An overview of the new VKontakte advertising cabinet, including its specific features and peculiarities for VK ads.

In April 2022, the Russian holding VK (which includes VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and partner networks) announced the launch of their new VK advertising cabinet. Over time, the beta version of the service was upgraded and new features were added, making VK ads a valuable and convenient platform for many marketing tasks.

However, VK developers have not yet abandoned their older services, VK PRO and myTarget, which broadcast ads on VKontakte and cover all of the company’s networks, respectively. It is unclear when these cabinets will cease to operate, but due to the improved functionality of VK ads, advertisers have been gradually transitioning to it.

To clearly illustrate the differences between VK ads, VK PRO, and myTarget, QB Agency experts have provided a brief overview of the new VK service.

The main advantage of the new advertising cabinet is the automation of promotion within the VK network, as well as faster operation throughout all stages of an advertising campaign. VK ads offers greater coverage than VK PRO, allowing advertisers to launch promotions on all VK holding platforms. Visually, VK ads features the corporate blue-and-white brand colors and enables advertisers to manage promotions within the platform, test hypotheses, and optimize budgets between ad groups and separate creatives.

The new service offers two types of advertising cabinets: one for agencies and one for independent advertisers who want to launch campaigns. In the latter, users can transfer their details, audience settings, mobile applications, advertising accounts, and active campaigns from myTarget using the “Share segment” function.

Users can choose from a list of promotion objects, including websites, communities, catalogs, and lead forms. The application option, which was available in myTarget, is no longer offered. The developers plan to increase the number of options in the future to make the cabinet more versatile.

The developers also focused on improving campaign effectiveness and targeting. As a result, VK ads now includes several useful additions to enhance the user experience.

Three-level structure

The cabinet is divided into three tabs – Campaigns, Groups, and Ads – for users’ convenience, enabling them to manage promotions at all levels. For instance, users can manage budgets for ad groups or separate creatives.

Additionally, VK ads allows users to duplicate any elements from campaign content and save drafts for future work. However, it is not possible to copy ads from one campaign to another, which may be less convenient. Nevertheless, the creative process has become much faster than in the old VK PRO cabinet, where creating an ad could take several hours.