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Keywords of competitors in contextual advertising. Analysis of competitors in Yandex Direct. All I need is to find out the texts of my competitors’ ads in contextual advertising

When I went to Google to see how I could view competitors’ ads in Yandex Direct, I was simply beside myself with anger. All I needed was to look at the specific wording of the advertisements used by market leaders for one of our projects. In the search results, I saw a bunch of services that offered me, for money, to see the full activity of competitors in contextual advertising, there were articles 3 or more years ago that were no longer relevant due to changes in the Yandex interface, there were laudatory reviews of services that literally screamed “HE is the best.” I tried different keywords, but the picture was almost always the same:

The picture is sad, and what was in it did not suit me at all...

All I need is to find out the texts of my competitors’ ads in contextual advertising

And everything is really VERY easy and fast:

STEP 1. Type keywords using the Wordstat service

You don't need much here. Choose 5-10 phrases that have the greatest competition in terms of impressions (number of impressions), but at the same time, try to be more specific about the request so as not to spread out the audience of your competitors on information platforms and other unnecessary nonsense.

STEP 2. Select “Budget Forecast” in the Yandex Direct admin panel menu

STEP 3. Set the display region (1) and enter our selected key phrases (2)

STEP 4. After selecting key phrases, click “calculate” at the very bottom of the page

STEP 5. Click on the phrase itself that appears in our table for calculating the approximate contextual advertising budget

As a result of these manipulations, a window appears with a complete breakdown of the texts and regions of your competitors. Watch ads, compare search rankings, experiment with search phrases, and create the best ad based on the data you get from your competitor analysis. And all this is completely free, easy, without unnecessary services and SMS.

So, let's start with the fact that you first need to view the Yandex search results. There will definitely be Yandex Direct advertising - that’s exactly what we need. Your task is to view the headlines, ad texts, as well as additional parameters, if they are configured (business cards, quick links, favicon). For example, for the request “buy plastic windows” in my city the following advertisements are placed in special placement:

As you can see, only one site has an icon, which makes it stand out from its competitors. Also on the same site the ad is much larger, which makes it more noticeable. The larger the ad, the more likely it is to be clicked. That's why I always tell people to customize their ads as much as possible. I have already repeatedly described how to write advertisements correctly in previous articles. Therefore, if someone has not read them yet or has forgotten something, then be sure to re-read them.

In addition to special placement, you can also check the ads that are under warranty.

The second step in checking competitors will be researching their sites that are advertised in Direct. To do this, go to websites for all advertisements and compare them with yours. Your task is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of competitors' websites. Anything you like on your competitors’ website can be borrowed and placed on your website with some changes. Regarding sites, I would like to note that if advertising is set up well, then often the quality of the site does not play a major role. Sometimes it happens that poorly designed websites sell tens or hundreds of thousands of rubles a month. For example, in the real estate rental niche, the website generally plays almost the last role, since for the user other parameters are the main ones when ordering services. Here's an example:

Agree, the owners of this company didn’t really work on design and usability.

After checking sites and ads, it’s worth analyzing what key phrases your competitors are using. What will it give? This will allow you to understand how much volume and what exact phrases they use. And if you don’t have some, then add them to your advertising campaign. Some of the most popular services are SpyWords and AdVse.Ru.

I should immediately note that these services are paid. The free version only provides limited data. Thanks to these services, you will find out what phrases your competitors are using to promote, what positions they occupy, how much traffic they receive, how much they pay for it, and much more. That is, you get a complete picture of contextual advertising, as well as SEO promotion. These services are very easy to use, so you will not have any difficulties with them.

You can also check whether your competitors have been mentioned on blogs and social media. networks. For this, Yandex has the “Blogs” service.

Enter the name of your competitor and see who wrote about them and how often. The search results will give you links to websites so you can read what your competitors are saying. But remember that very often incorrect information is written on the Internet and believing absolutely everything is, at the very least, wrong.

Using simple resources like these, you can quickly check your competitors and understand how to build your business to become better than them. If you need help in conducting such a comprehensive audit of your competitors, then you can contact us and we will check your competitors, compile a list of recommendations for you and develop a marketing model for the development of your business.

And in conclusion, I want to say that there is no need to be afraid of competitors. You just have to be better than them. Competition is always an incentive for the growth and development of you and your business.

See you in the next articles. Ask your questions in the comments. We will be happy to answer them and try to help you.

Before launching advertising campaigns in Yandex.Direct, you need to analyze your competitors. Niche research will help you understand what the approximate advertising costs will be, how you need to improve your ads and website to achieve maximum conversion. If you ignore this stage of work, then, most likely, more than half of the advertising budget will go to waste, and you can only dream of a quick return on investment in advertising.

A competent and comprehensive analysis of competitors will allow you to determine:

  • keywords for which it is better to advertise;
  • typical mistakes when creating ads;
  • approximate advertising costs;
  • approximate number of impressions;
  • directions for improving the site.

You can spend one day or a whole week analyzing competitors. The quality and completeness of the study will depend on the time spent. Let's take a closer look at the areas in which we will have to work.

First you need to get to know your competitors by sight. The easiest way is to use the section tools. Log in to the service, click on the required tab and set the advertising campaign settings. Please select the display region applicable to your business. For example, if you provide services or sell goods only in Moscow and the region, indicate only these regions in the settings.

In the “Select Key Phrases” section, indicate words and phrases that are suitable for advertising your business. Use the built-in word search feature if keywords have not yet been identified.

Select the appropriate key phrases, add them to the list and click on the “Calculate” button.

The service will generate a table with a forecast of impressions and clicks, approximate costs for each keyword.

To see a list of competitors and their ads, check the box next to the keyword you are interested in and click on it. Study the information in the results window that opens.

According to our request - “infrared heater price” - at least 50 sites are advertised in Direct. Most of them show ads to users from Moscow and the region. The list also includes companies that sell equipment not only in the capital and region, but also in other regions of the country - for example, in Krasnodar, Vladivostok, Voronezh.

Most likely, these companies have not only retail outlets selling heaters, but also an online store. To check this information, click on the request link - a competitor’s website will open in a new tab, which you can study in more detail.

To avoid wasting a lot of time analyzing competitors and studying their landing sites, put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer and select the most successful creatives from the list. Most likely, the list will include no more than 5-10 sites that you will have to compete with.

How to find out your competitors' keywords

Simply finding competitors before launching contextual advertising is not enough. It is important to understand what keywords they are advertising for. Thanks to this analysis, you will find out the approximate costs of advertising and determine the most profitable phrases - those that will give more clicks.

You can superficially analyze keywords using the same Yandex.Direct “Budget Forecast” tool. The service will show how much you will have to spend on advertising for key phrases of interest, predict the approximate number of impressions and clicks, the average bid and other useful information.

Remember that when calculating the budget, the service focuses on those sites that have already launched contextual advertising. The numbers in the Budget Forecast report and on the advertising campaign page will be slightly different. The Budget Forecast report shows average data for ads in the selected region, and the campaign shows indicators for specific ad groups at the moment for the most expensive regions.

Services for analyzing competitors in Yandex.Direct

To get more accurate information, you will have to use third-party services to analyze keywords.

Serpstat

Using the Serpstat service, you can find all competitors who are advertised for the key query you are interested in. To do this you need to go to the website and enter the query in the search bar.

Next to it, indicate the search engine and the region where your ads will be displayed, and click on the “Search” button. The service will generate a detailed report - it will show the frequency of the phrase in Direct for the last month, the average cost of a click, variations of the key phrase for which sites from the top 50 of Yandex place ads in Direct.

The service will not only provide statistics on key phrases, but will also show competitors in search results, as well as in context.

In addition, Serpstat will show examples of ads that competitors use in their advertising campaigns.

To use Serpstat tools for competitor and keyword analysis, you don't need to buy a paid subscription.

Spywords

The SpyWords service will also help you analyze your competitors’ key phrases and get acquainted with examples of their ads. To do this you need to go to the website , enter a key phrase in the search bar and click on the “Track” button. When you enter a query, the service provides hints with similar phrases.

SpyWords will show the number of advertisers who use a given key phrase, the average cost per click, the number of impressions in Yandex and Google. In addition, the service will demonstrate examples of ads indicating the text, link to the landing page and the number of requests.

With SpyWords you can identify similar queries. The service will show them in a separate list.

Most SpyWords features are available in free mode. To use the extended package of tools, you will have to purchase a paid subscription. Cost - from 1950 to 4950 rubles per month.

Advse

The Advse service will help you find competitors and determine the key phrases they use to advertise. To do this you need to go to the website and enter the phrases of interest into the window.

The service will generate a list of ten competing sites, sorting them by impression share.

To find out the keywords for which competitors are advertising, you will have to register on the site and buy a paid subscription - 1500 rubles per year, - specify the domain of your website in your personal account and run the analysis. In 10–20 minutes, the service will generate a list of competitors, after which you can see what queries they are advertising for.

As already shown in the screenshots above, almost all services allow you to view competitors’ ads. Moreover, to analyze promotional materials it is not necessary to buy a paid subscription. If these tools are not enough, you can view competitors' advertisements in Yandex manually.

Enter the query you are interested in in the Yandex search bar and check out the advertising results.

Based on the results, you can determine which keywords should be used in your ads, which extensions - phone numbers and store opening hours, quick links, etc. - will help you overtake your competitors.

Be sure to use the advanced search capabilities. Set the correct region for display, determine the time interval, and indicate the accuracy of words in the query.

Yandex will show all paid advertisements in the specified region.

By studying your competitors' promotional materials, you can understand what principles to use to build your creatives and what points you need to include in your ads in order to be placed as high as possible in the search results.

Ideally, before launching an advertising campaign, you need to analyze not only competitors’ websites, ads and key queries for which they are shown in searches, but also find out the approximate advertising costs. It is quite possible to do this. The main thing is to create a list of key phrases, arm yourself with a calculator and use the tools of online services.

You will have to analyze each key phrase for which ads will be displayed, and then summarize the indicators of phrases from the list. The calculation is carried out according to the formula:

Budget = cost per click * number of requests * position CTR

Let’s use the Serpstat service described above and collect the main key queries of competitors in Direct.

Let’s say that the site is planned to be promoted for the request “buy an infrared heater.” We have two values ​​from the formula - the number of requests and the cost per click. All that remains is to find out the CTR of the position.

The service blog provides approximate CTR values ​​for positions.

You can use this data as a starting point when calculating your competitors’ budgets. All that remains is to multiply the numbers in the report. For the key phrase “buy an infrared heater” you will have to spend at least 5,057 rubles to be in the first position: 90.6 (cost per click) * 1595 (number of queries) * 0.035 (CTR position). The numbers will be approximate, since Serpstat calculates the cost of a click in dollars, and the data in the system is updated only once a month.

You can also find out the approximate budget of your competitors using the Direct tool “Budget Forecast”. Enter the keywords of interest into the window and click on the “Calculate” button. Don't forget to set the display region, otherwise the data will be inaccurate.

When analyzing the data in the report, pay attention to the “Traffic Volume” and “Budget Forecast” columns.

Remember VCG auction rules in Direct. To be in the first position among advertisements for the request “buy an infrared heater,” you will have to pledge at least 95,557 rubles to outbid the bid of your nearest competitor. To place on the second and third lines you need to allocate about 77,000 and 62,000 rubles, respectively. There will be less traffic, but you can compensate for positions with attractive ad text. To do this, you will have to again turn to the search results for the query of interest in the specified region, analyze the creative texts and landing pages, find possible mistakes from competitors and prevent them when creating your own promotional materials.

Try analyzing your competitors in Direct today and make changes to existing advertising campaigns. Evaluate the results of the performance of impressions with the previous period and make sure that the main thing in context is good preparation.

Pavel Lomakin

And fulfill the obligations stated in the proposal.

N Before you start, I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the materials on the USP, which is located, very extensive material on, in which I described 7 working schemes for creating them for contextual advertising and are simply extremely important. Also remember that despite all the marketing tricks and speculative approach, everything you do should be based solely on how you can help the client with his problem and the product you offer. It is clear that without producing a product you can have little influence on its characteristics, but this means you need to focus on something else, on additional services or services, for example. So I digress a little, let's get down to business.

What we need:

  1. Sh Excel file template. (You can download it at the end of the article or create it yourself based on your needs.)
  2. ABOUT advertisements of your competitors

ABOUT I’m writing using the example of an online store. So we create an Excel file and divide it into columns according to the characteristics that we consider important in our product. For example:

  • Delivery and its conditions
  • Stock
  • Discounts
  • Bonuses
  • Guarantee
  • Exclusivity
  • Wow effect
  • Etc. what you think is important

IN As you can see, we break down the competitors by row in the very first column.

Important: We look for competitors where we are going to advertise, that is, in our case it is either Direct or Adwords. We simply enter the queries for which we are going to advertise and list 3 special placements and guarantees from the top.

I For clarity, I have highlighted what we are looking for from competitors, so that it is clearer for you. We write all this down in our matrix, as shown above on the excel slide.

T Now you can easily analyze and not jump around the search results here and there to see what your competitors are offering. That is, such a simple marketing analysis on the fly. Why am I only talking about the top 3 or 5 competitors? In principle, you can make a deeper selection in order to cover as many competitors as possible, even those advertised on the second and further pages. To automate the process, give the task on the website of freelance exchanges like Workzila and the like. Many people will do this for you for a small fee. If you don't want to do it yourself, it won't take you much time.

AND This is how all competitors were written out. Next, highlight in each competitor its strongest side in the offer; if there is none, then make more favorable conditions than theirs. Write down your idea in the file below and create your own unique sales ad. Don't forget about the restrictions on the number of characters in ads. Don't limit yourself to one option, do several at once to choose the best one later.

M It may be that in the process what was initially considered the best offer to you will be the most uninteresting. Compare yours with your competitors. See how well it meets the user's request and whether it will attract too many freeloaders. Take a look at what it looks like in the Direct interface.

E If there is such a possibility, indicate the most delicious thing in the title. If this is a price, then write the price in the title, etc. If your offer does not fit into the standard title and body of the ad, then expand it using as in the screenshot above or here is another example, by the way, another great opportunity has appeared. In addition to the fact that you cram as much information as possible into the ad, you also visually increase its area, pushing aside competitors. If it is possible to push products into Yandex Market, do it, but keep an eye on the rating, it is also displayed in the ad. See picture.

IN Now you are ready to fully meet the hot flow of your clients. Warn your sales department that they will now work without lunches and weekends. Joke!

N and that’s all, below you can download three excel templates that you can edit to suit your needs. One simple, one advanced, and one with a visual value outline. which I recently discovered on the vast expanses of the Russian Internet. I think you’ll figure out what’s what, where and how.

E If you have any questions, write them in the comments or to me at the contacts listed below. Wishing you high conversions and endless sales. Bye!