August 2026 Ad Review Roundup

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the first of my new format of monthly ad review roundup!

I stopped posting these for a while, but I’m ready to begin again.

To sum up things I have mentioned before, Facebook ads have become far less effective due to all the AI features Meta is jamming into the platform – basically it’s taking away control from the user and handing over control of granular settings to the AI. On paper this is fine, but in practice, the AI is appallingly bad at it. The cardinal rule of online advertising is to show the ad to an audience that is actually interested in it, and Meta’s AI breaks that rule right, left, and center.

For example, Facebook ads expert David Gaughran in his email newsletter described how romance writers typically limited their Facebook ads to a female audience, which makes sense as the romance reader audience is overwhelmingly female. However, the Meta AI in its infinite wisdom decided that, no, the ads would be shown to both men and women. So a lot of very annoyed men suddenly found their feeds filled with romance book ads and expressed their displeasure at length in the comments of the ads. Needless to say, those ad dollars were not effectively spent.

So I have mostly abandoned Facebook ads out of sheer exasperation (with the exception of the occasional boosted post), and have instead been focusing on Amazon and Bookbub ads, and we will see results below.

To be effective, an Amazon ad needs to generate at least one sale per 6 to 8 clicks. I should mention that this doesn’t include any Audible data. The “dollars back” figure is how much I got back per $1 spent on ads. CPC stands for “cost per click.”

AMAZON:

Half-Elven Thief, Dollars Back: $7.20 CPC: $0.53, Sales Per Click: 0.47

Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One, Dollars Back: $6.29 CPC: $0.47 Sales Per Click: 0.11

Ghosts Omnibus One, Dollars Back: $1.22 CPC: $0.51 Sales Per Click: 0.5

Cloak Mage Omnibus One, Dollars Back: $2.97 CPC: $0.43 Sales Per Click: 1.39

Dragonskull Omnibus One, Dollars Back: $4.15 CPC: $0.48 Sales Per Click: 2.75

Linux Command Line, Dollars Back: $1.57 CPC: $0.39 Clicks Per Sale: 3.74

So as we can see, it was a very effective month for HALF-ELVEN THIEF, but that series is still enjoying a halo effect from when DRAGON-MAGE came out in May and HALF-ELVEN THIEF OMNIBUS ONE had a Bookbub feature in June. The “Dollars Back” number will actually be a bit higher once you include Audible numbers, but those have gotten really hard to predict. The Dollars Back for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE will be a lot higher from Audible sales, enough that I’m not concerned that it’s only $1.22 at the moment.

So a good month for Amazon ads. On to Bookbub!

For Bookbub, I only advertise permafree books on B&N, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple, since advertising anything from Amazon (especially Amazon US) is prohibitively expensive on Bookbub. For the stats below, “Book One Conversion” is how many of the clicks converted to free downloads, and “Book Two Conversion” is how many of those free downloads converted to paid sales of book #2 in the series. “Dollars Back”, like Amazon ads, is how much I got per $1 spent on Bookbub ads across the entire series.

BOOKBUB

Silent Order: Iron Hand, Dollars Back: $3.09, Average CPC: $0.33, Book One Conversion: 39% Book Two Conversion: 6%

Sevenfold Sword: Champion, Dollars Back: $3.22, Average CPC: $0.36, Book One Conversion: 37% Book Two Conversion: 4%

Child of the Ghosts, Dollars Back: $8.69, Average CPC: $0.41, Book One Conversion: 30%. Book Two Conversion: 13%

Cloak Games: Thief Trap, Dollars Back: $2.73 Average CPC, $0.35, Book One Conversion: 39% Book Two Conversion: 12%

So as we can see, advertising permafrees on Bookbub, especially THE GHOSTS, works really well. There will be a little bit of audio revenue from this, but not a huge amount since in any given month around 60 to 70 percent of my audio revenue is from Audible.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

-JM