Yandex Ads consulting: Yandex Direct ads in search, with measured conversions.

We wrote this guide for marketing and sales teams who want to win customers from Yandex search in Türkiye, or who already run a Yandex ads account but can’t clearly see which query, which bid and which conversion drives the result. Every mechanism we describe is based on the English documentation of the Yandex Direct and Yandex Metrica help centers; the sources are listed by number at the end of the page. We verified product names, limits and settings against the source as of October 2026, and because Yandex updates its interface often, we check again on every setup. Our own field observations are marked separately under the heading “Expert note”.

Our Yandex Ads consulting and Yandex Direct management service runs in three layers: the targeting that decides which Turkish queries an ad appears for, the conversion signal the strategy learns from, and the ad and landing page that receive the click. The ten sections below explain how these layers work and what we check during setup, in that order.

What is Yandex Ads, and how is it different from Yandex Direct?

Yandex Direct is Yandex’s advertising platform; Yandex Ads is the name Yandex uses to market these ad products, so what people in Türkiye search for as “yandex reklam”, “yandex direct” and “yandex ads” is the same ad system. The unified performance campaign, the main campaign type recommended today, works as a single campaign that serves impressions in Yandex Search, Yandex Maps and the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN); ads are shown on desktop, tablet and mobile.¹ Yandex writes that ads can also appear in Alice AI chats alongside search results, so Yandex’s AI assistant is now an ad surface too.²

This page covers Yandex’s paid advertising. We cover organic visibility on Yandex, and being cited as a source in Yandex’s AI answers, separately on our Yandex AI (GEO) consulting page.

Which businesses is advertising on Yandex in Türkiye right for?

Yandex advertising suits businesses whose audience uses Yandex search or Yandex services such as Yandex Navi; the platform has the basic tools needed to work with queries in Türkiye. Keywords can be written with Turkish letters.³ Companies and individuals advertising from Türkiye can pay by card or bank transfer in several currencies, including Turkish lira.¹⁰ According to a survey Yandex commissioned from IPSOS in Türkiye, 44% of navigation app users use Yandex Navi; because this figure comes from Yandex’s own announcement, we read it not as a market share measurement but as a sign that Yandex services have real reach in Türkiye.¹²

How do you set up a Yandex Direct unified performance campaign?

A unified performance campaign is set up on three levels: at the campaign level, placements, strategy, schedule and advanced settings; at the group level, geotargeting, autotargeting, keywords, interests and audience segments; at the ad level, the ad type, texts, images, videos, sitelinks and contact details.¹ Different ad types can sit together in the same campaign:¹

• Combinatorial ad: Yandex Direct itself generates many ads from several titles, texts, images and videos; they can appear in Search, the Advertising Network, the product gallery and Maps.
• Product ad: ads are generated automatically from the site or a product feed for each product, service or catalog page.
• Image ad: pitches the offer in a single image and is shown only in ad networks.
• Neuro ad (beta): an ad generated with AI from the site’s content.

Yandex recommends adding as many variations as possible so the ad can be served across all placements. The budget can’t be split at the group level; if different placements need different budgets, separate campaigns are created.¹ In most accounts we launch search and the Advertising Network in separate campaigns, so we can read the cost per conversion of the two placements separately and shift budget between them deliberately.

How do keywords, negative keywords and autotargeting work?

In Yandex search, an ad is shown for queries that contain every word of the keyword (word-to-word matching) and for queries that semantically refine the keyword, meaning queries with typos, synonyms or more specific wording (semantic matching).³ A keyword can contain at most 7 words, a group can hold at most 200 keywords, and keyword changes take effect within 3 hours.³ Negative keywords work together at the keyword, group and campaign levels; they don’t replace each other. The ! operator is used to exclude a specific word form.⁴

Autotargeting doesn’t rely on keywords: it reads the ad’s title, text and landing page, decides for itself whether the ad matches the query, and runs with equal priority to keywords.⁵ Queries fall into five categories:⁵

These categories are combined with a brand setting: queries that mention your brand, competing brands or no brand at all can be turned on and off separately.⁵ Yandex notes that autotargeting works better with conversion strategies and on a site with Yandex Metrica goals set up.⁵

How are an ad’s position and format decided?

In Yandex search, ads are selected separately for each section and ranked by CPC, quality coefficient and the forecast click-through rate per impression; the ad with the best combination wins the placement.² The quality coefficient reflects how well the offer matches the user’s interest: Yandex Direct compares the ad and its landing page with the query the user typed and with what users do on the site.² In Yandex search and on YAN search sites, the average CPC is set by VCG auction rules, so the amount paid is usually lower than the maximum bid entered.²

Yandex also chooses the layout of the results page separately for each query. The more extensions an ad has, the more layouts it can enter; for example, appearing in the expanded format requires sitelinks with descriptions.² In the regular format, callouts are shown only for the ad in the top position, and an ad with no extensions appears as a “mini ad”.² That’s why we add sitelinks with descriptions, callouts and contact details to every ad group from the start.

How do strategies and weekly budgets work?

In Yandex Direct, a strategy is the set of settings that decides what the campaign maximizes (clicks, conversions or profit) and the budget and average cost limits it works within; Yandex recommends automatic strategies, because they adjust bids far more often than could be done by hand.⁶ Unified performance campaigns can use the maximum conversions, maximum clicks, maximum clicks with manual bids and maximize profit strategies; several campaigns can be combined into a portfolio strategy.¹

Budgets work weekly, and strategies have default overspending protection: in pay-per-click strategies, the system can’t spend more than 35% of the weekly budget in a day; in any strategy, a bid doesn’t exceed 10% of the weekly budget unless an increase adjustment is set.⁶ In most cases, it takes the strategy a few weeks to settle its forecasts; frequent relaunches and temporary manual management disrupt the forecast.⁶

How do Yandex Metrica goals become a conversion signal?

For Yandex Direct to adjust bids to what happens on the site, goals are set up in Yandex Metrica and selected as conversions in the strategy settings; a strategy can have up to 30 conversions.⁷ Each conversion is given the value it brings your business; the higher the value, the more important that goal is in the campaign, and ecommerce goals can use a dynamic value that changes with the sale.⁷ Yandex Metrica goal types include form submission, a click on a phone number, opening a messaging app, viewing specific pages, and conversions passed via JavaScript, the API or a file upload.⁸

The tag also has to be selected in the Yandex Direct campaign. If it isn’t, ad traffic is recorded under the “External campaigns” source in Yandex Metrica reports; Yandex Direct automatically adds the yclid parameter, which links the click to the session, to every ad link.⁹ If an agency manages the campaign, Yandex Metrica goals can be shared for campaign optimization only, without giving access to the tag.⁸

Why do Yandex Direct and Yandex Metrica count differently?

The two tools’ numbers don’t match exactly because they count different things: Yandex Direct statistics show valid clicks that weren’t filtered out by the anti-fraud system, while Yandex Metrica shows sessions.⁹ If a user leaves before the page loads, an ad blocker stops the tag, or the site has a cyclical redirect, the session never reaches Yandex Metrica; according to Yandex, the gap can reach 25%, especially for clicks from mobile devices.⁹ Yandex Metrica calculates Yandex Direct costs the same way Yandex Direct does by default, excluding VAT.⁹

How do moderation, payment and account ownership work?

All ads in Yandex Direct go through moderation before they run; for content such as texts, keywords and links, moderation usually takes a few hours, and the more ads a campaign has, the longer it takes.¹¹ Some products and services aren’t accepted at all, and some require extra documents; if an advertiser’s actions put Yandex, users or partners at risk, the account can be blocked.¹¹ We check before setup whether your sector falls into a restricted category.

For advertisers in Türkiye, Yandex’s “other countries” payment options apply: payment can be made by card or bank transfer in euros, pounds sterling, US dollars, Swiss francs, Turkish lira, yuan or dirhams. On the first payment, individuals are asked for a passport, residence permit or tax residency certificate; companies are asked for a document confirming their registration, and companies in Türkiye for their tax certificate (vergi levhası). Document verification can take a few business days.¹⁰ The account is opened in your name and payments go directly to Yandex; the markention team accesses the account as an authorized user.

How does our Yandex Ads service work in the first 30 days?

The work of the first 30 days isn’t growing the budget; it’s verifying measurement, seeing the real queries and strengthening the signal the strategy will learn from. We go in this order:

1. Week 1 · Measurement and account: the Yandex Metrica tag and goals are set up and yclid pass-through is tested; the account is opened in your name, or the existing account is audited.
2. Week 2 · Structure and launch: keyword groups, negative lists, autotargeting categories and ads are set up; after moderation, campaigns go live on a weekly budget.
3. Week 3 · Query review: the search query report and autotargeting categories are read; irrelevant queries move to the negative list and converting ones become keywords.
4. Week 4 · First evaluation: cost per conversion is compared with targets; whether the strategy moves to a conversion focus, and next month’s budget, are decided together.

What should you look for in a Yandex Direct agency?

In Türkiye, the partner who runs Yandex ads usually runs Google Ads too; the real question is whether they treat Yandex’s Turkish query behavior and Yandex Metrica measurement as a channel of its own. Three common models:

When you talk to a partner, it helps to get concrete answers to these questions: in whose name are the account and the Yandex Metrica tag opened, how are conversion goals verified, which autotargeting categories are on, how often is the search query report read, and how do offline sales feed back into the strategy?

1. Account ownership: the Yandex Direct and Yandex Metrica accounts are opened in your name and payment documents are filed by your company; the partner is added as an authorized user.
2. Discipline with Turkish queries: because Turkish is heavily inflected, irrelevant queries pile up fast; ask who grows the negative list and how often.
3. Measurement: ask for a setup where yclid survives on the landing page and goals are verified with a test conversion; a conversion strategy without measurement doesn’t know what it’s learning.
4. Budget kept apart from the fee: the ad budget is paid to Yandex directly and the service fee is invoiced separately; bundling the two hides the spend.
5. Guarantee language: on Yandex, position is set by bid, quality and click forecast together; a promise of “top spot on every search” doesn’t fit that system.

What drives Yandex ad costs and consulting pricing?

Advertising on Yandex costs two separate things: the ad budget paid to Yandex, and the fee of the partner who manages the account. Click costs form in the auction and vary by sector, region and competition; budgets run weekly. The service fee is set by the workload:

We work out the scope together in the first meeting, then send a written proposal. The ad budget is separate from our service fee and is paid directly to Yandex.

Yandex Ads consulting pricing: estimated ranges

Estimated range, excluding VAT; rows marked “/ month” are monthly, the others are one-off. Scope is confirmed in a written proposal after the first meeting. As of October 2026. Ad spend is not included in the service fee.

If you’d like to work out together whether Yandex is a demand channel for your business, pick a meeting day that suits you below.