Several years ago, I used to make a lot of money using Google AdWords to send paid traffic to affiliate link-heavy buying guides.
It was one of my best kept secrets.
Then, Amazon changed their commission structure the first time.
But I was still able to eke out a profit on some campaigns.
And then there were more Amazon changes and the end of easy profits for me.
Lately I’ve been wondering if I could so something similar by switching things up a bit and focusing on increasing display ad earnings.
The Experiment
I was curious if I could use Facebook ads to drive traffic to an informational blog post that has a high RPM with Mediavine and that also takes advantage of video ads via Mediavine.
So, I decided to test this setup for the period June 26, 2021 through July 26, 2021.
I set up a Facebook ad to drive traffic to the high RPM blog post at just $5 per day.
I don’t know a lot about Facebook ads as I just dabble in it here and there, hence the low $5/day ad spend.
One thing to keep in mind about this experiment is that I started it at the end of a quarter (highest RPM earnings period for a quarter) and finished it in the first month of a quarter (the lowest RPM earnings period for a quarter).
I think this is important to know because the timing for doing something like this can really have an effect on the results.
So, this was a bit of a messy experiment…but data is data, so I’m sharing the results anyways.
The Results
At the end of this little experiment period, my Facebook ads result was just okay.
I ended up spending $0.09/per click, which I think is just okay. Ideally I’d like to have gotten closer to $0.03/per click.
And my total ad cost on Facebook was $147.59 for a total of 1,695 clicks through to my site.
During the experiment period, the total amount earned from the ads in this post that I was sending people to via the Facebook ad was $121.65.
And the total RPM for the post was $108.52 (it was just $50.86 in the prior month, so all this extra direct traffic boosted the page’s RPM).
What’s interesting is how the pageviews (1,121) don’t match the clickthroughs from the ad (1,695), but whatever.
So, that income is just for the ads in the post. And remember, I have a video showing ads in the post as well.
But, the data here is really messy because this video is also my default video to show across the site on pages that don’t have other videos since it has a decent RPM.
So, for the experiment period, the video brought in $191.16 across 29,110 views. You can also see the previous months performance in the screenshot.
Now, let’s dig in to see how much the video made from the Facebook ads traffic.
The easiest way, I think, to do this calculate the earnings per single view and then multiply that by the number of views to the post (1,121).
If my math is correct, that amounts to just $7.36.
That means this blog post earned a total of $129.11 during the experiment period.
The end result is a net loss of ($18.58).
There is also the possibility that people stayed on the page long enough for a second video to queue up after this one, thus earning me more money. But I have no way of knowing if that happened, and if it did, how many times it happened.
Again, this isn’t really a clean experiment so that data is a bit messy, but still decent enough to draw some general conclusions.
Final Thoughts
One thing you cannot measure from this experiment is the value of the people who ended up liking the Facebook page, meaning that I now have the ability to market to new people.
Of course, it’s also difficult to determine just how valuable those new people who liked the Facebook page really are in the grand scheme of things since visibility is so poor for Facebook pages.
I feel like a month was a decent amount of time to gather data, but I do wonder if I’d run the ads for longer if my CPC would have gotten lower and resulted in profitability for the experiment?
Basically, if I knew more about Facebook ads, then it’s possible that I could actually do this and it be a profitable endeavor.
If you’re doing this or have tested something similar, then I’d love to hear about how it worked out before I test this again.
Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.
An interesting experiment and I’m glad you didn’t go too far into the red. I got excited when I saw the post title and I thought ad arbitrage was back 🙂
Maybe it is for some. I’d imagine the Facebook ad experts have it down to a fine art. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I think it can be done and that some people have to be doing it, but sadly I don’t know enough about it (yet) to make the numbers work.
I did something like this and my fb ads account is banned immediately. 🙁
Interesting data and thank you for sharing!
I have two comments/suggestions based on my experience with ad networks that might help with future experiments.
1. Ad networks value traffic from Social at a much lower rate than Organic Google traffic. It seems bizarre that the RPM for your page went up instead of down just based on the origin of the traffic. It suggests that there is an error in the numbers somewhere?
2. Ad networks value desktop traffic more than mobile traffic. You can set your FB ads to only target desktop users to get the most bang for your ad bucks.
You said something interesting about “how the pageviews (1,121) don’t match the clickthroughs from the ad (1,695)”. When I use to run FB campaigns I noticed this also. I wondered if FB was scalping the traffic with bots to my site or doing something underhanded. I haven’t been able to prove it but I have heard similar reports from people observing the discrepancies in clickthroughs on the ad to pageviews on the site. Do you think you might look into this further or chalk it up to the cost of doing business with FB?
Do you happen to know if growing your overall monthly traffic numbers through FB ads is frowned upon when it comes to getting approved for the Mediavine network?
I think they prefer most of your traffic be organic, but it won’t hurt you to have traffic from ads. With FB ads, it will just show up as social traffic
What about google ads?
I’ve only tried AdWords with affiliate posts, not informational ones.
you can set the cpc on 0.01 and you will profit like 7 Times up of your investment with this rpm! and i ask mediavine about paid traffic and said there are no such a thing about to low your profit cause paid traffic for the rpms!Try it!
im talking about google display ads