Market platform "VKontakte" and how to use it

The VK market platform is an advertising tool that replaced the old “Advertising in Communities” section. MP appeared at the end of 2021 and has already acquired a new design. The platform allows advertisers and public administrators to find each other without much effort. The first ones create their own advertising post and choose the communities in which they want to place it. The latter simply register their group in the system.

The selection of sites is carried out automatically. This is both a plus and a minus for advertisers. Plus: you no longer need to waste time searching for suitable communities and negotiating with their owners. Minus: if you want to advertise in a specific public, you cannot do this through the market platform. There is no search here. For administrators there are continuous advantages. The new tool allows them to do nothing at all. I registered my group in the system, and you can relax.

How does the marketplace platform work for advertisers?

The market platform allows you to place only two types of publications:

• a new regular post with text and attachments - in this case, in the community feed, this post is posted on behalf of the advertiser with the mark “advertising”;
• repost of an existing publication from a community or account - in this case, the publication is posted as a repost by the community itself, in whose feed the post appears.

The functionality for creating an advertising post is the same as for any other publication.

The market platform does not make it possible to find a specific community to place an advertising post. Communities for placement are selected automatically according to specified criteria (a fairly limited set):

• community theme;
• cost of accommodation;
• number of participants;
• daily coverage;
• age;
• floor;
• region.

The posting time range is also set so that the post is published during the most active hours. Before placing an application, it is important to review the communities and determine how effective advertising in the feed will be: how many people will see the post, what content the community publishes, what is the percentage of advertising posts, how often posts are made in communities and what kind of reaction they cause from users.

You can’t focus solely on the number of subscribers. As a rule, some of them are fake, some are inactive, fake or long-abandoned accounts.

You can select several communities to publish at once. This will reduce labor costs and increase recording coverage.

The community administrator can reject the publication of a post. According to the rules of the platform, no other posts are posted in the community within an hour after the publication of an advertising post. That is, with the right placement time, you can get maximum coverage. The advertising post will be at the top of the feed.

An advertising post cannot be deleted within 24 hours of publication.

How to connect to the market platform in VK

If you have your own community with a daily reach of more than 20,000, then you can earn money by posting advertising posts.

1. First, let’s go to community management and see if you have a “Monetization” section.

• If there is a section, then you can make money from the community, if not, then the daily coverage is less than 20,000;
• You can find out the daily coverage in the VK community statistics;
• An alternative for young communities is to make money on VKTarget (you can post advertising posts for money);

2. Now we change the status to “Applications are accepted”, indicate the cost (the recommended price is best), select the topic, leave a comment if necessary (the advertiser will see it) and save the changes.

• From now on, the community will accept applications for advertising;
• Just below you can set up notifications about new applications;

Limitations and disadvantages of the VKontakte market platform

The platform does not have a search for communities. That is, the advertiser cannot specify a title, keyword or other parameter for a custom search.

Limited functionality does not allow you to accurately configure the target audience, so the platform is not suitable for all advertising purposes and campaigns.

Only two supported publication formats limit the possibilities for promoting an offer.

Posts with about show less engagement than regular posts from the community.

The coverage of regional communities in the platform is still extremely low. Therefore, for regional advertising campaigns, the choice of suitable groups will be small.

How to replenish your advertising account as profitably as possible

Not everyone knows that for replenishing, you can receive a bonus to your account. Yes, yes, you heard right, get extra money into your account, real money that you can spend on advertising. And I recommend that you definitely use this opportunity.

This can be done using services for replenishing advertising networks. Personally, I use Eprofit, you can find it yourself, or any other similar services for replenishment. Since I use this service, I can recommend it. For the market platform, the bonus is equal to 15% of the deposited amount.

An agent account will be created for you, to which money with a bonus will be credited; the agent account has the same capabilities as your personal one. Well, if something happens, write to support, they are very quick and help well.

Advantages of the market platform

The VKontakte market platform automates the process of placing advertising posts, saving time on selecting communities, negotiating with administrators, agreeing on the format, cost, and time of placement.

Statistics of advertising records are visible in the account and do not require manual verification. If a community administrator deletes a post, the platform will notify the advertiser.

The platform acts as a kind of guarantor of placement, in contrast to personal agreements and settlements with community administrators. An advertising post posted through the platform will definitely appear in the community feed at the agreed time in the format specified by the advertiser at the time of publication. The community administrator cannot in any way influence the format, timing and placement of the post after the application has been accepted.

An advertising campaign in a market platform is cheaper than in targeted advertising.

Compared to the target, the market platform offers a fixed price for placement.

VKontakte market: platform performance indicators (average values).

• Advertising formats

1. Market platform. Minimum number of advertising formats. Options: publishing on behalf of the group; Repost a published post from the customer’s community.
2. Targeted advertising. Advertising in various formats for specific tasks: carousels, lead collection, posts with a button, text and graphic blocks, and more.

• Search for target audience

1. Market platform. Limited number of parameters for target audience search.
2. Targeted advertising. An extensive set of characteristics for choosing a target audience: geo-targeting, age, position, interests, retargeting and more. There is also the loading of an additional audience - a CRM database and “look-alike”, which is a search for similar users to an existing audience.

• Audience Engagement

1. Market platform. Promoting a post from the public wall without restrictions. + Statistical information on social media audience interactions with posted content.
2. Targeted advertising. Promoting a post from the public wall. Limit: 1 time. + Statistics on interactions (likes, reposts, impressions).

• Advertising cost

1. Market platform. The cost of publishing 1 commercial post is determined by the administrator of the VKontakte group. Budget option – payment for 1000 impressions in a large public page. A more expensive option is to pay for 1000 impressions in a large-scale outreach campaign (through the VK Advertising Account).
2. Targeted advertising. CRM is a kind of auction. The minimum cost is 30 rubles per 1000 impressions. The more funds allocated by the advertiser, the higher the position of his ads on the social network.

• Analytics

1. Market platform. Minimum set of criteria for analysis.
2. Targeted advertising. Extensive list of parameters for analysis.

Now you know how the market platform differs from VK targeting.

The VK market platform has simplified the process of posting commercial content to the point of impossibility. Now the customer does not need to waste time on personal agreements with the public administration. Personal correspondence between the customer and the contractor is no longer relevant (only for personal needs).

The advertiser sets the necessary search criteria on the platform, selects a suitable community and submits an application to place an advertisement. The public administration approves/rejects the application (depending on the specific situation).

For what purposes is the VKontakte market platform suitable?

The VKontakte marketing platform is suitable for increasing brand awareness and increasing the reach of posts, attracting new subscribers to a group or account, increasing audience engagement and activity.

This channel is suitable for media campaigns whose goal is to reach a maximum of interested audiences at the lowest cost. Through the market platform, you can perfectly notify about upcoming events and the launch of a new product on the market. But for complex sales funnels, where the potential client first has a problem in his head, is offered a solution, and then the supplier, the VKontakte market platform will not work.

How to withdraw money from the VK market platform

1. To withdraw earned funds, you need to go to the “Monetization” section and click on the “account transactions” link.

2. You will be transferred to the Socialcentrum service, where you will need to log in. Then you should indicate the details to which the money will be transferred, transfer money from the community to your account, and withdraw it in a convenient way.

• The minimum amount for withdrawing funds to electronic wallets and bank transfers is 500 rubles ;
• For ruble bank cards - 600 rubles ;
• To other bank cards - 1,100 rubles ;
• You can find out the current commission in the “Tariffs and Limits” section;

The general opinion about the market platform from the point of view community administrator : you can make money in VK, but for this you need to do a tremendous amount of work to promote the community. Fortunately, there is a special section on our website that will help in this difficult matter.

How many subscribers do you need in the community to get started? At least 30,000 active participants! And the more, the better. At first, the earnings will be small, 200-300 rubles a day, but then, if you take this business seriously, you can reach a level of stable earnings of 80,000 - 100,000 rubles per month. There would be desire and time.

Expert recommendations

The effectiveness of advertising directly depends on the activity of the audience in the selected community. Therefore, before applying for placement, it is worth checking the community according to the following criteria:

• what posts the community usually posts;
• what is the reaction of subscribers to regular publications - more likes, reposts or comments, what comments are left;
• user reaction to advertising posts - does the advertising cause negativity;
• what advertising posts are placed in the feed;
• “quality” of subscribers - pay attention to the photos of community subscribers in the right block, refresh the page several times and see if closed, fake accounts are displayed;
• coverage of publications - when planning an advertising campaign, it is important to know how many potential subscribers will see the post, and not the total number of subscribers in the community.

Advertising VKontakte market platform has its limits:

• Per day: no more than 5 commercial publications;
• Per hour: no more than 1 advertising entry.

Such restrictions are extremely important to consider when using third-party services to publish advertisements in the community. As soon as you place a commercial ad on a public wall, this function is deactivated for exactly 1 hour. It is not possible to bypass this rule. The market platform dictates its terms. If you really want to make money from this, they should be followed unconditionally.

Other posts scheduled for the same time will simply not be published, no matter how much you might want them to. Pay more attention to planning this type of content to avoid unpleasant consequences and dissatisfaction from other users.

Comparison with targeted advertising

Before launching advertising in a market platform, it is important to get acquainted with its features and differences from the advertising account.

The market platform has limited functionality, and the advertising account wins in terms of basic parameters, but my experience shows that this tool brings excellent results for the client when the goal of the advertising campaign is maximum audience coverage at a low cost.

For example, we launched a campaign to support the release of a new collection for a large women's clothing retailer. Two formats were launched in parallel:

• Promo post with a button for purchasing via CPC with targeting: relevant interests (beauty and fashion, women's clothing, etc.), group members (large online stores, clothing brands, etc.), widgets for large online clothing stores and retargeting from the site + look-alike;
• Sowing posts on the market platform in groups on topics: beauty and fashion, goods and services, etc.

The results pleasantly surprised us - with the same budget for placements on the market platform, we received a higher CTR at a lower cost per click and 1000 impressions (see table below). At the same time, the post that we promoted on the market platform received a large number of likes and reposts. All of them were collected under the original post in the client’s community.

Posting through a marketplace platform is suitable for you if you:

• Implement a media advertising campaign, the goal of which is to reach the maximum audience at a low cost. For example, inform about the launch of a new product, increase brand awareness.
• You are developing the VKontakte community and want to get new subscribers, increase engagement with specific publications and in the community as a whole.

I propose to consider the algorithm for working with the market platform and try it in action if at least one of these two tasks is relevant to your business.