Why the top 4 matters for sales
Getting a product into the top positions is the core task for anything you plan to grow. If a product ranks poorly - you can track its average position in search and catalog in Ozon Seller analytics - do not expect scaling.
Conversion differs sharply by position. When the average position is beyond 50, 70 or 100, the product's conversion will be noticeably worse than that of top competitors in the first five or ten. Improving positions and raising the average position in search and catalog is a direct route to sales growth through higher conversion.
Product card conversion is one of the key ranking factors. When positions rise, conversion rises too. You can trace this on your own products and stores: positions fall, conversion falls; positions rise, conversion rises.
What changed in Ozon's top placement tool
Ozon updated its bid management strategy inside the pay-per-click tool. Previously the strategy was used to get as many impressions as possible on the first 12 tiles in search - you could only promote within the first 12 positions, and there was no guarantee you reached the first three or four. You could sit on position 12, pay top-position rates and not get the benefits.
Now, for each product in a campaign, you can choose the position range you want to promote in: the first 4, 12, 20 or 30 tiles of search results. After the campaign launches, the range can be changed per product.
In effect you now choose where to compete: in the first four, the first ten, the first twenty or the first thirty. Cost differs across all of them. Reaching the first four means a higher cost per click and cost per acquired customer; the first ten is cheaper, the first twenty cheaper still, and the first thirty the cheapest. Competition is, of course, for the top positions.
But look at the tool through a wider lens: you may lose money in the moment while lifting your organic metrics, behavioral conversion signals and SEO. From that angle it becomes far more valuable.
Setting up a campaign in Ozon Seller
Go to your account, open Promotion, and choose pay per click. The tool is available only on pay per click. Click Create campaign and you see the usual interface.
The target spend here is top placement: hitting top-4, top-12, top-20 or top-30. The format is available on search only - search plus recommendations is not offered, and the interface says so right away. The weekly budget is 2,000 (in local currency) per product.
Everything else works as in other formats: pick the product, name the campaign, choose the strategy, set the daily budget and launch. Setup is simple; the only real decision is which strategy to run. Here is what to use and when.
Which strategy to choose
There are four strategies: top-4, top-12, top-20 and a lift to top-30. The basic rule: the worse the position, the worse the conversion. Top-30 will convert worse than top-20, top-20 worse than top-12, and top-12 worse than top-4.
All else being equal, top-4 is the optimal choice. It gives the maximum conversion, the maximum position and the maximum sales volume in your category. On one hand it raises ad spend; on the other it lifts organic sales, which can well outweigh the extra ad cost. So test it, watch spend closely and observe what happens.
Campaign learning
This principle is strong on marketplaces right now. When you launch a campaign, the ad system needs at least 500 impressions to understand whom to target, which audiences, keywords and categories to use. Ozon states this in its knowledge base as a baseline recommendation, but in practice the system needs closer to 1,000 impressions before you can draw any confident conclusions.
What matters: while the campaign is still learning, do not touch or change anything. Give the algorithm time to learn whom to promote you to. If you change the weekly budget bid or anything else, the algorithm gets thrown off and learning restarts.
So launch, let the campaign learn, and only then will normal numbers start coming in. With each day and each thousand impressions, the average metric will straighten out and level off.
Takeaway
Ozon's updated tool lets you target the first four positions deliberately, which brings maximum conversion and sales growth. Run the top-4 strategy and be patient while the campaign learns.
