I've moved the blog from Blogger to the KidPub domain. After doing a bit of reading, it seems to me that there are advantages to hosting the blog myself versus hosting on Blogger, including better control of the blog, and being able to leverage kidpub.com's high Google page rank to get better search engine placement of posts.
I'll of course write a blog entry or two about the results :^)
Click here to visit the new blog page.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Is FaceBook Advertising Effective?
Earlier I wrote about implementing FaceBook advertising as a way to reach KidPub's young market. I'd dug up $350 in coupons for ad credit and spent about two weeks spending it, testing out different ad copy for click-through rates. Once the $350 in free ads was burned through I backed off to a budget of $150 per month, just to see if FaceBook could really bring qualified traffic to the site.
I'm advertising our publishing program on FaceBook...KidPub Press publishes books written by kids age 15 and younger. The goal is for a new viewer to download our publishing guide, a PDF that explains the program.
Here's a Google Analytics chart showing traffic from Facebook during and after the $350 campaign:
You can see that over the past 30 days we've received 614 referrals from Facebook. The $350 campaign ended about a third of the way through the period.
The ad with the best CTR sees about 65,000 impressions per day on FaceBook, with a CTR of roughly .05%. Because daily spending is capped we get around 25 click-throughs per day. Of the 25 visits, an average of 5, or 20%, download the publishing guide. We capture email addresses as part of the download process, so we are building the marketing list for KidPub Press at a steady 100 to 150 per month.
We're projecting that 1% or so of the folks who take the trouble to download our publishing guide will sign up for a publishing package; an optimistic number is 2 new book deals each month, which makes the FaceBook ads a good investment. We also will reach out specifically to FaceBook users who download the guide to talk to them about the ad in an effort to improve the effectiveness of our Facebook advertising. Our average cost per lead right now is about $1.
Would CPM advertising be more cost effective? Probably not for us. Our effective CPM (eCPM) on FaceBook right now is just under 7 cents. It's unlikely that we would be able to see ads served in a CPM campaign for a bid under 10 cents, and we'd likely need a bid in the 15 cent range to achieve the same number of click-throughs. I'm comfortable with an eCPM of 7 cents, especially considering the side benefit of brand recognition as 65,000 ads are served each day to my target audience.
I'm advertising our publishing program on FaceBook...KidPub Press publishes books written by kids age 15 and younger. The goal is for a new viewer to download our publishing guide, a PDF that explains the program.
Here's a Google Analytics chart showing traffic from Facebook during and after the $350 campaign:
You can see that over the past 30 days we've received 614 referrals from Facebook. The $350 campaign ended about a third of the way through the period.
The ad with the best CTR sees about 65,000 impressions per day on FaceBook, with a CTR of roughly .05%. Because daily spending is capped we get around 25 click-throughs per day. Of the 25 visits, an average of 5, or 20%, download the publishing guide. We capture email addresses as part of the download process, so we are building the marketing list for KidPub Press at a steady 100 to 150 per month.
We're projecting that 1% or so of the folks who take the trouble to download our publishing guide will sign up for a publishing package; an optimistic number is 2 new book deals each month, which makes the FaceBook ads a good investment. We also will reach out specifically to FaceBook users who download the guide to talk to them about the ad in an effort to improve the effectiveness of our Facebook advertising. Our average cost per lead right now is about $1.
Would CPM advertising be more cost effective? Probably not for us. Our effective CPM (eCPM) on FaceBook right now is just under 7 cents. It's unlikely that we would be able to see ads served in a CPM campaign for a bid under 10 cents, and we'd likely need a bid in the 15 cent range to achieve the same number of click-throughs. I'm comfortable with an eCPM of 7 cents, especially considering the side benefit of brand recognition as 65,000 ads are served each day to my target audience.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Video and Google Results
David Berkowitz just posted an interesting article on MediaPost about a study that suggests video content is 53 times more likely than text to make the first page of Google search results.
I'm not convinced. In the original Forrester study, the numbers just don't seem to add up to the conclusion, which is that SEO optimized video content increases your ranking in search results. How many optimized videos didn't make it onto the front page? How many of the videos that were on the front page were not optimized? Did the meta data for the video content even match the search query? We aren't given any of this information.
It's a bit like noticing that there are several blue arrows in the bullseye on the archery range and jumping to the conclusion that you should paint your arrow blue to increase your accuracy.
I'm not convinced. In the original Forrester study, the numbers just don't seem to add up to the conclusion, which is that SEO optimized video content increases your ranking in search results. How many optimized videos didn't make it onto the front page? How many of the videos that were on the front page were not optimized? Did the meta data for the video content even match the search query? We aren't given any of this information.
It's a bit like noticing that there are several blue arrows in the bullseye on the archery range and jumping to the conclusion that you should paint your arrow blue to increase your accuracy.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Analysis of Facebook Advertising
It took ten days to burn through $350 of free advertising on Facebook. I ran five ad variations to test click-through rates and styles (for example, using a graphic versus not). I set a daily maximum of $35, and a CPC rate of 18 cents.
I have a couple of observations.
1. The targeting capability of FB is pretty good. My ads were aimed at kids 15 and younger, which required an approval from FB. I noticed that impressions were nearly zero each day until about 4pm, when kids started getting home from school. After 4pm they picked up dramatically and continued strong until the number of click-throughs hit my daily maximum.
2. Impression rates are good. In ten days my ads saw just over four million impressions. The effective CPM was about 9 cents, which is an excellent price in today's market. It wasn't possible to check ad placement, unfortunately.
3. Click-through rates are terrible. Average CTR for the best-performing ads was about .04%. On other networks, and on my own site, CTR ranges closer to .2%
4. However, Facebook provides a breakout of data based on unique impressions and clicks. For those 4M impressions, just over 1 million were unique, and the unique CTR was closer to .1%.
Here's a look at visits to the target of my ads during the test:
You can see that there was a significant impact during the run of ads. The average deal for the target product is about $100, so a relatively low conversion rate will recoup my ad investment.
Will I continue with FB ads? Yes. I think that FB is delivering my target audience in a measurable way, and providing brand awareness among kids 15 and younger. It was nice to use FB's money to do testing, and I'm using the highest CTR ad in the current campaign.
I found that an ad with a graphic did considerably better than one without, and that offering a free downloadable guide performed best of all. No surprises there. I capture email for downloaded guides, so in addition to building awareness and putting literature into the hands of a potential client, I'm building my marketing base.
I have a couple of observations.
1. The targeting capability of FB is pretty good. My ads were aimed at kids 15 and younger, which required an approval from FB. I noticed that impressions were nearly zero each day until about 4pm, when kids started getting home from school. After 4pm they picked up dramatically and continued strong until the number of click-throughs hit my daily maximum.
2. Impression rates are good. In ten days my ads saw just over four million impressions. The effective CPM was about 9 cents, which is an excellent price in today's market. It wasn't possible to check ad placement, unfortunately.
3. Click-through rates are terrible. Average CTR for the best-performing ads was about .04%. On other networks, and on my own site, CTR ranges closer to .2%
4. However, Facebook provides a breakout of data based on unique impressions and clicks. For those 4M impressions, just over 1 million were unique, and the unique CTR was closer to .1%.
Here's a look at visits to the target of my ads during the test:
You can see that there was a significant impact during the run of ads. The average deal for the target product is about $100, so a relatively low conversion rate will recoup my ad investment.
Will I continue with FB ads? Yes. I think that FB is delivering my target audience in a measurable way, and providing brand awareness among kids 15 and younger. It was nice to use FB's money to do testing, and I'm using the highest CTR ad in the current campaign.
I found that an ad with a graphic did considerably better than one without, and that offering a free downloadable guide performed best of all. No surprises there. I capture email for downloaded guides, so in addition to building awareness and putting literature into the hands of a potential client, I'm building my marketing base.
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