What is the impact of VK's 'Mercury' system on advertising campaign performance and how can advertisers adapt to it?

VK's 'Mercury' system is an automated content moderation and quality control system that significantly impacts advertising campaign performance by filtering out low-quality content, fake accounts, and bot activity. This primarily affects advertisers by improving the accuracy of audience targeting and engagement metrics, leading to more efficient ad spend. Before Mercury, advertisers might have seen high impression numbers but low conversion rates due to ads being shown to bots or fake accounts. Mercury reduces this by ensuring that ads are shown to genuine users who are more likely to engage with the content. By eliminating fraudulent activity, Mercury also leads to more accurate reporting of campaign performance. Metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates become more reliable indicators of ad effectiveness. However, the implementation of Mercury can also lead to an initial decrease in overall impressions, as the system filters out a large volume of previously counted but invalid impressions. To adapt to the Mercury system, advertisers should focus on creating high-quality, engaging ad content that resonates with their target audience. They should also ensure their targeting is precise and relevant, avoiding overly broad or generic targeting parameters. Regularly monitoring campaign performance metrics and adjusting bids and budgets based on the improved data is also crucial. Furthermore, advertisers should actively report any suspected fraudulent activity or policy violations to VK to help improve the effectiveness of the Mercury system. By focusing on quality over quantity and leveraging the improved data accuracy provided by Mercury, advertisers can optimize their VK campaigns for better results and a higher return on investment.