When targeted ads make sense: demand that does not exist yet

Targeted advertising is not a channel every business needs. That sounds odd given how hard it is sold, yet the channel has a specific job: waking up demand that does not exist yet. If people already search for your product, it is cheaper to catch them at the moment of the query. If they do not search, and do not even know they need it, there is no query to catch them on, and that is where targeted ads come in.

So the first question is never “should we run social ads”. It is “has demand formed already”. Everything else follows from the answer.

For a company selling into Russia from abroad there is an extra layer: the tools for answering that question, and the platforms for acting on the answer, work differently here or not at all.

How to tell whether demand has formed

Demand has formed when people have recognised a need and turned it into the words they type into a search bar. Checking this is a down-to-earth exercise. Are there search queries for your product, and how many? Does a keyword set with real volume come together, or does it come out empty? Is that volume growing, and does it follow a season? If people search actively, demand exists, and the task is to close it, not to create it. Search advertising does that more cheaply.

The opposite picture belongs to a product that is new, narrow, or aimed at a pain people are only vaguely aware of. The person has not named the problem yet, so they will not take it to a search engine. The keyword set comes out thin with volumes near zero, and that is a diagnosis rather than bad news: demand has not been born. Search ads here have nobody to reach.

In Russia this diagnosis runs through Yandex, and that changes the practice in a few ways.

The instrument is Yandex Wordstat. Google stopped serving ads in Russia in 2022, and Yandex holds most of the search market. Keyword Planner numbers for Russian queries describe a minority audience and an auction you will not be buying in. Wordstat shows how often phrases were shown, which differs from a count of buyers. I covered its blind spots in what Wordstat shows and hides.

The words have to be Russian, and they have to be the buyer’s. A foreign company usually starts from its own product vocabulary translated literally. Russian buyers often describe the same need in different terms, with different word forms, and sometimes with a borrowed English word spelt in Cyrillic. An empty keyword set built from a translated product sheet proves very little. Build the set from how people talk about the problem, which is the logic of keyword research by intent.

Do not mistake a quiet set for an absent market. An empty set can also be a seasonal dip, or a narrow niche where demand exists but is small. So you look at a combination of signals: volume, trend, consumption scenarios, and what your sales people hear in inbound questions. A diagnosis rests on several signals, never on one report. Otherwise it is easy to write off demand that is alive by taking it for demand that is missing.

When targeted ads are justified

Targeted ads are justified exactly where the diagnosis showed unformed demand. The product is new and the market does not know about it yet. The niche is narrow, and people do not realise their problem can be solved this particular way. The pain is real but has not reached the stage where anyone phrases it in a search bar. In all these cases people are absent from search because they have not started searching, and a better keyword set would not change that.

Here targeted ads do something search cannot: show the product to a relevant segment that never looked for you and create first interest. Demand is formed first, then closed. Part of the people you woke up will later put the need into words and arrive in search already warm.

There is a second case where targeted ads fit even when demand looks formed overall: specific items the company itself wants to push into the market without organic demand behind them. Internal bestsellers, products whose interest is built deliberately. There is no ready stream of queries for them either, so the targeted campaign creates one from scratch. Even then the decision rests on the state of demand for that specific item, never on a fashion for the channel and never on the business as a whole.

What the Russian toolset looks like

A Western playbook for this job usually means Meta. In Russia that option is gone: Facebook and Instagram are blocked, and Meta’s advertising is unavailable. The work moves to other platforms, each with its own audience logic.

VK Ads is the main platform for social targeting, covering the VK ecosystem. Telegram Ads places messages inside Telegram channels, which suits topics where people already read specialist channels. The Yandex Advertising Network carries display ads across partner sites and can target audiences as well as keywords, which makes it a bridge between waking demand and catching it later in Yandex search.

For a company coming from outside this has practical consequences. Audience settings do not map one to one, so a Meta campaign has to be rebuilt around how Russian buyers make this particular decision. Online ads in Russia have to be registered and labelled, and the Russian-language requirements apply to creatives; see ad labelling and the language law. Contracts and payment usually run through a Russian entity or a local agency, a route covered in how to advertise on Yandex from outside Russia. Sort both out before the creative work starts.

The sequence that follows from the diagnosis is simple. Where demand is unformed, targeted ads in VK or Telegram carry the first contact. Where demand exists, Yandex Ads close it in search. Where a product is somewhere in between, the two run together, and you watch whether branded and problem queries start to appear in Wordstat after the targeted campaign has been live for a while.

Why specialists avoid targeted ads

The strange part is that even where targeted ads are obviously needed, specialists often do not take them on. They blame the client (“not ready”), the topic (“too complex”) or themselves (“no experience”). On closer inspection the obstacle is rarely the difficulty of the task, which can usually be learned quickly. It is two fears: fear of the unfamiliar and fear of other people’s judgement. The real worry is trying, failing, and being judged for it.

This produces a typical trap. A specialist knows one tool, search advertising, and never steps outside it, explaining that by a lack of experience. Being locked into one channel means that for the task “wake up demand” they simply have no suitable instrument. So they either stretch search to cover a place where nobody is searching, or they talk the client out of what the client actually needs. The business loses in the end: nobody created its demand, although a channel for that existed.

For a foreign company this matters when choosing a contractor. An agency that answers every brief with Yandex Direct may simply have no other answer. Ask what the demand diagnosis showed before discussing the media plan.

The same fear hides behind “the topic is too complex”. Specifications and catalogues exist for any industry, the gaps can be filled by the client’s specialists, and language models help structure the material. In industrial sectors the product range changes slowly. The complexity is more often imagined than real.

Learn it or delegate it

If a project needs targeted ads and you do not know the channel, there are two honest paths. Both beat talking the client out of it.

The first is to learn. A purchased course or an expert title does not replace your own development. Study adjacent niches so you can solve the client’s problem as a whole. Keep developing inside your specialism, because platforms change constantly. Learn from people who have already walked this path; it is faster than trial and error. Years in the field do not create competence on their own. Continuous movement forward does.

The second is to delegate. Being able to solve a problem does not mean doing everything with your own hands. Tasks that are psychologically hard to take on can go to a contractor with the right experience, whom you qualify, brief and supervise. This removes part of the fear and helps when your own resources run short. Over time regular action wears the fear down, and failures become working material rather than something personal.

What to do before launching targeted ads

A short route, so the decision rests on demand rather than habit or fear:

1. Diagnose demand. Build a Russian keyword set in Wordstat, check volume and trend, ask your sales team. An empty set alongside a real need is a signal in favour of targeted ads.
2. Do not confuse absent demand with a season or a small niche. Look at a combination of signals rather than one number, so you do not write off live demand.
3. Admit when targeted ads are needed. A new or niche product, a vaguely felt pain, items without a ready stream of queries. Search cannot help here.
4. Rebuild for Russian platforms. Plan for VK Ads, Telegram Ads and the Yandex Advertising Network, with labelling and the account setup sorted before launch.
5. Do not hide behind “a complex topic”. Industry material already exists, the gaps can be filled by the client’s specialists, and the complexity is usually invented.
6. Learn or delegate. If the project needs the channel and you do not know it, learning it or bringing in a contractor is more honest than steering the client away.

Whether you need targeted ads is decided by the state of demand. The wish to try a fashionable channel does not decide it, and neither does the fear of taking it on. Where people are not yet in search, targeted ads are the one tool able to bring them there. Dropping them out of fear leaves the business without demand that nobody else will create.

If you are unsure whether demand in your niche has formed in Russia, a free review is a good place to find out. How targeted ads create demand where there is none is described on the VK Ads and Telegram Ads page, and how search closes demand that already exists, on the Yandex Ads page.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• VK Ads, the advertising platform of the VK ecosystem: ads.vk.ru/en
• Yandex Wordstat, search demand statistics: wordstat.yandex.com
• Russian version of this article on belokrylovo.ru: Когда нужен таргет: несформированный спрос