Choosing the right bidding style and bid amount is essential to winning ad impressions at a cost you’re comfortable with. There are two bidding styles advertisers can choose from for BookBub Ads: cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC). We’ve covered different strategies and scenarios where one bidding style might make more sense than the other, but in this post we’ll dive deeper into the benefits of CPC bidding. Here are three reasons why CPC might be the right choice for your next BookBub Ads campaign.
1. It’s easier to control your costs
CPC bidding is less risky than CPM because you only pay for the impressions that get clicked, rather than every impression your ad wins. Many advertisers find this reassuring, particularly while they’re trying out different combinations of ad images and audience targeting to determine which ads will drive the most engagement (more on that later!). And because you only pay for the ads that get clicked, CPC bidding gives you greater control over your advertising costs.
A CPC bid represents the maximum rate you want to pay per click, and you’ll almost always pay less than that amount — the winning ad pays the rate of the next-highest bid in the auction. If you’re focused on generating a profit or positive ROI, you can calculate or estimate a profitable bid and set your CPC bid slightly higher than that rate.
Note that if you set a lower bid to keep your advertising costs down, it may take more time for your campaign to win impressions. This can be a great strategy if you’re willing to be patient, and is particularly effective for driving steady sales over a long period of time. One author has been running a continuous CPC campaign for over four months that’s generated thousands of clicks for just $10 per day.
2. The auction boosts good CPC campaigns
One of the biggest benefits of CPC bidding is that you’re rewarded for creating engaging ads. The BookBub Ads auction takes the click-through rate (CTR) of CPC campaigns into account when determining the winning ad for each impression, which means ads with above-average CTRs are more likely to continue winning impressions for their target audience.
You’ll see this benefit kick in gradually for newly created CPC campaigns. As an ad begins winning impressions and earning clicks, it’ll start a positive feedback loop where the auction continues to deliver more traffic from that engaged audience over time, which in turn should continue to generate more clicks! But it can take a few days for our auction to learn how a new ad is performing, so give new campaigns some time to get going before you edit them or turn them off.
On the flip side, CPC ads that aren’t generating many clicks will be increasingly less likely to win new impressions. If you have a CPC ad that stops winning impressions, create a new campaign with different audience targeting or ad creative to try to generate more clicks. Find tips for targeting an engaged audience, designing compelling ad images, and other ideas for increasing clicks.
3. You can run cost-effective test campaigns
All of these benefits make CPC bidding a great choice for long-term campaigns, but CPC can also help you run efficient and cost-effective test campaigns to figure out which author targets or ad images work best for your books.
To set up test campaigns with CPC bidding:
- Create one ad campaign with a high CPC bid. When you’re running tests, a high bid will help you win impressions and learn which ad variations perform best more quickly.
- Copy it to create one or more identical campaigns. Change just one element in each variation, usually the ad image or audience — this element is what you’re testing!
- Use the exact same CPC bid amount for each test campaign. If you’re targeting the same audience with each test campaign, the auction will randomly select a winning ad and you’ll pay the rate of the next-highest bidder. If you’re testing different audiences, using the same bid will help you assess the rate it will cost to reach each of those audiences.
- Set low budgets — $5-$10 per campaign is usually a good place to start, and you can always add more if you want more data or if the campaign is performing well.
- Let the ads run and check the results! Any campaign that’s not earning clicks will eventually stop winning impressions, but you can still learn a lot from these ads’ initial results — it can be valuable to discover what doesn’t work! Pause or archive any test ads that aren’t performing well and create new campaigns with updated images or audiences to try to generate more clicks.
- Continue creating new test campaigns until you get results you’re happy with.
This process can be time-consuming, but it’s the best way to identify which images and audiences of readers work best for your books. And when you use CPC bidding, you won’t burn your budget paying for impressions that aren’t delivering engagement!
Want more guidance on BookBub Ads bidding? Check out successful advertisers’ tips for using CPC bidding or our bidding strategy guide with steps for choosing a profitable bid amount.
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