Advocacy Campaign Report
Week of December 5, 2022
Thank you for your interest in this pro-DRS advocacy campaign. This is the seventh weekly report for the 2022 Q4 advocacy campaign.
Some helpful keywords and terms to frame this information are below:
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Impressions: ad views; number of times the ads are displayed on device screens. Does not reflect unique number of people who saw the ads.
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CPM: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions - a primary advertising cost metric.
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CPC: Cost Per Click.
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CTR: Click-Through Rate - the rate at which people saw the ads and subsequently clicked on them.
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KPIs: Key Performance Indicators - these include the terms listed above and are basic gauges for measuring campaign progress.
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WoW: Week over Week - refers to changes in performance metrics from one week to the next.
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All currency is listed in U.S. dollars.
Executive Summary
The seventh week of the campaign showed especially strong performance - the ads altogether drove 1,820 site visits (32% increase WoW) at a cost of $0.89 per site visit (29% decrease WoW), the most site visits and the lowest cost per visit of any week during the campaign so far:
The Reddit ads were not accelerating in performance, so they were paused on Thursday, December 8, and the budget for them was reallocated to Meta.
Total spending declined by 6%, impressions by 15%, and clicks by 14%, while CPM increased by 11%. However, average CTR for the campaign overall increased by 1.5% and conversion rate by 53%, showing that no single KPI in isolation is an indicator of success.
Total site traffic saw another modest increase, largely as a result of the ads and direct traffic.
Meta Performance
(Facebook and Instagram)
The Meta campaign continued upward trajectory in performance this week, delivering 124 site visits (48% increase WoW) at a cost of $3.65 per site visit (10% decrease WoW):
Although impressions decreased by 15%, and CPM increased by 56% WoW, clicks increased by 24%, and CPC remained stable. CTR also increased from 1.56% to 2.27% (a 46% increase WoW), and is the highest CTR of any week of the campaign to date. The conversion rate of 9.60% was also the highest for any week in the campaign so far.
Spending increased by 33% this week, due to pausing the Reddit ads, and reallocating that budget to Meta later in the week. This higher budget for Meta may be largely responsible for the greater number of site visits this week, as performance shifted immediately after increasing Meta’s budget.
Site visits driven by Meta this week were 56% women, and 44% men. Overall, 87% of all site visits from the Meta ads were from people ages 45+, with just 13% being people age 44 or younger. Segmenting by both gender and age, women ages 45-54 made up the majority of site visits driven by the Meta ads, at more than 23% of the week’s total. This was followed by men ages 65+, at 17% of the week’s total.
The Meta ads continue to be algorithmically optimizing towards French users, as they made up 72% of site visitors driven by Meta. Though, this is a drop from 80% of the week’s total seen from Meta in week six. Germany again delivered the next highest number of site visits by country, staying at 10% of the week’s total, as well as maintaining the highest CTR for the week at 3.51%.
As the trend seen in prior weeks continues, Grandma’s Recipe delivered the most site visits, at 64% of the week’s total (down from 73% in week six). Lady Yellow delivered 20% of the total for week seven, with Whisper driving the remaining 16% (see ad previews here).
Reddit Performance
This was the third week of the Reddit ads being live and they showed no improvement, driving six site visits for the week at a cost of $34.66 per visit:
Although the cost per site visit decreased by 43% WoW, the cost is still an exorbitant amount compared to the total average of $0.89 per site visit in week seven, for all three platforms combined. Site visitors driven by the Reddit ads were also spending an average of about two-thirds less time on the site than the total average for all site visitors combined. All of these factors of low performance resulted in the decision to pause the Reddit ads on Thursday, December 8, and reallocate the remaining budget for them to Meta.
Of the 19 total site visits driven by the Reddit ads during its two and a half week run, 58% were driven by users indicating interest in web3-related topics. The remaining 42% were from people indicating interest in the broader category of finance and investing.
By country, the majority of site visitors for the full length of the campaign were from Canada (21%), and the Netherlands and Sweden (16% each). There were no site visits from people listed as living in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, or the U.S.
For the ads themselves, Grandma’s Recipe drove 32% of all site visits for the campaign, and Couch Man drove 26% of the total, with Crypto Padlock and Lady Yellow each delivering another 16% of the total. Whisper and Seedling led to zero site visits (see ad previews here).
From the perspective of basic KPIs, the intial estimates for Reddit ads and what the campaign actually achieved in the end are as follows:
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Estimated CPM: between $1 and $5 – Actual CPM: $1.93
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Estimated CPC: between $0.50 and $5 – Actual CPC: $0.67
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Estimated CTR: between 0.10% and 0.30% -- Actual CTR: 0.29%
Twitter Performance
Week seven for Twitter was the most successful week of the campaign so far, delivering 1,690 site visits (31% increase WoW), at a cost of $0.57 per site visit (28% decrease WoW):
This is despite weekly spending decreasing by 6%, CPM increasing by 6%, impressions decreasing by 11%, clicks decreasing by 14%, and CTR decreasing by 3%.
The ads continue to be algorithmically optimized towards Swedish users, with 37% of site visitors driven by the Twitter ads coming from Sweden. Denmark overtook Belgium this week in driving the next highest number of site visitors from Twitter, going from 18% of the total in week six to 20% this week. Belgium followed Denmark, dropping from 18% of the week’s total to 13%.
As mentioned in earlier reports, women continue to make up the majority of site visitors from the Twitter ads, at 71% of this week’s total. That has dropped from more than 80% of weekly site visits at the beginning of the campaign. Segmenting by age, 68% of this week’s site visitors were age 50+.
The ads driving the most site visits this week were in order: the static ads for Seedling, Couch Man, and the carousel ad featuring Couch Man, Seedling, and Grandma’s Recipe (see ad previews here).
Site Activity
This week saw slight increases in site activity, in both new and return visitors, with an 8% increase in unique visitors across all traffic categories. This was primarily the result of increased traffic from the ads, as well as a 12% increase in visitors from direct traffic.
There was also a peak in traffic for the week on Wednesday, December 7, which was the date of the GameStop quarterly earnings report:
A 13% increase in average session duration (time spent on site per visit) across all traffic sources was also recorded, largely impacted by a 22% increase in average session duration from direct traffic. Traffic from the paid ads alone saw another modest increase of 3% WoW for average session duration.
Unique return visitors from all sources increased by 13%, with a 28% increase from the ads alone:
The broker guides for Fidelity and IBKR continue to hold the top positions for most visitors, views, and sessions. Although, this week, Webull saw a major spike in visitors – almost seven times as many as the previous week (from 40 to 270):
The majority of this activity occurred on December 7, and can likely be attributed to visits from commentary linking to the Webull guide from this Reddit post:
Conclusion and Next Steps
The increased budget for Meta appears to be further accelerating performance positively, just as much as pausing the low performing ads has. With this in mind, the current budget split of 40% to Meta and 60% to Twitter will be maintained for the duration of the campaign.
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The Reddit ads unfortunately did not perform as well as projected. However, their performance did meet the realistic expectations set out prior to launch, coming in on the low end for estimated costs and on the high end for click-through rate. The budget for these ads was also set low to test initial KPIs, so it’s possible that allocating a higher budget for a future Reddit ad campaign may contribute to greater performance. It’s also likely that Reddit is just not as great a platform for advertising as others may be.
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As mentioned in earlier reports, it is unknowable how much traffic from the Twitter ads is a result of non-human activity, (bots or AI programs). The high level of female user engagement remains anomalous, in light of Twitter’s active user demographics, as well as the audience characteristics for the subject matter promoted by the campaign. Still, there are other metrics, such as time spent on site and engagement with specific pages from users driven by Twitter ads, which signal that the ads are still reaching a qualified audience and providing some value to the overall campaign.
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The Reddit commentary that led to the major increase in views of the Webull broker guide shows the significant and positive impact of the DRSGME team’s efforts, despite the relatively small size of the DRSGME team, and the community getting the word out about how to participate in the DRS. Also, comparing the number of visitors to the guide on the site, versus the number of visible engagements on the Reddit commentary leading to it, it is clear there are many more people who are being reached by the team’s efforts than what is immediately apparent.
Next week’s report (for week beginning December 12) will be the last report with a full week’s worth of data, as the campaign is scheduled to end on Wednesday, December 21.