What is VKontakte targeting and how to set it up: a guide for beginners. Tips for effectively setting up VKontakte targets Targeted advertising on VK

VKontakte is becoming an increasingly important information and advertising platform every day. Great amount active users of VKontakte not only communicate and learn news, but also search for products and make purchases. Every company needs to use this resource wisely to promote its business.
With a huge audience and a large number of competitors, you need to learn how to promote your product. You cannot advertise according to the principle “the more, the better.” You need to think about your customers and offer services only to those who are interested. VKontakte targeting will help you select them. Read our article.

Targeting– a tool for selecting an audience to display recordings.

This is setting up displays of advertisements with the ability to accurately select the target audience. The advantage of such advertising is that it is precisely targeted at potential buyers and selects only interested subscribers.

Setting up targeting

Targeting allows you to exclude untargeted ad impressions, and, accordingly, optimally use the budget spent on the advertising campaign.

      • increase the number of responses and impressions
      • increase your audience and show advertising to competitors’ subscribers
      • cut costs and reduce the cost of customer acquisition

Do not forget that the VKontakte administration checks the ad before publication. Therefore, be sure to familiarize yourself with the rules for advertising and comply with the established censorship.

      1. Click “Create ad”
      2. Select the appropriate type of accommodation:

On the page:

      • Application. Promotion of internal services
      • Community. Promotion of groups and events
      • Web site. A universal version of an advertisement with a link to any other external site

IN news feed. 4 types:

      • Fast. Regular post with text and visual material
      • Record with a button. Post with a “button”. The user is asked to click on this button with further action - buy, call, etc.
      • Carousel. Horizontal strip of several product photos (from 3 to 10 pieces)
      • Collection of applications. Form for filling out subscriber contact information. Suitable for sales or educational content.
      1. Select the format: “Image and text”, “Large image”, “Community promotion”. The most advantageous format is a large image; it attracts more attention. We select an interesting, clear picture. It is better to publish photographs of the product offered.
      2. We write the ad text and come up with an original post title. Upload visual material and select a theme

Tips for setting up VKontakte targeting

To advertise correctly, you need to understandto whomWe advertise, that is, we need to know and study our audience. Therefore, first of all, we make sure to draw up a portrait of the target audience, identify the “pain” of clients and their interests. We share target audience into groups and come up with a product presentation for each of them. VKontakte offers several ways to select your target audience.

Geographic targeting

2 tracking methods: by region and by location on the map. In the first case, we can specify users by specific cities and countries. In the second case, we set certain territorial “points” - locations. For each, you can specify the range of action.

Advantages

Unlike contextual advertising, geotargeting uses information about subscribers directly from their page. The data is double checked to avoid errors in the recipient. Another advantage is that the system analyzes data from the user’s page and selects his favorite and frequently visited places, and also tracks Internet connection locations and the frequency of being in a given area. Thus, even if you are not in the city or country, a person will see an advertisement about his favorite “place”.

This method of audience selection is also suitable for a narrow business that offers its services only in one city or area.

Flaws

There may be buyers outside the established territorial criteria who, for example, will be willing to order a product online and wait for it.

Demographic targeting

Selection of audience based on criteria: gender, age, marital status. There is also additional opportunity– display of advertising before a birthday.

Advantages

Correct, more personal appeal to each audience group in “its language.”

Flaws

The audience can be very different and each group needs to present the product in its own way. It is difficult to write a universal ad for everyone interested, for example, for both children and adults at the same time.

Targeting by interests

We set up advertising by segments. This will include users who are directly interested in our product or related products. VKontakte divides subscribers into certain segments depending on the activity of users on the social network itself or on other sites. If you advertise a narrow category of products, then it will be shown to a narrow category of people.

Advantages

High probability of finding new clients from other publics. The opportunity to show a product to subscribers of competitors who may also be interested in our product, but are not yet familiar with our community.

Flaws

There is not always access to the interests of users, since personal information and this item are rarely filled out entirely by users. We risk losing those who are interested in our products, but have not noted this in their profile.

Targeting community members

We set up advertising for those groups in which our target audience is likely to be. Searching VKontakte will help you find suitable and related groups. There is a special filter that will allow you to set certain criteria to search for the desired public. At the same time, you should exclude your subscribers from the resulting list, because they will already see your ad.

Advantages

This method also ensures the search for new clients from other public pages and increasing your subscribers.

Flaws

This method will help in attracting an audience, but will not always be able to “entice” users to join you, since the community they have chosen is already familiar and familiar to them. Here we focus on the uniqueness of our product.

Targeting specific apps and sites

Using the “Applications and Sites” filter, you can select the required audience of those sites and applications that request authorization through social network. The “Except” option excludes inappropriate users from displaying an advertisement.

Advantages

We work with the most “hot” audience that has installed applications or regularly visits the site.

Flaws

Targeting by education and position

This option is more likely to act as an additional option than as a mandatory one, and is more suitable for a very narrow category of advertising. If you are interested in people who have completed a specific educational institution, you can narrow your search using the name of the educational institution.

Advantages

You can prepare a literally personal appeal to the audience, touching on a specific “pain” and using special vocabulary.

Flaws

The advertisement may not be seen by that part of our target audience who simply did not indicate their profession in their profile. The target audience may also include those users who indicate all their places of work on their page, but do not currently occupy a position suitable for us. Therefore, we advise targeting by position only in rare cases.

Setting up retargeting

Retargeting allows you to set up advertising for people who are already familiar with our product or have visited the advertiser’s website. Here we work with a “warm” audience and increase their interest. We load the necessary subscribers either from a file or using the VKontakte pixel.

Set the right price

Two payment options

      1. Payment for impressions. The amount is set for every 1000 views of your post. There is a limit on the number of impressions to one person, which excludes inappropriate views. The average price for 1000 impressions is 6-10 rubles. Do not select less than 20,000 people so that the ad does not appear on the same pages
      2. Pay per click. Click-through rate is calculated here - the ratio of the number of clicks to impressions. Payment occurs for each user click on the link specified in the ad. The cost of this option is higher. But you get a guaranteed click on your link. Don’t set the price for 1 click less than a ruble, but don’t overprice either

Remember: the price is set when creating an advertisement; it cannot be changed later. Therefore, think about the type of payment immediately.

Set the right price

There is an auction system. The more the advertiser pays, the higher the impressions. Therefore, more expensive ads are shown first.

Analysis of statistics for an advertising company

The last tip - be sure to analyze the statistics on advertising campaign, determine the effectiveness of your advertising and the budget-profit ratio.

Diagrams in your personal account display:

      • audience reach
      • number of transitions
      • expenses
      • click-through rate (CTR)

This information can be obtained and studied for any period of time. Settings can always be adjusted and changed. Be sure to track and optimize your advertising and constantly work with statistics.

Conclusion

A large audience is concentrated on social networks. This creates huge opportunities for entrepreneurs. After all, a properly configured advertising campaign provides a business with customers for a long time. But there is also a downside - even minor errors in the settings lead to a waste of the budget. You need to be able to target VKontakte advertising correctly. Therefore, in this article we consider the key targeting options.

Ad types

Targeting is a tool for finely segmenting the target audience. With its help, you can choose from all the visitors who match our goals. Moreover, the resulting group is subject to additional screening of non-target consumers. This means that only truly interested people see your banner.

On VK pages

Here is the setup of targeted advertising on VKontakte of three types:

  1. Application. Suitable for promoting internal games and social network services.
  2. Community. Designed for promoting groups and upcoming events.
  3. External site. A universal option that provides for placing a link to any page on the Internet.

There are five external display formats for the listed publishing methods. They are not available for all types of targeting. Moreover, each has its own characteristics. For ease of comparison, we summarize the data in a table.

Note! It is not necessary to select the size of the pictures in exact accordance with the data in the table. It specifies the minimum resolution and aspect ratio. The rest is easy to do using standard editing tools in VKontakte.

For each option, you set a title of 33 characters. It appears in bold font.

This is only one way to place targeted advertising on VKontakte; we’ll look at how to set it up below. Let us only note that the effectiveness of such advertisements decreases. This is explained by banner blindness of users. Due to the frequent appearance of irrelevant links, people unconsciously begin to ignore them. Therefore, we developed radically new way promotion.

In the news feed

These advertising posts appear when visitors to the social network view news. They merge with the publications of their friends and communities from the subscription. Often, users do not even realize that they are switching to content paid for by the service. There are four types of display:

  1. Carousel. It is a horizontal ribbon consisting of product cards. There can be from three to ten. Moreover, for each you can show two prices: old and new. This is how you inform customers about discounts.
  2. Record with a button. Looks like a regular post. The only difference is that you add a button at the bottom with a call to action, for example, buy or call. Its functionality is configured separately.
  3. Universal module. It fully corresponds to classic VKontakte posts. Supports photos, text descriptions, geotags and much more.
  4. Collection of applications. Suitable for sales or educational content. It looks like a form in which visitors enter their contact information: from name and phone number, to country of residence and birthday.

Unlike banners on pages in VKontakte, for publications in the news feed you do not need to enter a photo and title into a rigid website template. Therefore, advertising posts have quite flexible options.

Setting up target audience

We have listed all possible ad types. Now let's look at how to set up targeting in VK using them. As a result of these actions, we will ensure that the selected display type is displayed among users of interest to us. To do this, we segment the target audience according to a number of parameters.

Note! For each segment potential clients It's better to do a separate project. This helps to quickly adjust work while analyzing promotion effectiveness.

Geography

There are two ways to track social network users:

  1. By region.
  2. By location on the map.

In the first case, we indicate the country and cities. In the second, the possibilities are much wider. After all, we choose a location with high accuracy. Down to geographic coordinates. There can be up to a hundred such points. For each of them we indicate the range of action. It determines the location of potential customers. The options include both adding and excluding regions.

Moreover, the service determines location not only by IP address. Profile data, Internet connection locations, and frequency of presence in the selected area are taken into account. This means that after setting up targeting in VK for residents of Novokuznetsk, they see ads even if they are temporarily in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Demography

  • Floor. Men are less active, but they buy faster. Women click on links more often, but are less likely to reach the result.
  • Age. Directly affects solvency.
  • Family status. The status does not always correspond to reality. Moreover, the option increases the budget by an order of magnitude. It is better to use it when absolutely necessary. For example, for a wedding agency or children's animation studio.
  • Birthday. Suitable for publications with products dedicated to this holiday.

If possible, it is necessary to lead different categories of people to separate projects. After all, a schoolgirl girl and a married forty-year-old man need different banner designs.

Interests

It is very difficult to tell in general terms how to properly set up targeted advertising on VKontakte using this tool. The problem is that the profile information is rarely filled out completely. However, it does not always correspond to reality.

Therefore, the only setting that deserves attention in this section is display in communities. Here we indicate the groups in which our target audience is presumably located. Moreover, both adding and excluding publics is available.

Education and work

This section is noteworthy only as an additional option. People often leave this part of their profile blank. And if they are filled, then the same position may be indicated in several variations. Therefore, a thorough analysis of target audience pages is required.

The advantage of this method is that you can literally prepare a personal appeal to the person in the ad.

Extra options

For some businesses, it is important not so much to use “internal” VKontakte targeting as the ability to set up retargeting for visitors to your own website. This provides for the connection of audience groups collected in the database using special scripts.

A gradation of visitors is available by browser type, operating system and device from which they access the social network. Using these settings, we further segment the solvency of potential clients. The feature is also useful for game and application developers.

Setting the price of advertisements

There are two options:

  • CPM – payment for impressions. The amount is set for every 1000 views of your post. Moreover, using a limit, the number of demonstrations to one person is limited. This allows you to exclude inappropriate views.
  • CPC – cost per click. The cost of this option is several times higher. But you get a guaranteed click on your link.

If you are just starting to figure out how to run targeted advertising on VKontakte, it is better to choose CPC first. As a rule, this method is cheaper.

When setting up a target in your VK personal account, the recommended cost of placement is indicated. It is often overpriced. In test mode, it is enough to set half of its value and watch the result.

What’s important here is the click-through rate (CTR) – the ratio of the number of clicks to impressions. A low score indicates that the audience is not interested in your offer. There are two reasons for this: the target audience was chosen incorrectly or appearance The banner does not stimulate the transition. This means that the campaign needs to be adjusted.

As soon as we achieve a CTR indicator at which views are cheaper than clicks, we can change the price to CPM.

Analysis of advertising campaign statistics

Without this tool, it is impossible to effectively set up targeted advertising in VK. There is a high probability of wasting the allocated budget. Therefore, we definitely analyze the diagrams for home page personal account. There are four options available:

  • transitions;
  • shows;
  • expenses.

All of them are displayed on the timeline. Therefore, it is possible to view information for any period. Sharp fluctuations in the schedule are a reason for a detailed study of the changes. By clicking on the project name, we see detailed reports.

When promoting a community, additional statistical data is available in its control panel on the “referral sources” tab. When advertising a website, a web analyst helps you draw the right conclusions. To do this, you need to first put down UTM tags.

It is important to remember: the purpose of studying statistics is to determine which changes give positive dynamics. It is the multiplication of the “right” actions and the elimination of the “wrong” ones that makes it possible to minimize the cost of each advertising transition.

In the article, we examined in detail how to make targeted advertising on VKontakte. We studied the basic tools and principles of their selection. Now you can independently advertise your community on social networks and minimize your budget.

VK targeting - The best way organize your social media campaign correctly. What do you need to know about your audience and what metrics will influence the increase in the number of leads? About all this in more detail, in an accessible form - in our new material from the site

In essence, VK targeting is an alternative in the social network. In terms of cost, it is much more expensive, but in some cases it really makes sense to advertise on VK Target, and not increase the parameters. We analyze the nuances of setting up and cases of VK target.

If you choose your target audience incorrectly, you will quickly spend your entire budget without achieving results. Let's look at how you need to set up VKontakte targeting so that your advertising is shown to exactly those people who make up your target audience.

Targeted advertising in VK (VKontakte) - principles of operation

Targeting (from English “direction”, “sighting”) – marketing technologies, which allow advertising to be shown exclusively to the target audience. Those people who are not included in it will not see your advertisement.

As a result, car owners in a certain city will be shown advertisements about vehicle repairs in the same city, adults will be shown offers for a vacation in Thailand, mothers will be shown medicines for sick children, etc.

Pros of targeting:

  • expenses are reduced;
  • the number of transitions and completed transactions increases;
  • the cost of attracting customers becomes lower;
  • people stop complaining about being shown ads that don’t interest them at all;
  • ads are shown to your competitors' target audience.

How to target VKontakte advertising

In order for targeting to be effective, study your audience:

  • survey people;
  • use the method of buyer personas (a profile of the ideal consumer of your goods and services, for whom it is extremely important to become your client);
  • Research your market niche.

Let's say you are the owner of a coworking space in Yekaterinburg and rent out workspaces in the city center. After studying the applications, you discovered that most often your clients are aspiring male entrepreneurs between the ages of 20 and 26 years. The next group of clients are male and female freelancers aged 25 to 35 years.

Advertising in the VK news feed

Posts are shown to people in their news feeds. Advertising is unobtrusive and therefore does not cause strong irritation. Impression frequency – 1 advertising entry per 25 non-advertising ones.

The ad is similar to a standard post and is displayed on any device.

VKontakte sets several rules:

  • One advertising entry is shown in a maximum of one ad;
  • Posts from closed groups are not allowed to be published;
  • To launch an advertising campaign, you must have administrator rights for the corresponding community.

Universal recording

Such a post resembles a simple post and has the usual attachments - videos and photos, polls. A universal entry can be created directly on the community page.

The purpose of this format is to attract subscribers, experiments and A/B testing.

Carousel

The ad contains from 3 to 10 link cards at a time. They add:

  • Brief information;
  • Name of product/service;
  • Image;
  • Button;
  • Previous and updated prices.

It is possible to immediately send a person to a directory in a group, using utm tags and determining the conversion. With Carousel, you can use your group as an alternative to an online store.

The purpose of this format is to promote services/products.

Record with button

The recording contains a call to action - “Purchase”, “Go”, “Become a participant”. The advantages of buttons are their ease of customization and attractiveness for users, which increases the effectiveness of advertising.

Click the button to go to the application, VK community, or website. Moreover, for all transitions there is a certain set of actions. For example, to dial a phone number, the options “Record”, “Reservation”, “Call”, “Register” are provided.

The objectives of this format are to attract people to the group and achieve loyalty of potential clients. Interaction with a person through the community ensures that he will soon take advantage of the services offered or begin to act in the interests of the company on the Internet.

Sidebar Ads

These ads are shown in the desktop version of the site - on the left side, below the menu. Ads lead to a community, app, or website. Using the Application format, you can promote the installation of Flash or iFrame applications.

Banners are used for advertisements on the VK page. You can apply one of three types of ads to the promoted object.

  1. Application advertising. Acceptable formats: “Application Showcase”, “Special”. format", "Text and image", "Square image", "Large image".
  2. Group advertising. Accepted formats: "Text and Image", "Large Image", "Community Promotion".
  3. Go to the website. Acceptable formats: “Text and image”, “Large image”.

Setting up targeted advertising on VKontakte

You can target any audience group.

Setting up geographic targeting

Select in which cities and regions the ad will be shown (for example, Yekaterinburg). There are many parameters in the settings: you can set in which regions the ad should not be shown, the place of residence of the potential client (if he indicated this on his page).

Attention! The system does not take into account the actual location of the person. She focuses only on those places that he indicated on his profile. If the user does not have information about his place of residence, the system will exclude him from the target audience.

Setting up demographic targeting

Let's assume that your potential clients are aspiring male entrepreneurs, as well as women and men who earn money by freelancing. Then the value in the “Gender” section does not need to be changed. If you offer clothing for newborns or car tuning services, put the gender as female or male. Be careful not to accidentally exclude potential clients of the opposite gender.

As for marital status, it is recommended to indicate it in rare cases - for example, if you are organizing events dedicated to a wedding anniversary.

Features of targeting by interests

Freelancers, entrepreneurs, and other clients in your audience may have a variety of interests. In addition, users usually write whatever they want instead or leave this field completely empty.

There are very few situations in which it is recommended to limit users by interests. For example, cosplayers, lovers of tattoos or astrology, and these interests should be clearly expressed on the person’s page.

If you sell phone cases with designs featuring popular characters from movies and games, you can specify interests in your targeting settings. At the same time, your ad will also be shown to those people who are simply fans of the game, movie/series, etc.

You can also indicate not individual interests, but their categories - cinema, music or sports. It is better to indicate the categories of interests, since the VK advertising exchange, to determine them, takes into account the user’s activity in communities and groups, his transitions from the social network to external sites. As a result, your ad will also be shown to people who do not have interests on their personal page.

Targeting community members

Showing ads to members thematic communities usually brings good results. You can show workspace rental ads to members of freelancing and entrepreneurship groups in the city you choose.

To identify a community and group, use the social network search, using filters to adjust your search criteria.

On the allsocial.ru service you can find and evaluate communities.

Make sure that members of your community are excluded from the audience, as they will see the ads without your spending.

Targeting users of websites and applications

In this case, you need to use the appropriate filter. Enter the name of the site and save the options that were suggested by the system. Assess the possible reach and reasonableness of audience targeting based on your chosen criteria. There is no need to target irrelevant and unpopular applications and sites.

You can use the "Excludes" filter to exclude users from certain apps and sites.

In most cases, the “Worldview” section does not need to be touched. If you are an organizer of religious seminars, mark the worldview that suits you.

Targeting by education and position

If your target audience is graduates of certain universities (for example, who have just graduated from an educational institution), indicate their education. When you're offering medical equipment for specific job titles, you can use an audience filter by job title.

In other cases, there is no need to target by position and education. Freelancers can call themselves differently - illustrators, translators, web designers. In addition, there is a risk that the ad will not be shown to people who do not indicate their position and place of work on the page.

Targeted advertising on VKontakte - successful examples of use


Users have to see your ad and want to click on it - that's when the ad will start bringing in deals.

How to increase the click-through rate of VKontakte ads

The click-through rate of ads depends on a number of factors - the choice of the audience, the demand and competitiveness of the offer, the attractiveness of the ad from a visual point of view, well-written text and headline.

The design of images and headlines, the choice of format are not directly related to targeting, however, it is the quality of the ads that influences the high response of the target audience. In addition to this format, such as image and text, there is also a large image, an exclusive format (2 times more expensive), promotion of communities and applications.

To increase your CTR, use the following tips.

  1. Let the ad give more space to the image rather than the text. Pictures attract people's attention better.
  2. Use captions on photos. Call templates for a variety of actions will be helpful.
  3. Please note that when advertising applications and communities, only the first 25 characters will be shown. You won't be able to change them. Make sure that your ad will not be received controversially and will not cause users to laugh after being cut.
  4. On high-resolution screens, images that are also high-resolution look better. Choose the appropriate focus of the picture.
  5. When choosing photos, take into account the interests of users and the features of the service/product. Use photo editing tools. There are also many sources of high-quality photographs online. Make sure the image complies with the rules for the design and publication of advertisements. To find out user preferences, experiment with several pictures.
  6. The image is what attracts attention, and the text and headline are what encourages a person to follow the link and become your client. Learn to create capacious and catchy headlines and texts.
  7. If the user, having clicked on the ad, did not find the necessary information or was disappointed in the product/service offered, the effectiveness of targeting and the entire advertising campaign will be low. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a landing page in advance.
  8. The payment method should match the solutions to your problems. To increase your reach, you should pay per impression, and for clicks and transactions, pay per transition.
  9. Monitor your advertising performance – click-through rate, number and cost of impressions and clicks, number of conversions.
  10. Today, users have developed an “immunity” to advertisements. To “suppress” it, alternate informational and advertising advertisements.

Why targeting is important

There are also third-party Internet projects that provide more detailed settings.

However, no amount of targeting will help you if your offer as a whole is uninteresting to users and does not make them want to use it. Therefore, the main goal is to provide a product that is in demand.

Two facts. First: VKontakte is the most popular social network on the Runet. Second: there are a lot of anti-cases on the Internet about VKontakte advertising - about how ineffective it is.

A simple conclusion suggests itself: not everyone can competently set up a targeted campaign from scratch. In this post, I tried to reveal all the nuances and features of the VKontakte advertising account, so that even a beginner could set up effective targeting.

If you want to save time on setting up targeting and quickly recoup the funds invested in advertising, order advertising from specialists:

Decide on your target audience

Take the relevant data from Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics (the “Audience” tab in the left menu). If there is no information about the target audience, you need to build a hypothesis about who your potential buyer might be.

When you have decided on your target audience, choose options for advertising placement. Will you advertise your VKontakte community, or attract users to the site to make a conversion?

Next, create a total budget for the advertising campaign. Also, be sure to set aside a test budget, since you cannot launch a campaign without a test. First you need to check your audiences, banners and all settings. Remember that testing takes at least 2-3 days.

How to calculate your budget?

To calculate, you need to know the formulas and indicators that are used in targeted advertising:

  • CPC - pay per click;
  • CTR - click-through rate, defined as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage;
  • CPM - payment for impressions (on VKontakte you pay for 1000 impressions);
  • CR is the conversion rate.

To calculate your budget, you can use two formulas, depending on what type of payment you will use:

  1. Budget = Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) / 1000 x Number of impressions.
  2. Budget = cost per click (CPC) x number of clicks.

Where can I get the CTR required for calculating? If this is your first campaign, use the average value for VKontakte (for teasers - 0.03%, for a feed - a little higher). In the future, take the arithmetic average of the campaigns conducted.

You will also need these formulas for calculations:

  1. Impressions = clicks / CTR.
  2. CTR = clicks/impressions.
  3. Clicks = impressions x CTR.
  4. Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) = budget / number of impressions x 1000.
  5. Cost per click (CPC) = budget / number of clicks.
  6. CR (conversion rate) = number of conversions / number of clicks.

Let's look at an example:

Send

Our subscribers always get more.

When you have calculated everything, you can go to advertising office VKontakte and create banners and targeting.

However, you can do it differently. First, go to your advertising account, set up approximate targeting in order to understand what the approximate cost will be for clicks or impressions, and then make all the calculations and start creating banners and fine-tuning targeting.

How to set the cost of advertising?

In fact, all audience settings affect the cost of advertising. Changing at least one leads to a change in the total amount. VKontakte always shows the reach of the target audience that matches your parameters and the recommended price in the right corner of the advertising account.

  1. Bottom line. At this price, you can reach approximately 70% of the audience.
  2. Upper limit. At this price, you can reach more than 90% of the audience.

It is impossible to reach 100% of the entire audience. Not all VKontakte users log into the network regularly, which means they will be able to see your advertisement.

What to choose: pay per click or per impression?

It all depends on the specific advertising campaign: the payment method is influenced by many factors. But if you are just starting to master targeting, I advise you to choose pay-per-clicks. This way you will only pay for specific clicks on your ad. If you choose to pay for 1000 impressions, you risk wasting your budget if your targeting is set up poorly.

Be sure to set limits on all ads. This will protect you from unnecessary write-offs and help you control your budget.

How to work with the VKontakte advertising account?

Click "Targeted Ads" and select "Create Ads."

Let's consider three main options for placing ads (VKontakte also offers advertising in the VKontakte Application, but this is a topic for a separate post):

  1. Communities.
  2. Post in the community.
  3. External site.

1. Community advertising

Click on the “Community” item and in the window that opens, select the group or page that you want to advertise. Click Continue.

There are four ad formats you can use to promote communities:

  1. Image and text.
  2. Large image.
  3. Promotion of communities.
  4. Special format.

All formats, except the special one, will be shown to the user on the left - under the control panel. Therefore, this type of advertising, also called TGB - text-graphic block, is available only for the desktop. Ads in these formats have a common auction.

Image and text

Ad format:

  • title - up to 33 characters;
  • description - up to 70 characters;
  • image - size 145x80 pixels.

This ad format is often used when one picture is not enough; you need to add a description of the advertised object. Here it is recommended to use a call to action to not only inform the user, but also to encourage them to click on the advertisement to perform the desired action: join the community, buy a product, and so on.

Large image

Ad format:

  • title - up to 33 characters;
  • image - size 145x165 pixels.

If you use this type of ad, it is important to find suitable images, because people first pay attention to the image. In this format, the image is the basis of the ad. Such banners attract more attention.

Community promotion

Ad format:

  • Image - size 145x145 pixels.
  • The title is unchanged. The name of your community is automatically added here. But if the title is more than 33 characters long, the text is cut off. Sometimes when advertising a community in this format, it is recommended to temporarily change the name to a shorter one so that the ad looks good.
  • Number of subscribers.
  • Subscribe button.

The banner also indicates how many subscribers there are in your community, but the data is rounded up. Additionally, there is a “Subscribe” button so that the user can become a member of the community in one click, eliminating the extra step of going to the community. But if you have just started to promote your community and there are not many members in it, this indication of the number of subscribers may turn off users.

Special format

A special ad format for communities is allocated as a separate auction. Such ads compete for display only with ads from other communities of the same format. Ads of a special format are shown in the VKontakte user’s news feed.

In the case of using a special community advertising format, the image must have a contrasting background, that is, the use of light background shades and white is unacceptable.

Ad format:

  • image - size 256x256 pixels;
  • the title is unchanged, the name of your community is automatically updated; By default, the title can only accommodate 33 characters, but in reality the title is trimmed to 15 characters;
  • indication of the number of subscribers.

2. Advertising a post in the community

Most recently, VKontakte added a new toolkit - now you can advertise not only specific posts from your community, but also make hidden posts. The latter will be advertised in the user's news feed, but will not be published in the community.

What to choose depends on your goals. For example, if you only have one post coming soon with important information, you can post it in the community, and then launch an advertising campaign.

If you need to advertise many products, but don’t want to clog up your community feed, then use hidden posts. In addition, you can create not one, but several banners for one target audience to conduct testing. In this case, hidden posts are also suitable.

If you are creating an ad for an existing post in the community, simply copy and paste the link to this post into the empty window and click “Continue”. This will open all the targeting settings for your ad.

If you need a hidden post, click “Create a post”, select the community for which you will create an ad, and start creating a post.

To create such ads, you need to provide a link to the site page where you want to lead users. The domain will be pulled up automatically. Click “Continue” and proceed to creating an ad.

  • large image;
  • image and text.

Once you've decided on your creative and put together a great ad, you can start setting up targeting.

Setting up targeting options

First of all, choose the topic of the ad and the subsection to which your ad belongs. There may be several subsections. These parameters are filled in for moderators. What you choose here does not affect your audience settings. Some types of advertising must also include age restrictions.

All further settings already apply to the audience that you select to display your advertisements.

1. Geography of users

The “Except” column is needed to remove some settlements from advertising. For example, you choose broad targeting for all of Russia, but exclude Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In the columns “Districts”, “Metro stations”, “Streets” you can specify specific locations where users will see the ad. For example, you advertise a store located in the Academichesky district of Moscow. You can consider residents of the area as potential buyers.

2. Audience demographics

Select the gender and age of the target audience. The relevant data is taken from user pages. But not everyone fills out complete information about themselves, so when choosing, for example, to target women aged 25-35, you are not taking into account women who did not indicate their gender or age. To more accurately target the target audience, it is recommended to use other parameters.

The Birthday option may be useful for some products and services. So, you can offer people who have a birthday soon to buy gifts with a special discount. There are cases where this setting actually worked.

A Nescafe campaign targeting female usernames and cities received more than 1 million views in a month.

The user chooses his/her marital status independently. This option can also be used successfully. For example, if a girl is proposed to, she changes her marital status to “Engaged” and immediately begins to see advertisements for wedding dresses, stylists, and photographers.

3. User interests

In this block, various interests are configured. You can choose one interest for each ad and track response, or combine options to narrow your target audience. But don’t narrow your audience too much! If you select two or more parameters, then your targeting will only include those users who match all the selected parameters at once, and not just one of them.

The “Interests” parameter is the hobbies specified by the user on their page. There are many interests, start typing the one you want in the field and it will automatically appear if it is in the list.

Advice. Remember that users do not always fill in their interests. And even if they fill them out, they either don’t change them in the future or do it very rarely. Therefore, interest targeting may not always produce the expected results.

It is better to use "Categories of Interests". They are calculated based on user interaction with VKontakte communities and external sites on various topics. Now there are not many categories of interests, and they are quite general. Soon the VKontakte team promises to expand this list by adding narrower categories.

4. User communities

Another interesting option for setting up ads is “communities”. Here you can select any communities where you think potential customers may be located. For example, if your audience is accountants, they most likely subscribe to accounting publics, as it is important for them to keep abreast of news about changes in legislation.

Pay attention to the number of subscribers, their activity within the public, and the frequency of publications of material. If the last post in the community was six months ago, it is unlikely to be interesting.

Advice. Use parsing services - there are paid and free ones that will help you segment your audience more accurately. Parsing services also allow you to collect subscribers of communities on the desired topic and identify active ones among them who are members of several communities.

The “Excludes” option allows you to remove from targeting those communities that you do not want to advertise to. They often indicate their community here, whose subscribers are already aware of news and promotions.

5. Applications and websites

Here you can indicate the sites on which the user logs in through his VKontakte account, or using various applications that the visitor uses. They can be excluded from targeting.

VKontakte also allows you to select the user’s religious affiliation.

If you tag travelers, the service will collect all users who visited the VKontakte website from at least two different countries for the last year.

6. Education and work

When choosing middle or higher education the service allows you to select certain educational establishments and training time.

You can also select user positions. Data for this setting is collected from users' personal pages.

7. Additional options

Devices, operating systems, and browsers used by users can be selected from a list. Just start entering the required parameter.

But let’s take a closer look at the audiences for retargeting.

This is very important parameter, which you should definitely use if you have your own website.

How does retargeting work?

Retargeting- a tool that allows you to display advertising materials to users who are already familiar with a product or service or have visited the site before.

Retargeting allows you to avoid missing out on “warm leads.” So, if a person came to the site from contextual advertising, looked at a product or even added it to the cart, but ultimately did not buy it, VKontakte retargeting will help “catch up” with the user on the social network. This way you increase conversions on the site.

For VKontakte, it is better to gather an audience of at least 1000 people, but it is better to start with 3000 or more users.

To set up retargeting, you need to generate a retargeting code (or pixel) and insert it into your website. Then VKontakte will be able to collect site visitors so that in the future you can catch up with them with advertising.

To create a pixel, you need to follow three simple steps:

  1. Specify the name of the pixel.
  2. Register the domain of the site where you want to insert the code.
  3. Select the theme of the site.

Now you need to copy the resulting code and paste it onto the site between the tags And. If you don't have access to the site code, just contact your system administrators (or developers).

Until you install the pixel, it will have a "not working" status. After installation, the status will change to “working”. From here, you can start creating and customizing retargeting audiences.

Retargeting audiences

Audience is a customizable VKontakte user base to which you can target your advertisements. The audience can be filled in two ways:

  • load from file;
  • get from the site using the VKontakte pixel.

To create a retargeting audience, you need to go to the “Audiences” tab and select “Create Audience”.

In the window that opens, the service offers two options for collecting an audience: using a pixel, or by uploading a file.

How to create audiences using the retargeting pixel?

Using pixel, you can create two types of audiences:

  • all site visitors;
  • users who visited individual pages.

To create an audience of all website visitors, you need to:

  1. Enter the name of the audience.
  2. Select the previously created pixel from the drop-down list.
  3. Specify the rule “All site visitors”.
  4. Select the time period for which you need data: for all time, for a month or a day. The time period can be corrected at any time in the future.
  5. Save your audience.

To create an audience of users who visited individual pages, you must:

  1. Specify the name of the audience.
  2. Select a pixel.
  3. Select the rule “Users who visited specific pages.”
  4. Specify the time interval.

    Then you can select the necessary parameters. Here you can indicate users who visited a specific page of the site, for example, a product card. To do this, you need to insert a link to a specific page into an empty window and select the appropriate rule from the drop-down list - it depends on the link whether it will change or not.

  5. Save your audience.

How to create an audience using a list?

In the window that opens, just select the “Load from file” source. Next, you need to select a file on your computer and upload it to your advertising account. VKontakte will automatically find users for you based on the data provided.

What data does the system “learn”?

  • email addresses;
  • telephones;
  • User IDs.

Please note that uploaded lists must comply

Today, not only teenagers spend time on VKontakte. With the expansion of social network settings, the number of adult paying audiences is also growing.

Each user is shown the advertisement that is most interesting to them. Setting up advertising for the audience most likely to be interested in your product and service is called targeting on VKontakte.

What is “targeted advertising” on VKontakte

Not long ago, two or three small publications began to appear on the left side of the Contact page advertising nature. They look like pictures with a title and a small description. If you study them more closely, you will notice that they often coincide with the user’s geographic location, age, gender and interests.

When displaying an ad, the choice of audience is not chaotic, but purposeful. Targeting settings determine which user is most suitable for displaying a particular publication. What it is?

"Target" translated from English means "goal". An advertising tool that allows you to large quantity users to select the audience that most satisfies the advertiser. It works on the principle of screening out uninteresting customers and those who are unlikely to be interested in the product. Using targeting allows you to significantly save your budget, because fewer users see advertising.


Targeting on VKontakte differs from other types of advertising in the following ways.

  • Launching an ad differs from and in its selectivity. Typically, for a hundred impressions of publications on a social network, there are much more responses than showing a media product to everyone, including users who are not interested.
  • There are several differences. Although their selective nature is a common feature, these types of product and website promotions function differently.

Firstly, the selection of VKontakte users follows a different pattern. Contextual ads link to the user's latest queries in the search engine. The corresponding publication is selected and sent to the desired ID. Targeted advertising is shown to users based on the information recorded on their page.

Secondly, the degree of readiness of the user to buy a product and order a service differs. That is, contextual advertising is shown to those who are already interested in the product. On VKontakte people come to communicate, so when you launch your ad, you need to understand that the user still needs to be captivated by the services offered.

Based on the above, we must conclude that targeting is not suitable for everyone.

It is advisable to advertise those products that a person buys spontaneously, without worrying about spending too much money. For this purpose, pages are created that sell goods. Another strategy is to stir up user interest in VKontakte groups. Both tools must be properly created, taking into account all the rules of sales and customer acquisition.

How to set up and launch targeted advertising on VKontakte?


On the left under the ad feed there is a section “Advertising”, in it you need to select an ad creation tool.


Basic requirements prohibit:

  • errors in the title and description text, as well as obscene language;
  • use of specific ages and names;
  • headlines for targeted advertising, consisting of only capital letters;
  • use of contact information;
  • links to other social networks;
  • promotion of alcohol, tobacco products and adult products;
  • use of competitor symbols;
  • simulating the Contact interface.


To make an announcement according to all the rules, follow the requirements:

  • selection of high quality images;
  • the text should not cover the image by more than half;
  • the subject of the ad must match the page to which the transition is made;
  • for activities requiring a license, all permits must be available;
  • compliance with the site's privacy policy.

When the picture, title and description are ready, you need to set up the ad correctly. Using a target will help create a truly working mechanism for promoting a product, website and service. With the right approach, the ad will start working in the near future.


  • Based on geography. Unlike contextual advertising, where IP is used to obtain information, VKontakte geotargeting takes information about the user from his page. To ensure that the recipient is not mistaken, the data is sent for additional verification.

The main information databases of VKontakte specialists are full list settlements and countries of the world, as well as a list of higher institutions and departments.

The advantage of using VKontakte geotargeting is that, taking information from the user’s page, the system determines his most favorite and frequently visited places. Thus, if a person goes on a business trip, he will even see an advertisement about mall in my city.

Set up geotargeting very specifically, down to the street and home. Using data from user pages, random people will not fall into the target audience.

  • Setting based on demographics: gender, age of the audience. In addition, there is an additional opportunity - displaying advertising before the user’s birthday.
  • Targeting by VK groups. Searching for people by communities and interests is a great opportunity to advertise your product.

Firstly, if this is a narrow category of products, then it will be shown to a specific category of users. For example, when selling rock band T-shirts, it is advisable to choose the appropriate audience; other people are unlikely to be interested in the products.


Special services help you quickly and efficiently find clients on the VKontakte network.

Secondly, VKontakte’s target is aimed so that advertising is not shown to everyone, excluding unnecessary communities from the search. This way, you will hide your ads from competitors' users. Or vice versa - show your higher quality and cheaper product only to them.

  • The social network allows you to search for audiences also by applications and sites where authorization took place through the social network. As with groups, the ability to exclude uninteresting users is included.


  • Retargeting is setting up a tool for displaying ads to people who are already familiar with the product and have visited the advertiser’s website or page.

When all the settings are selected correctly, all that remains is to top up your account and send your ad for review by moderators. Once the ad is launched, analysis and tracking of statistics on reach, impressions and number of conversions will become available. If the settings are chosen incorrectly, they can be changed at any time.

Cost of targeted advertising on VKontakte

Targeted has two payment options: per number of clicks and per number of impressions.

The pricing method is set during the ad creation process and cannot be changed later.


Like many, there is no auction system, that is, the more money an advertiser is willing to give for displaying his ad, the higher his chances of being shown.

If several advertisers target one user, the order in which the publication is displayed on his page will depend on the stated price. More expensive ads are shown first. With the option of paying only for transitions, not only set price, but also (ad popularity, calculated as the ratio of clicks to impressions).

When choosing targeting settings, the system analyzes the entered data and offers a recommended cost. VKontakte compares similar advertisements and the number of users reached and forms a price range. Of course, for greater efficiency, it is better to choose a higher price.


The average price for 1,000 impressions on VKontakte is 6-10 rubles. Since this also shows the number of audiences reached by the target, it is not recommended to select less than 20,000 people, since the ad will appear on the same pages.

One more nuance - when setting up impressions, select the option - no more than one hundred impressions per person. These rules will help promote your ad much faster.

Typically, the price for clicks is several times higher than for impressions. It is not recommended to set the price for 1 click to less than a ruble, but you should not inflate the cost too much either. It is advisable to use such a payment system when there is a large audience coverage (if it exceeds a million, then it is better to pay only those who are interested in the ad), to test your hypotheses, or when you need to quickly promote a product.

The correct choice of settings, payment method and analysis of user activity dynamics will help promote almost any product on a social network.


Proper use of targeting is the key stable income and popularity among clients.

Targeted advertising is a really working tool. With its help, you can select potential clients with greater accuracy than in the case of contextual advertising. It also becomes possible to attract competitors’ audiences or exclude aggressive users from the list of impressions.

The extensive capabilities of VKontakte allow you to choose the settings wisely and attract the necessary users. Do not forget about the quality of the advertised product or website, since no matter how effective the ad is, increased sales can only be achieved if the product offered is competitive.