Ozon Trafarety: Setup, Bids and What the Budget Is Spent On

Trafarety (Ozon's automated display ad format) is the platform's main advertising tool: it places a product in search, categories, product cards and recommendations automatically. Setup takes minutes, but the economics have to be managed, otherwise Trafarety will methodically spread your budget across weak SKUs. Here is how the format works, which payment models exist and what the money is actually charged for.

You pick the products and the bid, and Ozon decides where and on which queries to show them: search, category, competitors' product cards, recommendations. Control is arranged the same way as in WB automatic campaigns: not through queries directly, but through the product selection, the bid and the budget. The algorithm relies on the card content, so a product with raw SEO work gets impressions from the wrong audience.

Trafarety runs on two models, pay per click or pay per 1,000 impressions; Ozon changes the option set and the defaults from time to time, so check the current state in your dashboard. The practical logic of the choice:

• Per click — easier for a beginner to control: you pay only for visits, and the price of traffic is transparent.
• Per impression — can work out cheaper when the card has a high CTR: a clickable main image squeezes more visits out of a thousand impressions for the same money.

A strong main image lowers the price of traffic in both models; the principles are covered in the guide on card CTR.

1. 1Not every product at once. Pick your best sellers: margin, stock levels, a competitive card. Advertising a weak product is a way of paying to confirm that it is weak.
2. 2Start below the recommended bid. The dashboard recommendation is the top of the auction; start below it and raise the bid in steps until you reach the impression volume you need.
3. 3A daily limit at the start. In the first days the campaign is collecting statistics, so cap what that learning costs.
4. 4Similar products in one campaign. A mixed dump of SKUs makes the statistics unreadable and the bid impossible to manage sensibly.

• Check the report for each SKU: impressions, clicks, orders, spend.
• Calculate ad spend share (DRR) per product rather than as a campaign average: the average number hides loss-making items.
• Switch off loss-making SKUs, not the whole campaign, so the products that work keep running.
• Remember: Trafarety brings the traffic, the card does the selling. If there are clicks but no orders, fix the content and the price, not the bid.

These are two different contracts with the platform. Trafarety: you pay for traffic (clicks or impressions), so the conversion risk is yours. Search promotion: you pay a share of the order, so the risk sits with the platform, but per order it usually costs more. Mature accounts use both tools in parallel; the full picture of the formats is in the Ozon advertising hub.

"What is Trafarety on Ozon?" An automated ad format: Ozon itself places the selected products in search, categories, product cards and recommendations. The seller manages the bid, the budget and the product selection.

"What is the budget charged for in Trafarety?" By the payment model you choose, per click or per 1,000 impressions. The money comes out of the campaign budget according to the auction result; the spend breakdown is visible in the dashboard reports.

"What bid should I set in Trafarety?" Below the dashboard recommendation, raising it step by step until you reach the impression volume you need. The upper limit is the bid at which the product's DRR stays below its margin.

"Why does Trafarety burn through the budget?" Three typical reasons: advertising weak cards, launching the whole assortment without selection, and no DRR control per SKU. The fix is picking your best sellers and cleaning up weekly.

"How is Trafarety different from search promotion?" In the payment model and the risk: with Trafarety you pay for traffic with no guarantee of an order, with search promotion you pay a percentage of an order that has actually happened.