Once you’ve learned how to create a BookBub Ads campaign, the next step is learning how to interpret its results. You’ll see metrics in your dashboard begin to populate shortly after your ad goes live — but when you look at those stats, can you understand what they’re telling you?
Below, find our guide to assessing your campaigns’ results, one step at a time. To start, let’s review the key metrics you need to know to understand how your ad is performing.
Key metrics
Impression: One instance of your ad appearing in a BookBub email or on a page on the BookBub website. We call this an ad being “served” — if a reader is served an impression, it means an ad appeared in their email or on the website while they were browsing.
Click: One click on your ad.
Click-through rate (CTR): Expressed as a percentage, it’s the ratio of clicks to impressions your ad has earned. For example, a 1% click-through rate means that 1% of readers who were served an ad clicked on it.
Effective CPC (eCPC): This is the actual rate you’re paying per click on your ad, and you’ll see it even if you’re using CPM bidding. The calculation is (Budget Spent)/(Clicks).
Step 1: Are you winning impressions?
Before looking at any other campaign stats, you first need to answer a critical question: Is your campaign winning impressions?
Whatever the goal of your ad — whether it’s to generate exposure, drive engagement, or increase revenue — you can only achieve it if your ad is winning impressions. Without impressions, your book won’t be seen by readers, which also means it can’t lead to clicks or conversions (sales of your book). The volume of impressions a successful campaign wins will vary depending on how aggressively you bid and how large your audience is, but as long as you’re seeing that your campaign has served impressions, you can be confident it’s reaching readers.
You also need enough impressions to effectively assess the rest of your campaign results. If your campaign hasn’t yet served a meaningful number of impressions, its results may not be a good indication of how the ad would perform at a larger scale.
By the time your campaign has generated 1,000 impressions, you can be fairly confident that the rest of your campaign results are representative of the entire targeted audience. But if you want to move more quickly, you can start assessing results after your ad has served a couple of hundred impressions. Just be aware that the lower your total impression count is, the higher the risk that a few outliers may skew the data you’re using to make decisions.
What the data means:
If your ad has reached 1,000 impressions and is steadily generating more: Your bid is effectively winning impressions among your target audience.
If you’re using a CPM bid and your campaign isn’t winning impressions: Your bid is too low to win impressions among your target audience.
If you’re using a CPC bid and your campaign isn’t winning impressions: Your bid may be too low to win impressions among your target audience, or your ad may not be driving enough clicks among your target audience to continue serving.
Step 2: Are readers clicking?
If the goal of your ad is to drive exposure or awareness of your book, you might only be interested in whether your ad is serving impressions. But if the goal is to drive engagement or sales of your book, it needs to drive clicks. Once you’ve verified that your campaign is serving enough impressions, the next step is to evaluate the engagement on your campaign by looking at your clicks and click-through rate (CTR).
Both metrics are helpful to look at for different reasons: raw click volume tells you how many readers are reaching your retailer page, while click-through rate tells you how effectively the pitch you’re delivering through your ad image connects with the audience you’re targeting.
You should use both when evaluating your campaign results, and consider the goal of your campaign when you do. Campaigns with high click-through rates and low raw clicks may be equally as effective as those with low click-through rates and high raw clicks — the key is deciding what you’re aiming to achieve with your campaign.
What the data means:
If your CTR is high and your ad is driving lots of clicks: You’re reaching the right audience with the right message.
If your CTR is high but your ad isn’t driving as many clicks as you’d like: Your ad’s pitch is landing with readers, but the audience is too small to support the volume of clicks you’re looking for.
If your CTR is low but your ad is driving lots of clicks: Your ad’s audience is large enough that there’s a high volume of readers who are interested enough to click. You may be able to drive even more clicks by better aligning the pitch in your image to the audience you’re reaching.
If your CTR is low and your ad isn’t driving many clicks: There’s a mismatch between what your ad image is selling and what the audience your ad is reaching is interested in.
When it comes to CTR, “high” and “low” are relative — different advertisers use different thresholds to assess their campaigns. We most frequently hear advertisers say they aim for CTRs between 1-2%, but advertisers run campaigns that achieve their goals with CTRs ranging from well under 1% to well above 10%.
Step 3: What are you paying?
The next step is to assess whether your budget is being spent effectively. Your ad will never spend more than the budget you’ve set (whether it’s daily or overall), and you can always check how much your campaign has spent in total in the Budget Spent column. To determine how efficiently your budget is being spent, check your effective CPC to figure out what you’re actually paying for every reader who clicks on your ad.
When determining how much you’re willing to pay for your ads, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Conversion rate: What percentage of readers who click on your ad and land on your retailer page go on to buy your book?
- Book price and royalty rate: How much money do you take home from each sale of your book?
- Read-through rate: What percentage of readers who buy your book go on to buy other books in your catalog?
Ideally, you can calculate how much a click on your ad is worth, and monitor your results to ensure your eCPC never exceeds that number. But if you’re just starting ads and aren’t sure of your conversion rate, read-through rate, or how much you can expect to earn from read-through, you may not have an exact cost, and that’s okay. Start with estimates, and know that it’s common for spend to be high as you’re getting started and learning the ropes.
What the data means:
If your eCPC is low: Your ad is generating clicks efficiently.
If your eCPC is too high: There may be a mismatch between your ad image and its audience that’s keeping clicks too low for your budget to be spent efficiently.
If your eCPC is about right, but your ad still isn’t profitable: Either your conversion rate, your read-through rate, or both may be lower than you expected, and it’s pulling down the revenue you’re earning from your ad.
Don’t forget that interpreting your ad results is only the first step of making improvements to their performance — you’ll likely need to do some iteration to get your campaigns performing at a level that’s exciting to you. Starting a campaign, pausing and making adjustments, and continuing to test its effectiveness is a key part of running ads, and successful advertisers do it all the time. When you’re ready, check out our guide to testing your ads for better results.
Keep in mind what each of the metrics you’re looking at is telling you about your ad performance, make adjustments when needed, and don’t be afraid to take a break and go back to the drawing board if you need to!
