How to upload ads via direct commander. Direct Commander: instructions for use. Looking for ineffective phrases

Direct Commander is a program for managing Yandex Direct. You can install it on your computer and make changes without logging into your browser.

There, for example, you can make bulk replacements in ads and upload changes to Direct faster than via Excel.

You can download Direct Commander from this link.

After installation, add your username and password to Direct Commander - you can download all your campaigns to your computer. On a Mac, the login selection menu looks like this:

In addition to the massive changes in Direct Commander, there are some other interesting features.

We remove duplicates and internal competition

Select your campaigns for one specific region (with this support, the Commander does not take into account regional differences), go to the "Phrases" tab and, having selected all the phrases, click "Correct Phrases":

This way you can automatically remove duplicates and re-minus within the phrases of your campaign, i.e. remove internal competition.

Looking for ineffective phrases

Statistics are also uploaded to Direct Commander. This can be done by selecting phrases and clicking on the "get prices and statistics" button:

Thanks to this and filters, you can select phrases whose CTR is below the threshold you need. These ads are bound to have higher bids. They need to be deleted and recreated - then the rates will fall.

This is where the filter comes in:

Using the horizontal scroll, we find the required columns and set restrictions in them. For example, a CTR of less than 5 and impressions of more than 50:

Now we set, for example, a very low bid for these ineffective phrases. And export the snapshot of the account to Excel:

In Excel, we select phrases in our special low bid, rewrite ads and delete the ID of the phrase and ads. We now have new announcements. It remains to delete the old ones - you can do this through the same Direct Commander.

Direct Commander is a program that makes it easier to work with advertising campaigns in Yandex.Direct. With its help, you can configure new and edit existing ACs in one window. An indispensable tool for PPC professionals.

Direct Commander will be useful for specialists who run dozens of large-scale campaigns in Yandex.Direct. The program will allow:

quickly find specific key phrases from different advertising campaigns and ad groups;
find ads with a given text in a matter of seconds;
manage bids for an array of key phrases in a few clicks;
make changes and add negative keywords for hundreds of ads at once;
find overlapping phrases and remove duplicates, even if they belong to different ad groups or campaigns;
change the text and links of landing pages in dozens of ads;
create new campaigns in one click, loading information for ads from files of any format.

In this article, you will learn how to download, install and start working in Direct Commander. The article will be useful for contextual advertising specialists and marketers.

How does the new Direct Commander differ from the old one?

In October 2017 Yandex announced about open beta testing of the new version of Direct Commander. It lasted for about a year. In September last year, the company announced that a revised version of the program is available for download. Both versions of Direct Commander will exist until April of this year, after which the old one will be deleted forever.

IN new version programs Yandex specialists have added a lot useful functions... Among them:

work with clarifications - the ability to customize sets of clarifications for several ads from different groups and even campaigns;
adjusting rates for socio-demographic characteristics and for mobile devices;
work with video ads;
optimization of a set of key phrases - cross-backing and gluing of duplicates;
setting field values of one object into many other objects on the tab.

In addition, file import and export is faster and more stable. The program stopped freezing while working with large data sets.

According to Yandex representatives, in the near future Direct Commander will have an English version, adjusting bids for the retargeting list, the ability to copy and paste columns, and change the case of phrases.

How to download and install Direct Commander

To use Direct Commander, download and install the program, and then log in using your Yandex.Direct username. It is not difficult.

Downloading

To download Direct Commander, go todownload page programs and click on the button with the name of your OS. You can download a version for Windows or macOS.

The download will start instantly. The file size is about 110 MB.

Install

When the file is downloaded, install the program on your computer. Find it in the list of downloaded files and double-click on it with the left mouse button.

If you are installing the Windows version, operating system will ask for permission to run the file. Give it and wait about a minute for Direct Commander to get up on your PC.

After 1–1.5 minutes, a welcome window with the text of the license agreement will appear.

Read it, click on the button "I accept the terms of the license agreement" and log in

We pass authorization through the required account

You can get to work.

Before starting work, familiarize yourself with the Direct Commander interface. On the top toolbar, you can set the settings for the program itself.

Here you can add a new login, switch between saved logins, exit the profile or the program, view the hotkeys for undo and redo operations, highlight and delete data. Here you can also change the interface settings - adjust the width of the working columns, hide or expand the main, additional panel and "Inspector", switch to full screen mode, etc. If you have any questions during work, click on the "Help" section and read the help or submit a request to the support service.

Myself interface represents three columns. The first, left, column is the main panel. Information about advertising campaigns will be displayed here - their names, statuses, statistics.

Center column is an additional panel. Here you will see data about ad groups, ads, and keywords.

Right column - "Inspector"... It consists of three blocks - a navigation block, an editing block and a block with information. In it you will edit advertising campaigns, receive detailed information on them, move from ads to groups or campaigns, etc.

Above the columns is a panel for exchanging data with the server. Through it, you can upload campaigns from your dashboard to Yandex.Direct and get statistics on them.

Now let's take a closer look at how to work with advertising campaigns in Direct Commander.

In a minute, the interface will display all the ACs that you created in the Yandex.Direct web interface.

For campaigns uploaded to Direct Commamnder, you can upload short or detailed statistics - information about clicks, CTR, expenses, etc. Click on the RC you are interested in in the list, click on the “Get” button again and select “Basic data” or “All data”.

After unloading the campaign and obtaining statistics, proceed to creating text or image ads. To do this, click on "Add" in the center column to create an ad group.

You will have a new ad group.

Name it something, set the display region, set negative keywords per group ads. To view all settings, use horizontal scrolling, and to change the data, double-click the left mouse button on the desired column of the ad group and edit the information in the pop-up window. The same can be done in the "Inspector" - the right column of the Direct Commander.

Be sure to save all changes in the "Inspector" by clicking on the "Save" button. After that, proceed to creating ads.

To add a new text ad, switch to the Ads tab in the secondary central panel and click Add. From the pop-up menu, choose Image & Text Ad.

The new announcement will be displayed in the additional panel, and fields for editing will appear in the Inspector.

Edit the new ad. Write down Heading 1 and 2, add the ad text, provide a link to the landing page, add a business card if needed, upload an image (with a link to a picture or upload from a computer), etc. Save all changes by clicking the "Save" button in the Inspector.

After saving, the new announcement will appear in the list of the additional panel, and you can edit it if you forgot to write something, or add another announcement to the group.

To quickly replace an image, click on "Images" in the column of the additional panel. And if you want to remove an ad, click on the unnecessary ad and click on "Remove" in the same place.

Add a new announcement or send the created one for moderation.

To add a new image ad, in the “Ads” tab of the additional panel, click on “Add” and select “Image ad” from the pop-up list.

Image ads have fewer fields to fill out. You can upload image and provide a landing page link.

An image will not load if its size or weight does not match the template. Check out the service's recommendations by clicking on the question icon in the pop-up menu to upload images.

When your ad is ready, submit it for moderation - find the Status section in the Inspector and select Submit for Moderation from the pop-up menu.

In order not to fill out an ad from scratch, right-click on the template and select "Copy" from the pop-up menu. Then right-click on the ad and click Paste.

In the copied ad, change the settings by going to the Inspectors tab. In multiple highlighted ads, you can change titles, description text, landing pages, and more. Don't forget to click on the Save button in the Inspector to save your changes.

Several announcements can be sent to one click moderation... To do this at the same time, select them in the list while holding down the Ctrl key, and if you need to select all ads at once, press Ctrl + A, and then change the settings in the "Status" section.

If the ads pass moderation, the "Run" item will be unlocked in the "Status" section. After clicking on it, your ads will start showing to your target audience.

Want to create context? Here's my advice - (link to old version) and master this useful program with a friendly interface. The time spent will pay off with interest!

To say that using Direct Commander is much more convenient than working in the Direct interface means to say nothing. Therefore, we will analyze the convenience of the program using real examples. And here are 7 arguments for you " PER". In search of useful material for this article, I discovered two new features that I did not know about before. Read to the end!

Argument 1 Cross minus or cross minus one

I already told you about Yandex operators, in particular about operator minus "-"... It is used to exclude impressions for queries that are not of interest to us. In addition to eliminating "junk" queries, I use the minus operator for the so-called cross-minus. Let's say our ad campaign contains the following phrases:

If the user types the request "buy a vacuum cleaner in Moscow", then our advertisement can be shown both for this phrase and for the phrases "buy a vacuum cleaner" and "vacuum cleaner". How can the system determine which phrase to select for display? In this case, in order to avoid confusion and competition between phrases, we use the function cross-minus, which is provided in the Direct Commander program... Note that in the program "Google AdWords Editor" (a program for automating work in Google adwords) there is no such function. And if there is a need for cross-minus in Adwords, then you have to resort to third-party services.

For cross-minus in Direct Commander, just click on the " Multi-editing", Select" Correcting phrases "from the drop-down list, then Correct intersections" and press OK ". The program will perform the required action. Look at an example of how easy it is.

Argument 2 Remove duplicates

It is quite logical to argue in favor of Direct Commander with such a function as "Remove duplicates". Similar to cross-minus, deleting duplicates avoids competition within the same ad campaign. This function is called by the same button " Multi-editing". Only now we select "Delete duplicates". Try it, nothing complicated!

Argument 3 Change case

Before I opened the change case function in Direct Commander, I used text editor Word. I copied the phrases in Word, used the "Register" function and then copied the phrases back to the advertising campaign in Excel. Now this can be done in just a few clicks, without leaving the place. The "Multi-edit" button comes to the rescue again. See how.

Argument 4 Image Wizard

Do you know what is YAN? Of course you know! Advertisements blocks with colorful images that attract our attention. I often use different options images for testing, usually from 3 to 5. For quick image editing, I use the Direct Commander "Image Wizard". What could be easier?

Argument 5 Virtual business card

Filling in virtual business cards using Direct Commander is a pleasure! With the help of simple manipulations, we create one business card for the entire advertising campaign or prescribe it with differences for each group.

Argument 6 Filter

The Direct Commander filter supports a special query language. To start the query entry mode, enter the "=" sign. Next, we select the value we need, as shown in Fig. Finding and / or filtering out the values you want is easy.

Argument 7 Copy the column

A convenient function for editing texts is to copy the entire column at once. It is convenient to edit the copied data in Excel and then transfer it back. For example, in this way it is convenient to edit the texts and titles of ads.

So, in this article we have highlighted seven useful functions that are supported by the brainchild of Yandex. Therefore, I urge you once again: " Download Direct Commander and work with ease and pleasure. "

Yandex Direct Commander makes it easy to work with large campaigns. We have described several situations where it is simply irreplaceable.

Features and benefits of Direct Commander:

This is not an online service, but a program that is installed on a work computer.
The program needs to be updated from time to time. Yandex itself will offer you to click a button and update the program when needed.
Commander allows you to quickly edit hundreds of ads.
Allows you to load campaigns from Excel files and make uploads of different formats.
Supports work with multiple Yandex.Direct accounts.

How Commander helps a PPC specialist.

Loading campaigns with a lot of ads.

This situation is typical for online store advertising with extensive semantics. Direct has a restriction on uploading and editing ads from a file. As a standard, each account is assigned 64,000 points per day in the interface. This is usually not enough to load a large campaign file.

The number of points for each operation can be found in Yandex Help:

adding an ad - 12 points;
editing an ad - 4 points;
adding a phrase - 2 points;
editing a phrase - 1 point.

When working with Direct Commander, the number of points can differ tenfold. Also, this functionality is implemented in some automation systems. contextual advertising such as GetDirect from CPA admitad.

Strategy for getting maximum conversion.

If there are a lot of campaigns and in the distribution of bids you use the strategy of getting the maximum conversion by goal, you need to check from time to time if you have accumulated enough statistics for this. If you check using the Yandex.Direct interface, you need to log into each campaign, it will take a lot of time:

In Commander, you simply switch between campaigns:

Disable keywords.

There are times when a specialist mistakenly uploads non-targeted queries to a campaign. If we created a separate ad group for each request, it will be difficult to disable or delete them. Especially if the requests do not contain common words... In the Commander, you can open all the keywords of your campaigns at once and, by analyzing their list, disable unnecessary ones.

Placement of negative keywords in the campaign.

This is useful in search campaigns - the program analyzes all keywords and refines them using negative keywords. Everything is done by correcting phrases, in the same window where requests are disabled:

After the correction, the table looks like this:

Removing duplicates.

This function allows you to remove implicit duplicate requests. Such as permutation of words and duplicates of word forms:

Bulk search and replacement of keywords.

This can be very useful if you need to edit a large campaign in a boilerplate. For example, you generated a campaign in Excel and misspelled the word. Let's say you sell Hyundai cars, and your keywords are “Hindai”. You need to perform a search and replace for all keywords:

The same actions should be carried out with the text of the ads, if necessary.

Bulk keyword matching change.

To change the match from wide to phrasal, you need to enclose each keyword in quotation marks. One of the options is through search and replace in the Commander. We need to tick the "Use substitutions" checkbox and, one by one, first add the quotation mark at the beginning, and then at the end of the phrase:

Everything is pretty simple and transparent. When you have made changes to the campaign, you need to send it to the server.

Errors when working with Direct Commander:

Editing a campaign without loading recent changes... Before you change anything in the campaigns, you should download the campaigns themselves and separately the data with which you will work from the server.
Violation of Yandex.Direct rules when creating a campaign from a file: ad texts and titles are longer acceptable limits, prohibited characters in ads: everything that does not belong to the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks.
Incorrect Excel file encoding (it must be UTF-8 encoded).

If there is an error encoding, the file looks like this when loaded:

Conclusions.

Using Direct Commander, it is convenient to:

upload campaigns with a large number of ads and groups;
implement strategies for getting maximum conversion;
disable keywords;
place negative keywords in the campaign;
delete duplicates;
massively search and replace keywords;
massively change keyword matches.

Commander allows you to quickly work with bulk operations: simplifies routine work and saves time. Of course, these are far from all the functions of the program, but the most popular ones.

Let's talk about Direct Commander in this video transcription.

Direct Commander is free program from Yandex, created specifically for Yandex.Direct. If you have a lot of advertising campaigns or you work with a large number of keywords, then it is better to have this program on your computer. Why? Because Commander significantly speeds up work with Direct. Available for Window and Mac Os.

First you need to install Direct Commander on your PC by downloading it on the official website www. direct. yandex. ru/ commander/ .

After you download Commander, you only need an Internet connection in two cases to make changes to your Yandex.Direct account. Firstly, when you need to download data from your account to your PC, and secondly, when you upload edited advertising campaigns back to the Yandex server. The rest of the time, working with the program does not require an Internet connection.

Download Direct Commander

Commander benefits

Working in the program allows you to make an easy search,
quick replacement and copying of keywords,
error checking, etc.
You can also copy the entire advertising campaign at once to create advertising campaigns for different regions (from November 2016 you can do it in the web interface).

Work in Direct Commander

Let's move on to practice and small life hacks.

Go to the website site www. direct. yandex. ru under your username and password. At the bottom of the page, in the TOOLS section, select the DIRECT COMMANDER link. On this page you can find out about the main advantages of this program, about those that I have not mentioned. On the right, click on the INSTALL button.

After installation on your PC, you can log into your Ya.Direct account via Direct Commander only if you have at least one advertising company , even a test draft. After that, the program interface will open, a window divided into 3 main tabs.

You can enter your Ya.Direct account via Direct Commander only if you have at least one advertising campaign

Campaigns... In the campaign tab, you can easily load campaigns by clicking the arrow button on the toolbar. Also configure the settings in the Settings tab.
Ad groups... In the second tab, you can configure the Parameters already at the level of the advertising campaign.
Ads and phrases.

If you have an agent account, there will be another tab with a list of clients.

In the toolbar, the last button PANEL SIZES, I usually choose a view in which only the last two tabs are visible in the window, because I do not need the Campaign level for editing. And I make the ANNOUNCEMENT AND PHRASES window larger to make it more convenient to work.

For example, let's copy the existing ad group and paste it using the right mouse button. Then we will remove all keywords from the last tab. I already have a prepared list of keywords. On the toolbar, select the icon with the image of a new document and add new phrases to the window that appears. (Editing keywords a bit before adding)

In my example, it turned out that there were more characters than allowed by Coammander. And so an error icon appeared next to the ad group. It can be corrected by clicking on the SPLIT GROUP button.

But before that, let's try to make a cross minus one.

To do this, find the icon with the image of a document and a pencil (editing), select in the pop-up window CORRECTION OF PHRASES, then CORRECT INTERCESTS AND DELETE DUPLES, OK. Then APPLY.

After that, I got an error in the PRICE PER CLICK column. To fix this, find the icon with the MASTER PRICE magic wand, click, set the click price, for example, 3 rubles. and no more than 3 rubles. Check the box for ALL PHRASES. Then INSTALL.

The error has now been fixed. The only thing left to fix is to capitalize all keywords. To do this, select the icon with the image of a document and a pencil (editing), then CHANGE REGISTER OF PHRASES, the action HEADED PHRASES, APPLY.

After these changes, go back to the AD GROUPS tab, click on your ad group, next to which there is an error icon and select BROKEN AD GROUP. This creates several more ad groups with the same ads and bids, which is very convenient.

Today I told you about some of the features of this program. Now you can see that this program is necessary because we figured out the key phrases pretty quickly. And if you want to work just as quickly in Yandex.Direct, be sure to download this program and indulge a little with the functions, explore all the possibilities.

Until then, see you soon! Good luck!