[jsonne]

A few things that struck me. Note I primarily do Facebook consulting so I'm pulling broad generalizations from there but I do run youtube ads as well.

1. Using predefined broad audience categories rarely works. Doing keyword targeting or specific video targeting usually works out better.

2. $10 cpm isn't high. I regularly spend $40+ on Facebook that can be 5x+ profitable ROI. Judging an ad buy only by cpm is short sighted at best.

3. 14k is a very small budget. I regularly spend 5-10k per day for folks. It takes volume and frequency to optimize. Even the amounts I spend as a freelancer makes me a small fish in regards to any serious agency and their clients.

4. It is far far too early to measure the effects of the campaign. CLTV (customer lifetime value) takes years to realize. Modern analytics tools are very useful to inform us on performance. They are not the end all be all and don't do an awesome job of multi touch attribution.

5. 1 ad isn't really a great test. For clients spending any real amount of budget I can pretty easily push out 300+ ad variations a month. To find something that gets you the kind of results you want it takes time, effort, and paying close attention to what's working and what isn't.

Overall it's an interesting case study but I caution folks to not simply take this as "youtube doesn't work" but rather what this person did on youtube doesn't work.

[keont]

For someone just starting in this world, any orientation or advice in how to improve with facebook ads or this world in general? I am following tutorials and forming more formally but 3 to 5 ROI would be huge for me professionaly, since we deal with not so big companies that would have, in the best of scenarios, a budget similar to the post, normally even smaller.

So it feels quite hard to stablish a relationship between the money spent and what we directly get the client in return.

So your comment was extremely useful for me!!

[jonmb]

Use AdEspresso. Go to their free academy section and read their guides. They'll teach you 95% of what you need to know, for free.

[oculusthrift]

yeah but a lot of us have our side hustles or are just individuals. we can likely only afford what the poster did. not millions like some big company

[xstartup]

It ultimately depends on what you are pushing without revealing that these stats are pointless.

Sensational news, fake news will get you massive CTR. You'll have cheap CPCs but your ad account will be dead after some time. Yes, Facebook doesn't like it when ad viewers report our ads.

[cpncrunch]

What is your clients' average ROI for these campaigns?

[jsonne]

3 to 5x on a cold audience. 5-10x on retargeting campaigns and upsell/cross sells. It really depends on the client though.

[dfee]

Is there reasoning to not drive this into the ground, I.e. where profitability for the campaign hits 0?

At a practical level I wonder if you / they are cognizant of an exhaustion measure, if new campaigns are introduced rapidly enough to continue to maintain a 5-10x return, whether the spend is managed to a predefined ROI, etc.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always seemed to drive it into the ground, but those are for short term campaigns. The long term campaigns I’ve inherited have usually already been driven into the ground before me (though the PE firm I was working for bought that distressed startup on the cheap).

[xstartup]

It depends on what you are doing. Many are just middleman, so they sell conversions they drive from FB, the difference of which is your profit. You have an incentive to keep conversion cost as low as possible and quality as high as possible to maintain your conversion payoff.

Driving it into the ground might be profitable for a product owner but not to an ad agency which pockets the middle.

[IAmGraydon]

I’m finding that extremely hard to believe. What’s the product category?

[jsonne]

Find it as hard to believe as you would like but I have no incentive to lie. The most profitable campaigns tend to be high end consumer goods with a monthly recurring element built into it. The worst performers tend to be anything targeting small business.

[cpncrunch]

Yes, I'm targetting small business ($25/month typical), and I've never been able to make google ads pay, even after optimizing the f*ck out of it.

[scott00]

What would you recommend as a minimum budget to have a reasonable chance of success?