As we wrap up another year, it’s time for our annual roundup of the best BookBub Ads campaigns! These ads represent a diverse mix of advertising strategies — including different genres, price points, book formats, and bidding strategies — and showcase the many ways a BookBub Ads campaign can be successful. We hope you find inspiration here to fuel your book advertising in 2026!
Best Ultra-Narrow Targeting: Bryan Chaffin, King Liam, First of His Name
Sometimes the most effective targeting strategy is to go very narrow — we’ve seen that targeting authors with fewer readers on BookBub can drive more clicks than using the biggest names in the genre. This advertiser achieved just that with an image that hints at the story without giving anything away, which sparked enough curiosity among its audience to drive close to 2,000 clicks across campaigns! They used the same creative throughout the year while targeting different individual sci-fi authors whose BookBub audiences ranged from a few thousand to over 100,000 readers. The best-performing campaign — with an outstanding 14.46% click-through rate (CTR) — targeted just one author with an audience of around 5,000 readers. Using moderate CPC bids and running each campaign for about a month with even budget pacing kept costs at an impressive $0.25 per click.
Best Self-Targeting Success: Ruby Skye, The Secret Job
This new advertiser’s success shows that exceptional results are possible right out of the gate! They began testing ad designs and strategies to promote this debut, and by the time book two released three months later, they’d cultivated an engaged audience eager for the next installment. They landed on bold, simple design and copy that directly communicates the book’s spice level to signal genre expectations to the right readers. After testing both narrower and broader targeting, they found targeting their own readers delivered the best results: This ad targeting existing fans ran continuously for two weeks and drove an incredible 13.64% CTR with a low $0.24 cost per click.
Best Series Launch Strategy: L.M. Dalgleish, Guarded King
This advertiser kicked off the year using different new release strategies to promote their series, Empty Kingdom, around the launch of the third and final book in February. They began testing different versions of an image to promote a limited-time $0.99 sale on book one. Nine days before release, they shifted focus to a preorder campaign for book three targeting just their own readers — a great way to build early momentum with existing fans. During launch week and beyond, they continued experimenting with different creatives and promotional tactics — advertising book three, the complete series, and book one again — to various combinations of romance author and category targets. The most successful version ran continuously from launch day through June, generating over 10,000 clicks at a 0.87% CTR. Using a high bid, they racked up more than one million impressions across campaigns while keeping the average cost per click under $1 — and since they chose CPC bidding, they only paid for readers who actually clicked.
Best Rapid Testing Strategy: Theophilus Monroe, Druid Detective Agency series
This advertiser launched four identical ads, each targeting a different single author. After two days, they turned off the ads not delivering quick results to focus their budget on only the highest performer (a smart way to avoid overspending on underperforming campaigns!). That campaign ran continuously for five weeks and used a high CPM bid to maximize visibility. The hints at the characters and number of books on offer compelled readers to click — the ad drove a CTR of 11.58%, resulting in a cost of just $0.14 per click! This campaign demonstrates the power of testing to quickly identify your best targets, then investing your budget where it counts.
Best Audiobook Campaign: Luke Mitchell, Shadows of Divinity
Audiobook ads require special attention to making the book format clear to readers, and this advertiser nailed it after testing a few different audio-focused creative elements to support a Chirp deal. In early March, they launched five test campaigns, including the Chirp logo and price along with or without the audiobook cover, with and without a “listen now” call-to-action, and with and without star reviews. They targeted their own fans plus several other niche authors, sometimes stacking lots of authors with smaller audiences — a great way to target lesser-known authors whose individual audiences may be too small to run effectively on their own. After identifying the campaigns with the lowest costs per click, they paused all other underperforming ads. The top campaign, targeting the promoted book’s author plus 15 others, generated 665 clicks at a 1.09% CTR during the one-month discount period. A week after this campaign exhausted its budget, the advertiser launched a similar ad that drove an additional 361 clicks, demonstrating the value of reusing a successful formula.
Best Low-Budget Continuous Campaign: Dan Padavona, The Silent Hunter
You don’t need a huge budget to see results with BookBub Ads — this advertiser proves that small, sustained investments can drive meaningful results when you’ve identified the right strategy. They ran more than 400 continuous campaigns with low daily budgets for this YA thriller title this year, testing this image to dozens of individual authors at three different price points ($4.99, $0.99, and $7.99). Urgency can be a powerful motivator, and this layout makes excellent use of it, with “on sale this week” in large text to prompt readers to act fast. A combination of self-targeting and the $0.99 sale dramatically outperformed other variants, earning a 1.08% CTR at just $0.49 per click. By targeting their existing fans, using a CPC bid, and keeping their daily spend low, this advertiser reached the readers most likely to respond while maintaining control over costs.
Best Full-Price Launch: Bethany House, Before the King by Heather Kaufman
This publisher launched a new release campaign one month after the book’s publication to reach readers who may have missed the initial launch buzz. Using CPC bidding to control costs, they targeted three authors, including the book’s own author, ensuring the ad reached both new and existing fans. They created separate campaigns for different regions and retailers to ensure granular control over each. Over a month, these ads collectively served over 61,000 impressions and drove 1,233 clicks at a 2% CTR while keeping costs efficient at $0.34 per click. Mixing self-targeting with thoughtfully selected comparable authors is a great way to increase exposure while keeping engagement strong.
Best Long-Running Campaign: Iris Beaglehole, Accidental Magic
This advertiser steadily drove traffic to book one in their nine-book cozy mystery series using a series of continuous campaigns that ran for several months. They paired category and author targeting, selecting authors with a range of audience sizes — ensuring that the ads’ audiences were focused enough to reach relevant readers, but big enough to run continuously without constant hands-on management. By using a low CPM bid, this advertiser guaranteed a consistent volume of impressions, and over the course of this campaign’s four-month run, drove almost 2,800 clicks directly to book one on Amazon from readers who were hooked by the comparisons to popular cozy, witchy media.
Best New Release Exposure: RepEquity, Out of the Woods by Gregg Olsen
This advertiser launched a month-long campaign on the same day this true crime book released. The image pairs the book’s striking cover with an intriguing tagline that immediately communicates its themes to prospective readers. To maximize visibility during the critical launch window, they targeted a large audience including the book’s author and three other well-known true crime writers, using a moderate CPM bid to ensure consistent visibility throughout the campaign. The strategy paid off with over one million impressions and thousands of clicks — impressive engagement for a full-price book during its launch month.
Best Strategy for Expanding Reach: Bookouture, The Serpent’s Bride by Kathryn Ann Kingsley
For this new dark fantasy romance, this publisher targeted authors in the niche romantasy space who had bigger audiences than the book’s author: a “targeting up” strategy that’s particularly effective for reaching new readers with new releases. About a week after the book’s release, they dropped the price to $0.99 and used BookBub Ads to promote the week-long sale using images showing the price — the campaigns were identical except for different currency symbols to target the US and UK. After the sale, they launched four more continuous campaigns testing slightly different creatives without the price. Some included the book cover while others did not, though all featured the same compelling quote. The best performer targeted a larger audience and included the book cover in the design. Running continuously for two and a half weeks with a moderate CPM bid and moderate daily budget, the campaign served over 72,000 impressions and drove 448 clicks at a 0.62% CTR.
We hope these examples inspire your advertising in 2026! Create a new ad now. Looking for more inspiration? Browse The Ultimate Collection of BookBub Ads Examples.
