Advocacy Campaign Report
Week of November 28, 2022
Thank you for your interest in this pro-DRS advocacy campaign. This is the sixth 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
Week six of the campaign saw all around notably greater performance from the Meta and Twitter ads, likely as a result of more optimizations applied in week five. This was also the second week of the Reddit ads being live, although they did not see any upward momentum in performance versus the prior week.
Site visits driven by the ads increased by 36% (from 1,017 to 1,378), and at a 24% lower average cost per site visit (from $1.65 to $1.25):
Total spending, impressions, CPM, and CPC remained relatively stable. Although, total clicks increased by 74% (from 81k to 141k) and CTR increased by 72% (from 8.19% to 14.09%).
Although Meta and Twitter showed remarkable activity after a poor display in the prior week, total site traffic saw a modest increase, largely as a result of less direct traffic than in week five.
Meta Performance
(Facebook and Instagram)
Meta showed phenomenal recovery in performance, delivering 84 site visits in week six (up from 30 in week five), at a cost of $4.04 per site visit (63% decrease WoW):
Spending remained consistent. Though, impressions decreased by 78%, from 307k down to 66.5k for the week, while clicks more than doubled to 1,038. This subsequently drove the CTR up more than nine-fold, from 0.17% to 1.56%.
The biggest change that happened was pausing all of the lowest performing ads in week five, which may likely have been the reason for such dramatically improved performance. The only ads now running on Meta are Grandma’s Recipe, Whisper, Lady Yellow, and the carousel ad featuring Crypto Padlock, Seedling, and Whisper.
Similar to week five, the majority of site visits and clicks came from people falling into higher age demographics. The breakdown of site visits equaled out to 52% from people ages 55+, 37% from ages 35-54, and 11% from ages 18-34. By gender, site visits in week six split to 52% female and 48% male.
French users again accounted for the majority of site visits by country, making up 80% in week six. This was followed by users in Germany, who delivered 10% of site visits for the week and at the highest CTR of 2.88%, which was 85% higher than the total average CTR for the week.
Grandma’s Recipe continues to be optimized over other ads (due to the algorithm), delivering the most site visits, at 73% of the week’s total (see ad previews here). It also achieved a conversion rate 27% higher than the total weekly average for the Meta campaign, and a cost per site visit of $2.89 (28% lower than the weekly average cost per site visit).
Reddit Performance
The Reddit ads showed no positive change in performance during week six, delivering six site visits at a cost of $60.57 per visit (26% increase WoW):
Impressions and clicks both increased slightly, while CPM, CPC, and CTR remained stable. Although, the conversion rate was about equivalent to Twitter and decreased by 23% week over week.
Through the first two weeks of the Reddit ad campaign, the ads driving the most site visits are Couch Man and Grandma’s Recipe, respectively delivering 31% and 23% of total site visits (see ad previews here).
Still, there is still not enough data to draw any conclusive insights about the audience being reached directly by the Reddit ads. Although, there does continue to be organic engagement within subject-relevant subreddits, highlighting visibility of and positive sentiment towards the ads, which indicates they are meeting users in ways that would not be apparent by analyzing the campaign KPIs in isolation.
Twitter Performance
Twitter showed much improved performance in week six, delivering 1,288 site visits for the week (31% increase WoW) at a cost of $0.79 per site visit (24% decrease WoW):
Additionally, week six achieved the second highest number of weekly site visits for the campaign, close to the most successful week of the campaign so far (week three), despite having a 23% lower budget and serving a near equivalent number of impressions. Versus week three, cost per site visit was also 18% lower, CPM was 23% lower, clicks were 21% greater, and CTR was 21% higher.
The most likely reason for this striking improvement is that the Twitter ads were also optimized by pausing the lowest performers in week five, same as with Meta. The top performing ads this week were Whisper, the carousel ad featuring Ringo/Lady Yellow/Ethel, and the static ad with Ethel (see ad previews here).
Sweden continues to be the country delivering the most site visits, with 40% of this week’s total and at $0.50 per site visit. This was again followed by Belgium, delivering 18% of the week’s site visits, with Denmark and France following.
Site Activity
Week six saw a steady rise in traffic coming out of week five, both in new and return visitors, with a 7% increase in unique visitors week over week. This was primarily the result of the ads showing better performance this week, and visits driven by the ads continues to be the greatest source of site traffic since campaign launch.
Direct traffic, the second highest source of traffic by category, saw a 13% decrease week over week, while organic search visitors increased by 20%:
Average session duration (time on site per visit) for all traffic sources saw a combined 17% decline week over week. This was primarily impacted by direct traffic, which singularly saw a 40% decline WoW in average session duration. Traffic from the paid ads alone saw a modest increase of 3.5% WoW for average session duration.
Unique return visitors to the site from all sources increased by 9%, although those driven from the ads alone increased by 27% week over week:
Aside from the guide for Vanguard seeing traffic return to levels closer to what was being sustained prior to week five of the campaign, there was no remarkable activity observed this week for engagement with the broker guides:
Conclusion and Next Steps
In light of the demographics of the audience, (that has gathered around the DRS and $GME investment phenomenon on Reddit, specifically skewing predominantly towards males), it is encouraging to see that the Meta ads are reaching users belonging to higher age groups and skewing slightly more towards females. Since the goal of the campaign is to increase larger public awareness of DRS and the GameStop stock, the current ads on Meta are an important platform to continue outreach efforts.
The Reddit ads did not show improvement in delivering site visits in their second week of activity, and in conjunction with a high cost per site visit and low conversion rate, they will be monitored closely in their third week, with the potential of them being halted altogether if performance does not advance.