What elements are required in a YML feed for Yandex Direct?

CategoryId and url are always required. For a simplified offer type, a name is required; for a vendor.model type, the vendor and model elements are required. If the offer has a price, currencyId is required. The available attribute is required if you filter products by availability. The root element yml_catalog must carry a date attribute in the format YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm.

What is categoryId in a feed and why is it needed?

This is the identifier of the category to which the product belongs: a positive integer up to 18 characters long. Each offer belongs to exactly one category. The list of categories itself is declared in the categories element inside shop and always before the list of offers. All segmentation is based on categoryId: based on it, products are divided into campaigns with different bids.

How to segment a feed for a product campaign?

By categoryId and price. Categories with different margins are divided into separate campaigns so that different goals can be set for DRR. The second level is a price filter: cheap positions and expensive ones behave differently and are averaged out in one campaign to the point of meaninglessness.

Why are products from the feed not shown?

Three common reasons. The first is that required elements are missing: without name in a simplified type or without vendor and model in a vendor.model type, the offer is ignored. The second is the discrepancy in price or availability between the feed and the landing page. The third is zero price or oldprice, which does not exceed the current price.

How often should the feed be updated?

There is no formal requirement for frequency in the reference, but there is one practical rule: the feed is updated no less often than prices and balances on the site change. For a store with dynamic pricing, this is several times a day. The date attribute of the root element must show the real generation time, otherwise the system does not understand whether it is reading recent data or yesterday.

Is it possible to run a product campaign without a feed?

A product campaign can work based on website data, but the feed gives you control: you decide which products are included, what they are called and at what price they are shown. Without a feed, this is controlled by a robot based on page parsing, and any layout error turns into an error in the ad.

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PerformanceSeptember 5, 202611 min

Feed for Yandex Direct 2026: required elements, categoryId and validation errors

Product campaigns are driven by the quality of the feed, not the campaign setup. Based on the official information, I’m reviewing the required elements of an offer, the categoryId role, two levels of segmentation, and errors that cause offers to silently drop out.

What makes product campaigns and smart banners successful is not the campaign setup, but the quality of the file that is fed into it. Half of the problems “there are few impressions” and “products are not unscrewed” are solved not in the Direct interface, but in XML.

Below are the required elements according to the official help, the categoryId role, segmentation principles and an analysis of errors due to which offers are silently ignored.

A feed is not an upload of goods. This is a description of the display that a person will see. Everything that is not in it will not appear, and everything that is incorrect in it will appear incorrect.

1. File structure

YML format, based on XML. Root element - yml_catalog, it has a required attribute date in the format YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm, and it must correspond to the real time of file generation on your side.

Inside is an element shop, in it currencies and categories, and only after them the list offers. The order here is not cosmetic: if categories are announced after offers, some products will remain without a category.

File restrictions from Direct requirements: one directory per file, URL length up to 2048 characters, standard XML encoding.

2. Required elements of the offer

element	When required	What will happen without him
`categoryId`	Always	Offer outside of segmentation, campaign cannot be set up
`url`	Always	There is nowhere to lead, the offer does not work
`name`	Simplified offer type	Offer is ignored
`vendor` and `model`	Type vendor.model	The offer is ignored, the ad is not generated
`currencyId`	If specified `price`	Price without currency - error
attribute `available`	If you filter by availability	Availability filter will not work

The keyword in the right column is “ignored.” An offer without a required element does not generate a validation error for the entire file, it simply drops out silently. Therefore, the discrepancy between the number of products in the catalog and the number of offers in the campaign must be checked manually: it will not communicate itself.

3. categoryId: all control rests on it

Technically, it's a positive integer up to 18 characters long, and each offer belongs to exactly one category. In practice, this is the only lever with which you control a product campaign.

Through categoryId, products are divided into campaigns, and different goals for DRR are set for each campaign. Without this, the entire catalog lives in one heap: a product with a margin of 8% and a product with a margin of 45% are unscrewed for the same purpose, and the first eats up the budget of the second.

Hence the rule: the structure of categories in the feed is built not according to the logic of the site, but according to the logic of the economy. If the website “Accessories” has one category, and within it there are products with a two-fold difference in margin, these should be two categories in the feed.

4. Segmentation: two levels

Level	Why do we divide?	Why
First	categoryId	Different margins - different goals for DRR
Second	Product price	Cheap and expensive items behave differently
Third, optional	Availability and turnover	Don't spend your budget on something that's about to run out

The second level is often skipped, but in vain. In one campaign, a product for 1,500 ₽ and a product for 40,000 ₽ are averaged: the system optimizes for overall conversion, and a cheap product with a high conversion attracts impressions, while an expensive product, which brings in money, receives less traffic.

5. Errors that cause the feed to not work

Floating product identifier. IDs must be unique and the same across feeds. If the id is reassembled every time it is unloaded, the system sees a new product and re-enters statistics on it - learning never accumulates.

Divergence from landing. Price in the feed is 3,900 ₽, on the website 4,200 ₽. The validator will let it through, the moderation will not. It is checked only by hand, ten random products after each major edit of the catalog.

Zero price and wrong oldprice. A price equal to zero and an old price that does not exceed the current one are typical reasons for an offer to be rejected.

Constant in the generation date. The date attribute, which does not change from upload to upload, is a sign that the feed is not being collected correctly and is a cause for problems with the relevance of the data.

Categories after offers. Formally, the file is valid, but in fact, some products lose their category, and along with it, their inclusion in the desired campaign.

6. Product campaign and smart banners: not the same thing

The question comes up all the time, so I'll keep it short. A product campaign is a separate type of campaign that itself collects ads from the feed and displays them both in search and in networks. Smart banners are a dynamic format within networks.

They have one thing in common: they both eat feed. And for both, the quality of the file is more important than the campaign settings - you cannot fix in the interface what is not in the XML. How the campaigns themselves are set up - in analysis of product campaigns and smart banners, this article is about the file itself.

7. Checklist before launch

Check	How to check
Generation date is real	Compare date attribute with last upload time
Categories announced before offers	Open XML, see block order
The number of offers matches the catalog	Check the quantity in the feed and in the CMS
IDs are stable	Compare two consecutive uploads
Prices are the same as on the website	Check 10 random products manually
No zero prices	Filter price = 0
Categories reflect margin	Check unit economics, not site structure

8. Summary

Mandatory minimum in each offer: categoryId and url always, name for a simplified type, vendor and model for vendor.model, currencyId if there is a price. Categories are announced before offers, identifiers are stable, and the generation date is real.

Then management begins: categoryId is built according to the economy, and not according to the structure of the site, and a division by price is added within the categories. It is at this level that a product campaign ceases to be a black box.

If the feed is collected, but the products are not unscrewed, send a link to the file to Telegram, I’ll see what silently falls out there.