Last week a client and I ran their test ads to see which targeting approach would work best (and cost the least) before they went bigger with their official ad budget. We opted for two $20 test ads for testing over 5 ish days. A small but worthy test. Here’s what we found.
- Product: Concert Tickets, Live Band (Butts in Seats)
- Funnel: Direct to Sale (Ad -> Landing Page/Ticket Page -> Sale) – the most challenging funnel because you have to warm up and sell your audience all in one ad.
- Call-to-Action/Sales Trigger: Time is a primary trigger because the concert date is finite and coming up fast. The is also an element of shared culture and nostalgia to this particular concert.
- Channel: Facebook & Instagram.
- Paid vs Organic: Organic posts + performance videos via reels + ads
Results
- SPEND:
- AD 1 – $16.85
- AD 2 – $23.27
- (tried to make it equal but one was on approval hold longer than the other)
- TARGETING:
- AD 1 – Generic, 18+, all genders, humans within 25km of concert city
- AD 2 – Super Targeted – interests, likes, specific gender, specific ages
- REACH:
- AD 1 – 1,955
- AD 2 – 2,637
- VIEWS PER DOLLAR:
- AD 1 – 116.09
- AD 2 – 113.32
- CLICKS:
- Ad 1 – 58
- Ad 2 – 77
- CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR):
- AD 1 – 2.97%
- AD 2 – 2.92%
- BENCHMARK – 0.89%
- COST PER CLICK (CPC):
- AD 1 – $0.26
- AD 2 – $0.27
- BENCHMARK – $0.68
What it means
What we wanted to find out was whether or not the ad was good and which targeting approach would work best. What we actually found out was that both ads beat the benchmarks with click-through-rates and cost per click. ie. The ad is good, doesn’t need a rewrite or different images.
Targeting had little to no effect on clicks, which is likely because the algorithm was still figuring things out. Or it means that the differences are being seen at the sales level instead of the click-through stage. So the test offered zero help in choosing target markets.
Because of the close results, we’ll be running both ads at bigger budgets and turn one off when or if it appears to perform worse than the other.
