EXPERIMENT: Lesson Unlocked (16 Views)

Hey, welcome back to my experiment! I served you a Facebook ad because you have viewed 16 or more pages of my website during the past 180 days.

Today’s video lesson is embedded below…

As you know, this is a true “experiment.” I had some basic goals, but I was going to learn from the results and make adjustments along the way.

Recently, I’ve realized that I made a pretty significant mistake that has led to waste. Far too much waste, in fact.

One of my original goals was to reach everyone who was eligible with each ad. And really, that was a good goal. The problem is that “reach” wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to be sure you actually saw it. And that wasn’t necessary.

You see, there’s a difference between serving you an impression and you actually recalling seeing and acting on my ad. While that may be necessary or important in some cases, it simply isn’t in this campaign.

Why? This is my fifteenth lesson. If you are qualified to see this one, I really don’t care if you saw all 14 of the others (and you probably don’t either). Since I link to all prior lessons at the bottom, you can very easily go back and check out anything you missed.

Here’s a visualization of what has happened…

The earlier audiences were much larger than this one (and the more recent ones). I initially used very weak frequency capping (once per day or once every two days). Even when I increased that to once every three, four, or five days, it really wasn’t enough.

Let’s assume a frequency cap of once per five days, but an audience of 6,000 people. If I reach 700 people per day, there will still be people to reach after that fifth day. And Facebook will revert to many of the original people who were already reached.

The result is the frequencies of 3 and close to 4 per lesson that I was getting for the larger audiences. And because of those frequencies, I was unable to get to a 90+ percent saturation point like I did in the later lessons.

So, I should have approached this differently. If I know that I’m going to be producing 10-20 (maybe more) lessons in this series, I shouldn’t have prioritized you seeing and acting on every lesson. I’m more concerned that you see some of what you were served.

I should have used a frequency cap of 1 per 30 days and combined all users, regardless of country, into a single ad set for each lesson. Eventually, I would approach complete saturation for each ad set. And that would give me a much clearer path for when to shut off each one.

While those CPMs would certainly increase with such an approach, I also think I’d save quite a bit of money. With frequencies of 1 instead of 3 or 4, you can probably cut my bill by 3/4.

Luckily, I’m applying what I’m talking about — what I’ve learned here — in a couple of other campaigns. I’ll talk about that more in the next lesson!

If you want to get more tips served to you, you’ll need to first qualify! The next threshold to hit is viewing at least 17 pages of my website in 180 days.

View Prior Lessons

I have multiple engagement thresholds for viewing lessons in this experiment. If you were already ultra-active on my website, it’s possible you’ll skip a few of the initial lessons. As a result, I will link to all prior lessons at the bottom of each one.

Here you go: