a universal second heading to all the ads (which is not entirely correct, but more on that later). And for the first part of the headline in Adwords, the title of the Yandex.Direct ad was taken without changes. Consequently, part of the headers will have to be rewritten - they are longer than 30 characters.
• Keyword Match Types The first and third converter worked like. The “!” Sign was not removed, and Adwords does not know the wordform fixation operator, so the Editor gives an error. The exact key match in Yandex.Direct has turned into a phrase into Adwords - which is wrong, there have been duplicates of keywords. The second converter had 209 keys out of 348 at the output (which groups did not even want to understand), all the keys are broadly consistent, the prepositions have “+” preserved.
• Negative words. There are no negative words for the first and second converter. The third, minus the words of the campaign did not suffer, but tried to preserve the semblance of cross-minus. But he did not decline the words, and this is a display on all the variants of the cases, genders and numbers of negative words. In addition, it has a limit of two negative words per group.
• Extensions did not transfer any converter.
• Campaign settings did not transfer any converter.

Important note - I used all the tools “as is”, without any modifications and following the instructions if any. I know that if you make some changes in tabular converters, you can beat a few of their sores. But such changes have to be done individually for each specific campaign.

As we can see, the result is far from ideal. Of course, there are also successful campaigns for converting, for example, those in which all headers are no longer than 30 characters. But I see no reason to set myself such restrictions when you can simply use a more advanced tool - the Synapse-transfer converter.

What do we offer.

Service Synapse-transfer.ru. The goal of the service is to maximize the automation of the process of moving and converting campaigns. And now this is the most advanced solution of all that can be found. It works directly with Yandex.Direct and Adwords accounts through an API. That is, you will not see any tables, scripts, macros or desktop applications at any stage of the transfer.

The same campaign that was used to test converters from the list above is transferred by the Synapse-transfer service in 40 seconds and without a single error. For comparison, only the script of the “first” converter in Google Docs was executed for more than two minutes.

Now we are beta testing the service. All members receive a month of free and unlimited use.
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Beta test functionality:

1. One campaign is moved at once.
2. Correctly converted only search campaigns.
3. The campaign structure is preserved - ad groups, ads and keys are in the same places as in Yandex.Direct.
4. Ad headlines and ad text are automatically converted to Adwords (Expanded Text Ads).
5. Conversion types of keywords are converted according to the logic of maximum correspondence to their work in Yandex.Direct and Adwords.
6. Negative keywords at the campaign and ad group levels are migrated and automatically declined . The minuses from the corresponding group in Direct will be transferred to each ad group in Adwords. The service automatically declines all words for which the word form is not fixed (by the “!” Sign). From campaign negative keywords, negative keyword lists are created in Adwords and assigned to downloaded campaigns.
7. The option to save the cross-minus by moving it to the level of ad groups (available if you have 1 group-1 key structure)
8. Quick links are transferred with descriptions and clarifications. They are now being written to the ad group level. Even if you have unique quick links in the campaign for each group in the campaign, they will remain in the same form in Adwords.
9. The option of changing part of the value of the UTM labels during the transfer: yandex, yan, y to google, goog, g, respectively.
10. Partially migrated campaign settings.

Thus, even with the current functionality, you can save from 10-20 minutes, up to several hours on the transfer of only one campaign. The time depends on the complexity of the initial campaign in the Directive and on how full your hand is. And it’s generally inadvisable to do such a thing as cross-minus one in Adwords manually - doom yourself for a few hours of monotonous Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V.

A detailed description of the nuances of converting headers, keywords and other elements of the campaign by the Synapse-transfer service, you can read in the “Instructions” section in your account.

Not without flaws. But these are only beta costs:

1. Now there is no possibility to select several campaigns at once.
2. The service does not show errors when converting. But we have tried to keep their number to a minimum, and at the moment we have no campaigns on which the converter “falls” or does not work out correctly.
3. We need to speed up the loading of campaigns in Adwords. Due to the large number of negative keywords recorded in ad groups when simulating a cross-minus Direct, the download time per campaign can be 3-5 minutes. Now we are working on speeding up the process, as well as adding background campaign loading over time. This will nullify the problem of mass transfer of campaigns from several logins simultaneously.

We are also planning to increase the functionality: add transfer and conversion of YANA campaigns, fully transfer campaign settings, there are requests to add the Direct and Adwords campaigns synchronization function, and a lot of things to talk about yet.

I will answer one of the first and main questions before using the service:
“ How safe is it to use? After all, giving access to accounts via API is a rather intimate matter. ”
This question was asked to me in the Google Adwords Russia community, and there I answered it in detail. I will give a brief version of the answer here too:
We do not store the data of campaigns passing through the service. And we don’t load anything into your accounts, except for those campaigns that you choose yourself from your Yandex.Direct. Also, all items are loaded with the status "Stopped" and without your knowledge new campaigns will not be shown.
In addition, Adwords just does not give access to its API. We underwent multilevel testing and verification by Google before getting it.
And if at least one user has a nuisance in the form of leakage of advertising campaigns or loading into accounts of what should not be there, they will know about it and the reputation of the service will be lost forever. And this we in no case need.

We are open to suggestions, and if you have any ideas or suggestions for the service, please feel free to express them in the comments or on our group in VK .

Landing with a more detailed description of the functionality.
The beta test is expected to last until mid-February 2017.