New features for promotion in search results and measurement of ad performance on Yandex

Publication date: 8 October 2019

A new way to promote in search results

Yandex has introduced a new advertising format. Now advertisers are able to add an interactive answer to the line about their company or product.

Yandex sees its new tool as a way to provide all market participants with equal access to advertising in search results. Interactive answers look like “Wizards”—widgets with links to Yandex services (Yandex.Afisha, KinoPoisk, etc.) that appear atop search results.

Some companies blamed Yandex for using “Wizards” to limit access to third-party resources and promote its own services instead.

Yandex is planning to finalize its new format with the help of beta testers by the end of the year and bring it to the market in the first quarter 2020.

Third-party measurement for advertising inventories

Yandex has launched a platform where ad campaign effectiveness can be safely measured by independent verifiers. The platform allows getting information about key metrics, including the number of impressions and clicks. At the same time, no personal data of users is disclosed to third parties.

Third-party services are able to generate reports but without identifying individual users. Verifiers record how many times a person saw a banner on a particular webpage but get no information about what other websites this person was on before and headed for after.