Targeted advertising: what targeting is and how it works

What targeted advertising is, in plain terms

Yandex’s advertiser materials define targeted advertising as a way to promote products and services online in which ads are shown to a specific group of users. You describe who needs the product, and the platform finds those people among its own users.

An example. A yoga studio opens in a new neighborhood. Its owner sets up an ad for residents of that neighborhood who are interested in sports and a healthy lifestyle. The person isn’t searching for anything: they’re scrolling a social feed or reading the news, and they see the studio’s offer right next to their home.

This kind of advertising also goes by “targeted” or “targeting” ads — the two names mean the same thing.

Target, targeting, to target: what these words mean

• Target — English for “goal.”
• Targeting — the setting that tells a platform who to show an ad to: region, age, interests, and other traits.
• To target, or informally in Russian “to targetit’,” — to set up ad delivery to a specific audience.
• “Target” — a casual, shorthand name for targeted advertising.
• Targeting specialist (“targetolog” in Russian) — the person who sets up and manages this kind of advertising.

These terms get mixed up because targeting isn’t unique to targeted advertising. PPC (paid search) advertising also lets you choose a region and an audience, and the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) matches ads partly by a user’s interests and behavior too. If what you’re actually looking for is advertising that adapts to your search queries, that’s PPC (paid search) advertising instead.

How targeted advertising works

The path an ad takes is roughly the same across platforms:

1. The advertiser picks a goal. For example, community subscriptions or messages to a community, or, for a website, specific actions by visitors.
2. Describes the audience using targeting settings: region, gender and age, interests, their own customer lists.
3. The platform selects users who match the settings, based on its own data.
4. An auction decides whose ad is shown. Several advertisers usually want to reach the same person, and the platform compares their ads.
5. The person sees the ad and takes an action — or doesn’t. The advertiser checks the stats and adjusts the settings.

Where the platform gets its picture of the audience

Platforms rely on data about what a person does on their services and elsewhere online. In VK Ads, the “interested in a topic” targeting setting is based on users’ search queries and the content they’ve viewed on that topic. Targeting by keyword phrase also factors in search activity on VK’s own properties plus other actions — browsing categories and product pages, for example.

In Yandex Direct, short-term interests are worked out from the sites and apps a person has visited, the topics of their search queries, and routes in Yandex Maps. Yandex gets gender and age either from data the person entered in their account, or infers it from behavior — if someone behaves the way users of a given gender and age typically do.

In VK Ads, when you build an audience, the interface shows its reach — the number of users in the sources the audience is built from.

The auction and payment models

The auction is an automatic selection of ads at every impression. In VK Ads, ads are compared by eCPM — effective cost per thousand impressions. The bid is the basis for it, and if the campaign’s goal is clicks or conversions, the predicted click-through rate (CTR) and predicted conversion rate (CR) also factor in. The higher that score, the more often the ad is shown. The winner doesn’t pay its own bid — it pays the next participant’s bid, which is why this is called a second-price auction.

You can pay for different things. VK Ads offers these models:

• CPM — cost per thousand impressions;
• CPC — cost per click, meaning click-throughs on the ad;
• oCPM and oCPC — payment for impressions or clicks, where the system optimizes delivery toward conversions — target actions;
• CPV — cost per view, for video ads.

In Telegram Ads, the advertiser sets a CPM — the price per thousand ad views. The set of payment models differs by platform and changes over time, so it’s worth checking the current help documentation before launching a campaign.

Moderation and ad labeling

Ads are reviewed before they go live. Ad materials in VK Ads must comply with the law and the platform’s rules. In Yandex Direct, an ad isn’t shown until it has fully passed moderation. In Telegram Ads, the platform’s team reviews an ad’s content before it can run in channels.

Online advertising in Russia must be labeled. Under the law “On Advertising,” it has to carry the word “advertising” and identify the advertiser, or a website with information about them, and data about that advertising is reported to the authorized federal body. In VK Ads, ads are labeled automatically: an “Advertising” marker, information about the advertiser, and a token — a unique ad identifier — are added. For that, the legal details in the account need to be filled in correctly.

Types of targeting

How many types of targeting are there? There’s no single, official list: the set and the names depend on the platform and change along with its interface. The main groups look like this.

Targeting type	What it’s based on	Example task
Geographic (geotargeting)	Region where the ad is shown	Show an ad to residents of the city or neighborhood where a business operates
Socio-demographic	Gender and age; in Direct’s display campaigns, also income, marital status, whether they have children, occupation	Offer a product to young parents
By interests	Topics the person has shown interest in	Show a course to people who read about programming
By search queries and behavior	What a person searched for and which sites they visited: keyword phrases in VK Ads, query topics and visited sites in Direct	Find people who recently considered a similar product
By communities and channels	Subscribers of VK and Odnoklassniki communities; specific channels chosen in Telegram Ads	Show an ad to readers of topic-specific communities
By first-party data	Customer lists, site visitors, in-app events	Remind people who have already visited the site
Look-alike audiences	Users similar to a source audience by interests and behavior	Find new people similar to your current customers

Showing ads to people who have already interacted with you — visited the site or opened an ad — is called retargeting. Those audiences are also the source for look-alike audiences in VK Ads.

Targeting settings can be combined, but narrowing them has a cost. Direct’s help documentation warns directly: the more criteria you select, the smaller the audience’s reach.

Where to run targeted advertising in Russia

Below are the platforms used in Russia to run audience-targeted advertising on social networks and other services: VK Ads, Yandex Direct’s targeting options, and Telegram Ads.

VK Ads

VK Ads is VK’s advertising platform. Its ads appear in the VK feed, in both the mobile and web versions, and on other properties. For example, a community’s subscribers may see its ads on both VK and Odnoklassniki (another major Russian social network).

VK Ads can promote either a website or a VK community. For a community, the available goals are “Community subscription” and “Send a message.” For a website, there’s a pixel — code that tracks visitor actions and helps build audiences. This is usually what people mean by “VK targeting” or “VKontakte targeting.”

Yandex Direct: targeting in the Yandex Advertising Network

There’s no separate product called “Yandex Target” in Direct’s help documentation. What people usually mean by “Yandex Target” is Direct’s targeting options that run in the Yandex Advertising Network.

The Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) is a system for placing ads on Yandex’s own services and partner sites. Placements are matched by thematic or behavioral targeting: an ad either fits the page’s topic, or the person’s interests and behavior. Impressions driven by short-term interests and habits run only in the network, not in search.

For first-party data, Yandex has a separate service — Yandex Audiences. It lets you use your own customer data together with Yandex’s data to configure Direct campaigns. Audience segments are applied as display conditions in the network.

Telegram Ads

Telegram Ads is Telegram’s advertising platform for ads in public channels. The advertiser chooses the specific channels where the ad will run. The link in the ad has to lead to a channel or a bot in Telegram.

How targeted advertising differs from search advertising

	Targeted advertising	PPC (paid search) advertising
What triggers the ad	Audience characteristics: region, interests, behavior	The query a person typed into search
Stage of demand	The person may not be searching for the product yet	The person is already searching for a solution
Where it’s shown	In social feeds, channels, websites, and apps	In search results
What to prepare first	A description of the audience and creative that catches the attention of someone who isn’t searching for the product	A list of queries and a page that answers them

For more on how PPC (paid search) advertising works, see a separate article.

The line between the two channels isn’t rigid: Direct shows ads both in search and in the Yandex Advertising Network, where interest-based targeting applies. So treating it as an “either/or” choice is usually a false one. Targeted advertising helps tell people about a product before they’re thinking about it, and search advertising meets people who are already looking.

Who targeted advertising fits, and when to start with a different channel

There’s no ready-made list of “niches for targeting”: a lot depends on the product, the audience, and what a person sees after clicking. But there are signs you can use to check the channel against your own situation.

Targeted advertising is worth considering if:

• people aren’t searching for the product yet, but it’s easy to describe who needs it — a new kind of service people don’t know about yet, for example;
• the product is visual or tied to a date — a visual product, an event, a seasonal offer;
• the business is local and operates within a clear radius, so you can set the region shown;
• there’s somewhere to send people — an active community, channel, or website with a clear offer.

It’s better to start with a different channel if:

• demand already exists in search. People are already searching for your product, and it makes more sense to meet them there. A separate piece covers what’s behind a search query and how to gauge whether a person is ready to buy;
• there’s nowhere to send people. An empty community or a page that doesn’t answer a customer’s questions won’t turn a click into an inquiry;
• there’s nothing to measure with. Without configured goals and a tracking tag, it’s hard to tell what the advertising delivered beyond clicks.

What makes up the cost of targeted advertising

No one can quote an exact price for targeted advertising in advance — the auction sets it. The spend breaks down into several parts.

• Ad budget. How much to spend is your decision. The question is how many impressions, clicks, or actions you get for that money.
• Price per impression or click. The auction sets it. In VK Ads it depends on other advertisers’ bids and the predicted click-through and conversion rate of your ad. The more appealing your ad is to the audience, the better its chances in the auction.
• Audience size. The narrower the audience, the smaller the reach — and if an audience is in demand, more advertisers may be competing for it.
• The specialist’s work and the creative. Setup, copy, images and video, and analyzing the stats are a separate cost line if you’re not doing it yourself.

So it makes more sense to decide in advance what result you’re willing to pay for, and compare your campaign’s actual numbers against that — rather than going by someone else’s “average prices.”

What to prepare before launching targeted advertising

This isn’t a step-by-step guide to setting up an ad account — it’s a list of what’s worth deciding before your first ad.

1. Goal and target action. What you want the person to do: subscribe, send a message, submit an inquiry, buy. This determines what the platform will optimize for.
2. Audience description. Who your customers are, where they live, what they’re interested in, what problem they’re solving. This is the basis for your targeting settings.
3. Where you send people, and whether there’s content there. The community, channel, or website a person lands on after clicking has to answer their questions. Targeted advertising brings people in, but they decide based on what they see. If the community isn’t updated regularly, start there: look at what a social media strategy and content plan should include.
4. Creative and copy. A few versions of images and wording, so you have something to compare.
5. Measurement. For a website: the VK Ads pixel, or a Yandex Metrica tag with goals set up. A goal in Metrica is a visitor action the site owner cares about — clicking a button or visiting a page, for example.
6. Ad labeling. Make sure the legal details needed for labeling are filled in, and that the ad carries the required marker.
7. Test budget and evaluation criteria. Decide in advance which metrics you’ll judge the result by, and how much data you need before making a decision.

Frequently asked questions

How does a targeting specialist differ from an SMM specialist?

A targeting specialist sets up and manages paid advertising aimed at a chosen audience. An SMM specialist is responsible for the accounts themselves: strategy, content, posting, and working with the audience. The two jobs connect: targeted advertising brings people in, and the content meets them and helps them decide.

Can you run targeted advertising without a website?

Yes, on several platforms. VK Ads can promote a VK community with a subscription or messaging goal. In Telegram Ads, an ad leads to a channel or a bot in Telegram. But you still need somewhere to send people: the community or channel has to be ready to meet them.

Does targeted advertising need to be labeled?

Yes. Online advertising has to carry the word “advertising” and identify the advertiser. In VK Ads, labeling happens automatically if the legal details in the account are filled in correctly.

Why does targeted advertising sometimes show ads to the “wrong” people?

The platform builds audiences from its own data, and that data is incomplete. Yandex, for example, may infer gender and age from behavior if a person never entered them. VK Ads’ automatic targeting selection can also adjust settings while a campaign is running. That’s why it’s worth looking at results by individual audience and ad, not just the campaign total.

How long do you need to test targeted advertising to know whether it works?

There’s no universal timeframe: it depends on the size of the audience, the budget, and how many actions accumulate per day. What matters more is agreeing in advance on what counts as success and how much data you need before deciding — and not changing everything right after the first few days.