Would you like to see the results for our second crowdfunded video ad campaign for Steemit on Facebook and YouTube? If you voted on the campaign and wanted me to do this, I hope these results will help you see exactly what we've got out of it.
Read this post or watch the original video from YouTube to see the ad campaign results.
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has all of the highlights in screenshots!
Steem Facebook and YouTube Video Ad 2 Results
Here's the post on Steemit, which I think is the most amazing thing you can do on online advertising.
I'm extremely grateful that the Steemit community a month ago gave me $1,161.14 to advertise Steemit on my Facebook page and YouTube channel. That is a beautiful arrangement to get paid to advertise videos I've made, that's a great collaboration.
Now, I'm doing this report first because this ad campaign is finished.
I'm still running video ad number one and I've only spent about two-thirds of it, so I'm still going to run it for a month or so longer.
If you'd like me to do more like this, would you please upvote this post or like the video and any other future posts related to this?
Now, I'll show you first the basic proposal, if you're not familiar with it.
Last month on Steemit, I made a new video about an hour long. I then made a post on steemit.com offering that I would take any of the rewards to use the exact video linked in the post. You can see the video ad on Facebook and on YouTube.
Then I clearly defined the purposes, I showed some of the initial results for the other ads, and then I said, "Anything you upvote, I will use that to make a new ad."
So here's the ad on Facebook.
The video has got 549,000 views on Facebook now as a result of the advertising I've done on it. You can see the very simple post here with the video, it also got 745 shares on it, tons of interactions and 319 comments on the video, and that is the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the other things that have happened.
This is just what happened on Facebook just for one specific form of the ad. I'll show you much more here after having given you the initial results. These were ads run on Facebook and on YouTube.
Facebook ad campaign
Now, here are the Facebook ad campaigns I've run. I spent $890 on Facebook ads to get the results I showed you.
Some people who've tried their own Facebook ads think I'm lying, that I can't get this level of results. I show you the exact data here, 549,000 views for $890.00 on Facebook.
One reason I can do this is because I've already spent so much on Facebook ads that I'm not making a first impression. It's much easier to get engagement with my ad because often I've reached people 5, 10, 15 or 20 times already with ads. It's much easier to get someone to start watching my ad. The second main reason is that I used video ads. Just using linked ads is usually way more expensive.
Finally, I advertised worldwide. I don't just limit my audience to the US because everyone around the world is equally as valuable as a person, and therefore I advertised to the whole world. I let Facebook give me the best deal, the most views for the least amount of money which gives an outstanding result.
I'm doing the exact same strategy to make sales on one of my courses on a different campaign, and this has made $1,251 in sales on about $300 in ad spend and that is to the same audience.
Some people suggest, "Your all worldwide audience aren't valuable. You got to advertise in the US and Canada."
That is completely wrong according to the data.
I have run very few of the Facebook ads in the US, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom because it's so expensive, and I'm still making sales without using most of those countries for most of the ad budget.
So if I'm making that kind of sales as I just quickly showed over here, the $1,251 in sales on about $300 in ad spend on my own campaign for my university to the exact same audiences I'm running this Steem ads to, these ads to the Steem audiences are very valuable and they do reach any country in the world where people are on Facebook.
Facebook tends to prioritize most interactive users for the very lowest price.
So let's take a look at the Facebook ads, and then I'll go into the YouTube ads a bit more.
These are the results from the Facebook ads, and I put these for the campaign that I have featured here.
I've got other campaigns, but these are just the ones that are running right now, and I'm going to turn all these off because I've spent more than the budget I was given. I spent $809 on Facebook and I think I spent several hundred dollars over the budget I was given.
These are the basic results that are most important.
You can see the Cost per Page Like, which is a good indication of how much people liked the ad. The Cost per Post Share is one of the most very valuable things that can happen and that's why these ads are so effective. When you can pay a dollar to get someone to actually share the post with a friend, share the post on their own Facebook, that is the ideal scenario for getting results, because once a person shares it, they can get that whole viral effect going.
Now, the Cost per Link Clicks is another very valuable metric and you can see link clicks on average for about $0.20 each, and those are link clicks getting people to go over and look at Steemit.
The Cost per Website Conversion is not as relevant for this, and then you've got the Cost per Thousand Impressions. So this is what makes these ads so effective that I can pay an average of $0.36 on these ads to get impressions a thousand times on Facebook.
I ran this to people interested in "Bitcoin," but this particular ad was also designed to reach out to bloggers, people who want to post on Steemit.
This ad was also designed to reach out to people interested in "Digital Currency" and "Cryptocurrency."
However, I also tried to reach "WordPress" users to get people not even in the cryptocurrencies yet and to get them there. So the engagement on all of these ads was good, I'm very happy at the results.
You can see hundreds of thousands of views on the videos and over 912,000 people reached on this ad.
This means that Facebook showed this ad to 900,000 different people, and that is outstanding for branding and for account signups. I think this is some of the most valuable advertising we can do for Steemit.
These are the four ad sets I ran and they all did pretty equally well. In summary, this was an outstanding Facebook ad campaign. I don't know how great it was compared to anyone else's Facebook ads, but this looks like it was a really good campaign: $890 spent to get out to 912,000 people, that's outstanding.
I would love to do some more of these and try some different approaches. You can see the results all on this post right here.
What I'll do now is go over and show you the YouTube part of this as well, and I’ll add up the budget that I spent on both of these together.
YouTube ad campaign
I ran ads on two different platforms. I used Google AdWords for video, which is how you run YouTube ads, and then I also did Facebook ads.
I’ll add up the total I spent here: I spent $890.97 on Facebook ads plus $491.17 on YouTube ads. So I spent a total of $1,382 on this, meanwhile I was given $1,161 by the Steemit community.
I actually tendered 28% over budget on this so what I’m going to do now is turn this ad off today because I’ve already gone over budget on it.
In fact, I don’t want to turn it off all the way, but I’ll just turn it down a bit. I’ll turn it down to $2 a day and just keep spending my own ad money on this because this is a very valuable thing for me, as well as for Steemit.
On YouTube, it doesn’t look nearly as impressive as the Facebook stats. You can see how many people the ads reached, which is 65,000 people reached on YouTube, not nearly as many clicks. This is why I spent a smaller portion of the budget on YouTube ads, only $491. I spent a significantly smaller proportion on YouTube ads.
Now, what’s really cool with YouTube ads is that you get a lot deeper interest.
On Facebook, people often don’t watch videos that long. Facebook people just quickly look at the video, and maybe click on a link.
What you can see on YouTube is that out of everyone who watched the video, even though it was a lot more expensive, 2% of people watched all the way to the end of the video. That is powerful. When someone actually sits there and watch the whole video, that’s very likely to get them to sign up for Steemit and start using it.
On YouTube, one of the main things to get is minutes watched.
So if look at my YouTube account, what you’ll notice is that these ads help out with getting the minutes watched. This is the video I advertised on YouTube. This is where people actually found it from.
What stands out on YouTube, when you run YouTube ads on videos, it helps them get found naturally in search. It makes it easier for these videos, when you advertise them, to get found higher in search, especially when on average a video’s getting watched 10 minutes on YouTube search, that’s really good.
That’s exactly what we’re looking for. The ads on YouTube help it rank high in search and suggested videos, and then on external website, and also on browse features.
Now, the actual numbers of views obviously does not compare to Facebook. If we say, “Well, there are half million views on Facebook, all these likes and all these shares.” Yes, that directly doesn’t compare to Facebook. However, what we’re doing on YouTube is going after the power users, essentially.
On YouTube, we’re trying to get another person like me for example who’s searching on YouTube to find the video about Steemit, and then get converted to Steemit. On YouTube, we’re essentially trying to reach the very best opportunities more effectively.
Facebook makes a great outreach to the masses, but YouTube is really good to reach the exact people you want to reach with a really powerful message.
This video is called "#1 New Social Media and Blogging Website? Steemit!" and when someone’s searching for an alternative to WordPress, a new social media and blogging website, when they’re watching other videos already about Steemit or they're watching videos looking for a new social media website, having a video positioned when they’re looking for it at just the right time, can make a gigantic difference.
I spent the majority of the money on Facebook ads, and then I advertised this YouTube video to both convert people already following me. For the majority of the ads on YouTube I used remarketing, which means I advertised to people who have already seen one of my videos before, and then are seeing another video of mine, because I’m working to bring my own audience, who I’ve already started a relationship with, over to Steemit.
Therefore, that’s usually one of the most effective ways to spend money, to bring my own audience over to Steemit, and then position to get the most new users, the most influential users, the biggest investors to come invest in Steemit and get excited even outside of the crypto world.
Final words
I appreciate you watching this review of the ad campaign I did. I hope this has given a comprehensive summary of the ads I ran. I hope I'm presenting you exactly how much I spent.
I’m going to spend a little bit more on my own, but this is the final amount for the contribution: $1,382 spent out of $1,061 given.
I appreciate the chance to do this and I would love the chance to do more ads like this.
However, after doing two of these campaigns and being given more than $4,000, I feel I need to fully present the results of a finished campaign before I go ask for another one.
In summary, this has been extremely effective. If you want to advertise anything, I hope showing you this entire approach is really helpful, because this is the best of what I’ve found in six years online for doing advertising. This helps everyone involved the very most.
Everyone who funded this only gave voting power, they didn’t give any actual money. Meanwhile, the money I received helped me promote Steemit.com, promote my own business and build my own followers. There was no long drawn-out process, I made the video on faith. I made this request after having already made the ad, making something like a hour-long video presenting this.
I did all the work upfront and simply asked for the money. No one actually had to give me money. I got the money, spent the money and I think I helped produce some awesome results for getting new signups on Steemit and promoting just general awareness of Steemit, which can then be continued to convert that general awareness to new users, new investors, new bloggers and amazing opportunities.
Thank you for reading this post, if you found it helpful and you'd like more like this, would you please upvote or leave a like on the video wherever you are at.
If you’d like to join us on Steemit, this is amazing, and that’s why I’m pumping it over and over again because I’ve invested in it and I think this is an awesome thing we can all do together and get in from the beginning.
I love you.
You’re awesome.
If you would like me to do more ad campaign posts with new videos, would you please upvote this because that will inspire me to film another video and do ad campaign #3?
Love,
Jerry Banfield