We know that the price of a discount has a huge impact on the click and sales rates for Featured Deals — but what about for BookBub Ad campaigns? Should you always include a price in your ad image? Which deal prices drive the most clicks?
We analyzed over 1,000 recent ad campaigns for both ebooks and audiobooks to see how including a price in the ad image affected the ad’s results. As you might expect, ads promoting books at lower prices tended to have higher click-through rates (CTRs), but some of our other findings were more surprising. We hope this data will help you decide which elements to include in your ad images, no matter the prices of the books you’re promoting!
Ads for free ebooks drive more clicks than any other price
Unsurprisingly, including the word “free” in your ad image will cause lots of readers to click — the average CTR for ads with the word “free” was 32% higher than the overall average of the ebook ads we analyzed.
$0.99 ebooks get higher CTRs than $1.99+ deals
Similarly to Featured Deals, ads displaying lower-priced ebooks generate more engagement than ads showing higher prices. The average CTR of ads with “$0.99” or “99p” was 31% higher than ads showing prices of $1.99 or higher. Ads with “$0.99” also drove 12% higher CTRs than ads that mentioned a sale or a discount but did not include a specific price.
For audiobook ads, prices under $2 drive the highest clicks and conversions
Audiobook listeners seem to be slightly less price-sensitive — for ads promoting audiobooks, images showing “$0.99” or “$1.99” were the most engaging. The average CTR of ads for audiobooks showing a price under $2 was 23% higher than the average audiobook ad CTR.
The majority of these ads promoted Chirp audiobooks, which means we have access to sales data as well as click data for these campaigns. Not only did audiobook ads displaying prices under $2 get more clicks, but they also drove more sales — on average, the conversion rate of Chirp members who clicked on these ads and purchased the promoted books was more than 2x higher than that of ads showing prices above $2!
Including price or sale information can boost conversion rates
While images advertising prices of $2.99 or higher generated the lowest average CTRs of any price group for both ebook and audiobook ads, our data suggests that including any pricing information in your ad can result in more sales than if you don’t mention the price at all (Note that of the ads we analyzed, none showed prices higher than $7 for ebooks and $9 for audiobooks in the creative, though many partners do run ads for higher-priced books as well).
The average conversion rate of audiobook ads showing prices of $2.99+ in the images was nearly 4x higher than that of audiobook ads with no price information in the images. And even audiobook ads that mentioned a sale or discount (but no specific prices) converted at an average of 3x the rate of ads without any mention of price, despite the promoted books having higher prices than other titles being advertised on Chirp (the average price of the Chirp books purchased from this group of ads was $4.88)! It seems readers are more willing to buy if they have some sense for price — or know that they’ll be getting a deal — before they click on an ad.
This data is specific to ads for audiobooks, but we would expect to see similar trends across formats. However, we still recommend testing this out for yourself in your ebook ads to confirm!
Low prices aren’t the only way to drive more clicks
A steep discount is one element that can increase the chance readers will click on an ad, but ads without deal prices can also generate high CTRs! All of the ads below had CTRs between 2–5x higher than average, and none of them include any information about the promoted book’s price. If you’re advertising a book without a low price or a sale, include other engaging elements in your image, such as popular tropes, seasonal imagery, or clear signals of your book’s subgenre. And of course, targeting the right readers is key!
We hope this offers some guidance about when it’s best to include a deal price in your ad image! Create a new ad now to put these takeaways to use.
When do you include book prices in your ad images, and how has it impacted your own campaigns? Share your experience in the comments below!
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