Advertising roundup April 2025
As usual, it’s time for my monthly ad roundup!
I do this to demonstrate that it is possible to profitably advertise ebooks once you have enough of them, and to share my mistakes in hopes that people can learn from them.
Let’s see how the ads did across all platforms.
First, Facebook ads, where I advertised THE GHOSTS, CLOAK GAMES/MAGE, and DEMONSOULED.
-THE GHOSTS, $4.79 back for every $1 spent, with 13% of the profit coming from the audiobooks.
-CLOAK GAMES/MAGE, $4.43 for every $1 spent, with 10% of the profit coming form the audibooks.
-DEMONSOULED, $2.21 for every $1 spent.
GHOSTS and CLOAK GAMES/MAGE were way up, while DEMONSOULED was just slightly down from March. I suspect it’s because the ad images for GHOSTS and CLOAK GAMES had female characters while DEMONSOULED had male, so I may experiment a bit with that in May and see what happens.
For Amazon Ads, my main campaign was for HALF-ELVEN THIEF. Some setbacks for this one. Remember that an Amazon ad really needs a sale or a complete KU readthrough for every 6-8 clicks.
-HALF-ELVEN THIEF: $1.07 back for every $1 spent, with a sale/readthrough for every 2.07 clicks.
Why was the profit so low despite the good click rate? Just one of the ads in the campaign had glitched and was bidding for higher clicks, so it was getting a lot of clicks at too high a cost. We caught and adjusted that, so I think it will be more profitable in May.
Better results came from the campaign for HALF-ELVEN THIEF OMNIBUS ONE:
-HALF-ELVEN THIEF OMNIBUS ONE. $12.66 back for every $1 spent, with 63% of the profit coming from the audiobook, and a 1 to 1 click to sale ratio if you include the audiobook.
I don’t think the omnibus cannibalized the ads for HALF-ELVEN THIEF because the culprit was clearly the excessively high bid, and most of the profit for the omnibus came from the audiobook.
Lastly, I did some Bookbub ads for SEVENFOLD SWORD and THE GHOSTS on Apple and Google Play:
-SEVENFOLD SWORD Apple: $5.71 for every $1 spent.
-THE GHOSTS Apple: $7.71 for every $1 spent.
-SEVENFOLD SWORD Google Play: $6.14 back for every $1 spent.
-THE GHOSTS Google Play: $18.62 back for every $1 spent.
So very clearly it is advantageous to advertise permafree books on Apple and Google Play!
As ever, thank you for reading and listening to the audiobooks!
-JM