Ozon promotion tools: what sellers say actually moves sales

All of this comes from eight Russian-language YouTube videos of sellers talking, not Ozon's documentation; only the 23 May webinar is Ozon's own. Rates and minimum bids change often, so read every number as "at the time of filming" (2025-2026). The sellers contradict each other in places, and both sides are given.

Four levers: trafarety, top placement, search promotion, promos

Trafarety. Roma Rayd says the minimum bid is now 50 ₽ per 1,000 impressions, up from 30 ₽. Ozon's marketing line claims trafarety show the card 3.2% more often on average; Rayd undercuts it at once — raising a bid to 2, 4, 6 or 10 ₽ sometimes changes nothing. On a student's new product, in one week: 582 impressions to 4 clicks, 911 impressions to 10 clicks.

Vyvod v top. The "Products in search" report shows the first 12 slots go to ads, and this tool never appears below position 12 — Mikhail's main lever. The cost is the ramp-up: matching a competitor's 45 ₽ per click will not put you beside him — the opening bid may need to be twice as high, and the algorithm takes 2-3 weeks to settle, with ad cost share (DRR) inflated throughout.

Search promotion (soon renamed "pay per order") charges a percentage per order. Promos are what Mikhail calls "the fourth kind of advertising": not advertising on paper, but they lift ranking hard enough that he uses them instead of ads.

The sharpest disagreement: search promotion

Vladimir Blokhin (Nex agency) calls it a hidden commission. The minimum bid is 10.5% of revenue and he sees nothing in return: about half the bid becomes a coefficient on the card's aggregate score. His case: 4 orders, 432 ₽ in fees, roughly 37 impressions total — no extra reach, just commission on brand searches that would have converted anyway. On trafarety the same product costs 6.6 ₽ per click at 25% click-to-order, about 25 ₽ per order; through search promotion the same order costs around 400 ₽. A client who switched to trafarety over October-November got 10% more impressions and 16% more unique visitors at the same budget.

Mikhail says the opposite: it is the only tool with a guaranteed ceiling. The rate varies by category, averages about 20%, and can be written into unit economics up front. A product showing 35% DRR in top placement and 45% in trafarety moves here and lands under 20%. He parks weak articles, dead stock and unpopular colours in it — "modest volume, but not zero". Roma Rayd takes a third position: 40% of his turnover comes from search promotion — but it needs orders before it engages, and he makes those first orders with trafarety.

Two details also clash. The GU87XI-8-4Y seller says the bid can no longer be set manually, while Blokhin still discusses setting it — most likely different periods. He also warns that in apparel you pay per order but half may be returned, so DRR against real sales runs above the headline rate.

What burns budget

• Stacking tools on one SKU. Mikhail: one tool per article; switch on two and sub-10% DRR stops being possible. Blokhin: with two trafaret campaigns the cheaper bid never shows (5 ₽ is dead next to 30 ₽). But the GU87XI-8-4Y seller routinely runs trafarety with top placement or search promotion. They openly disagree.
• The reach metric. Rayd's store sits at 3% reach — below Ozon's own "below average" mark of 5% (5-12 optimal, 12+ normal) — and sells fine. He reads it as a number meant to make you spend more.
• Video covers. Rayd put one on a product sitting second in its category and sales stopped for a month; removing it brought them back, and he repeated the test on several products. The GU87XI-8-4Y seller says video raises add-to-cart conversion.
• Display advertising. The GU87XI-8-4Y seller has not run it once since 2021: "it doesn't produce sales, it's a brand-awareness tool".
• Reacting to a short DRR spike. Vyacheslav (MiClick): cart-to-order conversion swings between 20%, 60% and 40% day to day, averaging out over the month. If cost per cart is stable, leave bids alone.
• Raising the budget mid-day. Rayd calls trafarety a slow tortoise: raise the budget and the system reacts two or three days later, and most days you will not spend half of a 1,000 ₽ cap. Keep "spread evenly" on or the budget is gone by 10 a.m.; his trafaret orders mostly arrive between 19:00 and 24:00. He never enables automatic product addition.

The non-ad tools that move sales

Reviews for points. The arithmetic from Ozon's own webinar: 100 points = 100 ₽, plus a 10% service fee = 110 ₽, plus 20% VAT = 132 ₽ per review, charged only if the review is actually left; 10 or more reviews lift a card in the ranking. The V1FK9cszzB0 seller notes a second effect: a badge offering X points for a review lifts click-through and purchase rate independently of the review count, and disappears once the point budget is spent. Ozon's suggested levels in his example were 200 / 350 / 350 ₽; his own advice is at least 10-20 reviews (Ozon recommends 10). Against that, the seller in o5jZ3MFavP4 calls the tool "quite expensive right now": 100 points is 100 ₽ straight out of unit economics.

Discount requests. One of the GU87XI-8-4Y seller's favourites: a buyer taps "I'd like it cheaper" and a 5% request arrives; requests also fire from items left in a cart. He recommends auto-approval at the ceiling price Ozon suggests — few approved requests convert, so the giveaway is small and the conversion gain is not.

Seller bonuses and mailings. The one hard return figure anyone gives: 6,500 ₽ over 30 days against 68,000 ₽ in sales — roughly 10% DRR, and "not even the best variant". Settings: automatic mailing, "cart activation" only, bonus validity 14 days, 100 bonuses for a 1,000 ₽ average check, floor limit 3,000 ₽. He treats 7% conversion on cart activation as good; favourites convert at 3-4% but still work.

Promos. Mikhail switches ads off and enters a promo as a deliberate strategy: price drops, the promo pushes ranking, DRR goes to 0%. Two of his best-selling articles carry no advertising at all. It works well in apparel, is harder in general goods, and he never combines promos with ads — the margin will not take both. The GU87XI-8-4Y seller describes the Boosting X2/X3/X4 promos: whichever carries your lowest price is the one in effect, but the difference between X4 and X2 cannot be measured — "just be in one of them".

How they decide a budget

Vyacheslav's rule is rubles first, percentage second. In audits sellers say they want 15% DRR, then say they will pay 200 ₽ per order — for their numbers, 10-12%.

The metric he watches is not the click but the cost per add-to-cart. In his sample report: 19,000 impressions → 1,100 clicks (CTR ~5%), average click 8 ₽ → 344 carts at 28 ₽ each. DRR must be calculated against vykup (goods actually redeemed), not orders: on 100,000 ₽ ordered at an 80% buyout rate, the ad share is measured against 80,000 ₽. His own store runs at 94%.

The expensive cart can be the cheaper order: in trafarety, 10 carts × 30 ₽ = 300 ₽ at 20% conversion gives 150 ₽ per order; in top placement, 10 carts × 50 ₽ = 500 ₽ at 50% gives 100 ₽ — traffic from the first 12 slots is better targeted. Mikhail's thresholds are cruder: DRR under 20% per tool, under 10% cabinet-wide; a product showing 45% does not belong in that tool. The floor also keeps rising (GU87XI-8-4Y): the trafarety auto-strategy weekly minimum went from 3,500 ₽ to 7,000 ₽ as of 14 May, and existing campaigns were raised automatically.

Short summary

• The first 12 search slots go to ads; without advertising a card is effectively invisible (Mikhail).
• A different tool can be right for each article; test order is top placement → trafarety → search promotion → promos.
• Sellers split down the middle on search promotion: a hidden commission to some, 40% of turnover to others.
• Paying per order on traffic that already searches your brand is a straight loss (Blokhin).
• The core metric is cost per add-to-cart, not DRR — and calculate DRR from vykup, not orders (Vyacheslav).