
Reddit's Ad Changes Reduce Your ROI - bold_panda
I&#x27;m a long time Reddit advertiser. I&#x27;ve also written the top ranked post on Google for &quot;Reddit Ads.&quot; Reddit liked the post so much that they feature on a case study on their site.<p>I used to be able to drive $10 CPAs from Reddit ads.<p>It was a simple process. You pick a subreddit that fits well w&#x2F; your product and run an ad in that subreddit. It would only appear in that subreddit.<p>For example, I run a jerky club, so I would advertise in the r&#x2F;jerky subreddit and people would see my ad in r&#x2F;jerky and sign up for a subscription. My ad would only appear in the r&#x2F;jerky subreddit.<p>It was perfect contextual advertising. Redditors see relevant ads, Reddit gets ad revenue, and the advertiser gets ROI.<p>Now, Reddit has changed their system secretly so they can boost their ad revenue and reduce advertiser ROI. CPAs now cost me $100+ on their platform.<p>Here&#x27;s what they&#x27;ve done.<p>Now when I tell Reddit that I want to run an ad in r&#x2F;jerky, instead of ONLY running the ad in the r&#x2F;jerky subreddit, they run the ad to any user who&#x27;s ever visited r&#x2F;jerky or subscribed to it. Of note, they don&#x27;t tell the advertiser about this change anywhere on their new platform.<p>So now my jerky club ad can appear on the front page for ANY Reddit user who&#x27;s ever visited r&#x2F; jerky or subscribed to the subreddit. The ad can appear any place on Reddit totally out of context.<p>This drastically reduces the ROI for the advertiser and it gives Reddit the ability to sell many more impressions.<p>Total deception on the part of Reddit.<p>Disappointed.<p>Maybe someone from Reddit can chime in on this because it&#x27;s very frustrating.
======
jamiequint
Hey bold_panda, I'm the Group PM for Monetization and Growth @ Reddit. I'm
really sorry to hear you're experiencing worse CPMs from this targeting
change. We definitely did not make this change to intentionally deceive you.
You, the advertiser, are our the customer of our ads product. We certainly
don't intend to reduce advertiser ROI, because at the end of the day if you
are unhappy with your ad performance and leave that doesn't boost our ad
revenue at all.

To clarify what happened here, around the time we released our new ads
platform - 6 months ago - we made some changes to targeting. Specifically, we
modified subreddit targeting so that recent visitors to a subreddit or a post
from a subreddit could also qualify to see ads targeted to that subreddit. We
did not make any changes to how users who subscribe to a subreddit see ads
(subreddit subscribers have been eligible to see ads targeted to a subreddit
as long as they are visiting safe for work content since this commit ~2 years
ago:
[https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/f6a37b64c17579b82e22...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/f6a37b64c17579b82e22697b0e29dee50ebd2fd6))

The release of our new ads platform also coincided with a re-release of our
help center docs, which detail how subreddit targeting works. You can see the
specific page here:
[https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeti...](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeting-
your-audience/targeting-subreddits)

As noted there: "Targeting a subreddit means you are targeting the subscribers
and recent visitors of that subreddit. Subscribers can see your ad while
visiting the targeted subreddit and on other subreddits if they recently
visited that targeted subreddit."

We made this change in response to advertiser feedback that they would like to
see an increase in targeted inventory, the idea being that if you're
interested in jerky when you're on /r/jerky you're also interested in jerky
when you're not on /r/jerky. This change has helped a good number of our
advertisers successfully expand budgets while still meeting their return on ad
spend goals, specifically for advertisers that target smaller subreddits
regularly. We of course also limit the subreddits your ads can show on outside
of the targeted subreddit to ones that are similarly "brand safe" to the ones
you are targeting. (e.g. if you are explicitly targeting only NSFW subs your
ad will show up on other NSFW subs, but if you're not targeting NSFW subs your
ad will never show up on a NSFW sub)

While we haven't done any sort of official analysis of CPM changes here, the
expected effect of this change was that advertisers would be able to spend
significantly more budget (a specific request of many of our advertisers). An
expected side effect is that CPMs might possibly increase due to more bids on
a per-impression basis, but since you're bidding on a wider range of inventory
I would expect that you would be able to reduce your CPMs and still spend the
same budget you were spending before, with similar performance.

If there's something I can do to help please don't hesitate to email me
directly (jamie@reddit.com). In the future for ads problems we also hang out
on [https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads)

~~~
abcd_f
> _the idea being that if you 're interested in jerky when you're on /r/jerky
> you're also interested in jerky when you're not on /r/jerky_

Now, that's one fundamentally DUMB idea if you pardon my French.

If I am interested in hemorrhoid suppositories, it doesn't mean I want to hear
about them all the time, e.g. when eating a parfait.

Subs exist because they provide context, focus and isolation of the content.
You start stuffing unrelated crap there - you f*ck up the very core of the
reddit experience.

~~~
StavrosK
To their defense, I'm subscribed to various subreddits but never _ever_ visit
them. I only visit the front page to see their content, so I'd never ever see
your ad if not for this change.

That having been said, this should definitely at least be an option.

~~~
abcd_f
Front page is a fair game. It's a summary of subs, so it's perfectly fine to
have a mix of ads on it.

Just don't show ads for /r/abc when it's not a part of the current view.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, yes, agreed.

------
redditadvthrow
I work at a digital advertising agency as a media buyer. I buy ads for a
living, and spend ~$5MM a year.

Reddit is merely stepping into the big leagues.

What reddit has done is switched from "Contextual Category" (cx cat) targeting
to "Behavioral" (bt) targeting. Usuaully behavioral is much much better, which
is likely why the change was made. But OP was doing contextual cat really
well, so it was more successful than bt.

Reddit made this switch because it will benefit the majority of advertisers,
but hurt the ones who really know what they are doing. Reddit will earn more
from the 80% that see improvement, and therefore spend more. The 20% like OP
will spend less, but it won't matter.

CX CAT = Companies like grapeshot and peer39 use NLP to identify keywords on a
webpage and categorize it. Then advertisers can buy ads on any webpage that is
in those categories. One of my favorite strategies is to buy ads on content
that is predicted to go viral in a certain category (like fashion). These are
ads that HN usually would like because the ad content is similair to the
content of the website. They target a webpage, not a user.

BT = Ads that target a specific user, no matter what website they're on. So
once a user has visited r/jerky, they're tagged as liking beef jerky and could
possibly see beef jerky ads on any site they visit. This is partially how you
get ads that seems very out of place - beef jerky ads on a r/technology.

If you spend time buying media, you know reddit's behavior isn't surprising.
Facebook and Google both have default settings that will burn through your
budget and provide shitty results. Only someone who intimately knows the
platform will be successful. Reddit is merely stepping into the big leagues.

~~~
shostack
Fellow buyer here. This is spot on.

Reddit is going down a well-trod path. First you implement something basic and
allow any advertisers in to generate cash. In Reddit's case, they started with
the easiest and most tolerable form of targeting--contextual.

Now that Reddit has taken outside investment that aims to turn it into the
next feed-based FB competitor, they are following the playbook pretty
obviously. This typically means things like:

\- Improve audience data (see efforts asking for email registration, new
profile pages, new tracking, etc.)

\- Clear out low-quality advertisers and content that scare away big brand
advertisers (see past changes to user, post, and ad policies)

\- Increase impressions and ad engagement by moving from static banners to ads
inserted into the feed to continually create new impressions the more someone
scrolls (see Reddit's mobile app)

\- Increase RPM with more expensive ad formats like video ads (see their June
video ad update, starting to host video, etc.)

Reddit has a somewhat significant disadvantage in all of this in that they are
starting from a place of strong privacy and user-favorable policies. This has
led users to feel that they are the reason Reddit exists and the content
creators and sub owners vs. the reality, which is that they are the product.

This means Reddit has an uphill battle in rolling out these revenue-driving
changes, and many of the more noticeable ones have been met with fairly
significant and visible user pushback. This is why the announcements are
almost always bundled with other positive changes.

I would anticipate further reduction of user privacy, a site-wide conversion
tag to make it easier for them to build stronger user audience profiles for
retargeting and facilitate conversion tracking setup, ads inserted into user
uploaded videos, images and gifs and maybe even comments to increase
impressions, and attempts at monetizing influencers who get paid outside of
Reddit (read: money they don't get) via promoting posts.

As a Reddit user of 12+ years, I've disliked seeing many of these changes. As
an advertiser, I understand why these changes are necessary for them to be
successful in the existing Google/FB duopoly. My hope is that they continue to
honor user wishes for privacy as Reddit would not be what it is today without
users who felt it was a safe space to anonymously post certain things. My
other hope is that they start dramatically improving their ad platform since
pretty much every advertiser I've asked really dislikes it, citing poor UI,
targeting issues, tracking limitations, and quality issues (it definitely
won't perform for everyone).

~~~
BRAlNlAC
>As an advertiser, I understand why these changes are necessary for them to be
successful in the existing Google/FB duopoly.

Well then maybe you can help me understand. I see this going exactly as you
describe, but I don't understand what's wrong about the old advertising
model... just charge more. Direct advertising on reddit seems like it should
be very lucrative. Couldn't they also sell trackers

You wrote

> This has led users to feel that they are the reason Reddit exists and the
> content creators and sub owners vs. the reality, which is that they are the
> product.

The content creators aren't wrong, are they? Granted, to Reddit eveyone who
views the page is the product that they sell to advertisers for money, but the
content creators are the ones drawing in the page views, not reddit.com (or
tumblr.com, etc), and they are selling that content to drive page views. Sure
the dollar is king, but without content to generate pageviews reddit is
nothing. I feel like this is indicative of a destructive and
characteristically narcissistic attitude that pervades the Valley, namely that
people who participate in the online information exchange--not as idle lurkers
but as active participants--are essentially a resource to be extracted. This
won't work long term, the effects are already pretty obvious on Reddit, a lot
of the best content creators have already abandoned most of the site and if
they continue down the road you outline it won just be the best memesters and
the people who have interesting and nuanced personal philosophy (both of which
have mostly vacated reddit in the last 1-3 years), but also anyone who has an
interesting story to tell, which a huge draw for a lot of people. If Reddit
continues to go down the road of "boiling the frog" it will just be Buzzfeed
in a few years, and it's such a waste--I doubt that Reddit has a product (the
product here being a BBS-like service) that can generate a user profile with
comparable value to that of google and facebook, the data is not rich enough.
That said, I'm curious as to why their aren't more trackers on reddit, it
seems like google amazon and facebook would be keen to add their users' reddit
browsing habits to their profile.

~~~
shostack
> "but I don't understand what's wrong about the old advertising model... just
> charge more. Direct advertising on reddit seems like it should be very
> lucrative. Couldn't they also sell trackers"

There have been complaints of reach being too low, so I could see the line of
thought with making the broader targeting the default. Brand advertisers often
don't care as much about the context (as long as it is brand safe) and care
more about the person. It can lead to some issues, but allows targeting at
much greater scale because of the inventory it opens up. I agree with other
comments though that they should leave it as an advanced targeting option. Not
every advertiser performs the same, and some do much better in a narrowly-
configured contextual targeting setup.

> "The content creators aren't wrong, are they?"

I don't think they are. But it isn't that black and white in reality. Many
would not be where they are today without Reddit existing as a platform for
them to grow their audiences. I think they and Reddit are somewhat symbiotic
and a better balance could be reached.

------
jmarbach
I was a long time and happy Reddit advertiser myself up until last month when
their original ad system was deprecated.

I experienced the exact same change in results as the OP describes: An
effective 10x increase in CPA with the same ad copy and what I understood was
the same targeting. When you think you're paying for the same thing but
experience worse results by an order of magnitude, then you know something is
up.

The deceptive nature of this change is that their new ad platform does not
explain any of details that their product manager has graciously offered here.
It's too bad that it has taken a front-page HN post to get this information to
light; this already undermines the trust of the ads product team at Reddit.
Thank you to the OP for explaining the change in laymen's terms.

Next, despite spending tens of thousands of dollars with Reddit, it's nearly
impossible to be in contact with a competent person on their ads team. My
support requests have gone routinely unanswered, or at best I receive a
template response after days and days. After this most recent change I tried a
last resort option of posting in the Reddit ads subreddit, which also received
no response:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads/comments/6wlyya/using_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads/comments/6wlyya/using_the_new_ads_center_is_like_going_back_in/)

The only benefit I've seen in the new platform is conversion tracking, which
is a basic feature that has existed on even the most rudimentary ad systems
for more than a decade. The Reddit Ads platform is way behind the times, which
is sad because they're sitting on some of the most valuable web traffic in the
world.

~~~
jamiequint
Hey jmarbach, we haven't made any changes to targeting in the last month. The
changes described in this post were made 6+ months ago, which means any
performance difference you're seeing over the last month are entirely
coincidental. The deprecation of our old ads platform didn't involve any
changes to the way ads were trafficked on the back-end, it simply turned off
our outdated front-end interface for ad buying.

~~~
huhtenberg
Jamie,

I am a very heavy reddit user and I was constantly finding myself in a
situation when I would see ads for, say, diapers while browsing /r/software. I
was also given an option to "report" such ads for violating Reddit's
advertising guidelines and one of the option was to file it under "This ad is
not relevant to this subreddit".

From users perspective this makes it look like the ad was sneaked onto
/r/software by a disingenuous advertiser.

    
    
      --
    

Also, the very decision to show ads outside of their targeted subs is
EXCEPTIONALLY STUPID and I don't use caps lightly.

Previously they felt and acted as community-oriented announcements - you see
one, look at it, perhaps visit the link, hide it and _be OK with looking at
another one_. But now ads come across as a irrelevant stream of random
bullshit, just like all other ads everywhere else. Reporting doesn't do
anything. Hiding is plain broken on mobile, with hidden ads showing up again
and again with "unhide" option... which would've been funny if it weren't
obnoxious.

The change basically managed to destroy all the goodwill and tolerance I had
for reddit's ads in a matter of days, prompting to add a cosmetic rule to
uBlock. I genuinely wish I didn't have to, because some of sub-restricted ads
were in fact interesting.

------
nulagrithom
EDIT: Found confirmation that this is how it works now.

[https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204584279-Targe...](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204584279-Targeting-Subreddits)

> Targeting a subreddit means you are targeting the subscribers and recent
> visitors of that subreddit. Subscribers can see your ad while visiting the
> targeted subreddit and on other subreddits if they recently visited that
> targeted subreddit.

That's a bummer. I really liked the idea of highly targetted ads in
subreddits...

\---

Looks like they've updated the Reddit ads page since I last looked, but it
seems quite explicit:

'Interests' means shows the ads everywhere. 'Subreddits' means show it _only_
on that subreddit.

[https://i.imgur.com/dm5DRO6.png](https://i.imgur.com/dm5DRO6.png)

Now I noticed that it says the 'Potential Daily Impressions' are too low for
that subreddit. Used to be that it wouldn't let you run the ad this way. Maybe
now it automatically changes to run everywhere if this is the case?

The FAQ states:

> Why can’t I target a specific subreddit?

> We only allow users to target the top 5k most trafficked subreddits, as
> other subreddits do not garner enough traffic for advertisers to hit their
> minimum budget. We will continue on-boarding subreddits as they grow in
> size!

Maybe during the 'ad review' your particular ad was switched to target an
interest in jerky instead of just the subreddit? Was there any sort of
confirmation email about Reddit accepting your ad?

~~~
bold_panda
Subreddit does not mean that it only shows in that subreddit. That's the
problem I outlined in my OP.

Their is no interest category for jerky specifically and Reddit certainly
wouldn't be that proactive as to adjust my ad for me in my experience. It's an
automated system...which is fine...but they swept this targeting change under
the rug.

~~~
nulagrithom
The tooltip says "Targets users that are visting a particular subreddit."

[https://i.imgur.com/g6GlErJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/g6GlErJ.png)

I feel like that's pretty unambiguous... Would be interesting to hear somebody
from Reddit weigh in on this.

(Also it looks like the system isn't automated:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads/comments/6z144n/how_long_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads/comments/6z144n/how_long_does_the_reviewing_process_take/))

------
hysan
Anecdotally, as a user, I actually noticed this two weeks ago when certain ads
started to feel like they were following me around in other subreddits. It
creeped me out enough and was annoying enough (ex: I don't want to hear about
tech jobs when I'm browsing my sports subreddits; it reminds me of work) that
I finally unwhitelisted reddit. Prior to this, I had reddit as one of the very
few whitelisted sites on my adblockers because I felt like the advertising was
in good faith. That it was actually pretty relevant sometimes. It's sad to
read that I wasn't just being paranoid.

------
jedberg
Did you talk to someone at Reddit about this? I'm sure they'd like to know how
you feel. If you haven't, you should send them this feedback directly.

BTW, it's clear as day that they do this on their help page:
[https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeti...](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeting-
your-audience/targeting-subreddits)

~~~
bold_panda
I sent them a long email w/ all my suggestions for improving their platform.
My current opinion of Reddit is that they DGAF about their advertisers.

~~~
raldi
How long ago did you send it?

------
CryoLogic
I ran into the same issues. I had a niche (starwars) product I was advertising
on the starwars subreddit during holidays which would pull in ~$1.5 per $1
spent on Reddit (lifesize wookie cardboard cutout).

After new changes the tactic operates at a loss so I opted to stop advertising
on Reddit all together.

~~~
folli
Did you never run into any problems regarding trademarks?

------
GigabyteCoin
By targeting recent visitors to a subreddit... they are essentially no longer
targeting anyone.

I rarely browse the reddit homepage, but I know that most redditors do.

And what's on the homepage that most everybody who looks at it clicks through
to? Any and every random subreddit you could think of.

I have seen /r/bitcoin on the homepage recently.

I have seen /r/security on the homepage recently.

I have seen /r/rtlsdr on the homepage recently.

That's ridiculous.

If I want to advertise a SDR to the "rtlsdr" crowd, I do not want to pay for
impressions for every single user on reddit who has just recently viewed
/r/rtlsdr because they had a quirky post which resonated with people.

~~~
JorgeGT
To makes things worse, they have also changed the algorithm to promote lesser
known subreddits to r/all (or r/popular) more easily [1]. Which is not always
good, /r/rtlsdr was unusable for a few days after that...

[1] "The algorithm change is fairly simple — as a community is represented
more and more often in the listing, the hotness of its posts will be
increasingly lessened. This results in more variety in r/all"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4oedco/lets_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4oedco/lets_all_have_a_town_hall_about_rall/)

------
leeoniya
this problem is the same for other ad platforms.

i only want to target people on those sites that have contextual meaning to my
offerings and not creepily offer them a chevy truck when they're on a
cosmetics page simply because they once searched for "chevy".

these ad platforms maximize impressions and clicks, not conversions - metrics
that are good for them but usually annoying, misleading and meaningless for
real ROI. and there's not much you can do about it, by design.

~~~
soared
Yeah, by design only experts are going to be super successful. The average
small business owner will waste a lot of money on reddit, facebook, and google
because missing a single checkbox will have massive impacts on your campaign.

~~~
leeoniya
this is 100% true.

for example, using any kind of partial broad match and not having a large
amount of negative keywords (which must be manually managed and maintained
over time) will waste a lot of money.

~~~
soared
Exactly. Experienced users know to use mod-broad. Same with facebook - when
building an audience the interface looks like you're using AND logic, but only
a tiny checkbox will enable AND logic, by default is OR and presented a
deceiving way. (They also enabled insta and fb by default, and used to do fb
display network by default too).

------
fomojola
According to @jamiequint, "You are also able to exclude any specific
subreddits you don't want to show up on.". Would it help to simply exclude
every subreddit except the one you want? You'd need a comprehensive list of
subreddits, but the Reddit API at
[https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/#GET_subreddits_default](https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/#GET_subreddits_default)
seems like it would give you that.

~~~
Jeremy1026
But then you have to manually add the hundreds of thousands of individual
subreddits to your exclusion list, and be prepared to add hundreds more each
week.

------
adrr
That would scare me as advertiser. I don't want my ads on certain sub-reddits.

~~~
jamiequint
PM from Reddit here.

We limit the subreddits your ads can show on outside of the targeted subreddit
to ones that are similarly "brand safe" to the ones you are targeting. (e.g.
if you are explicitly targeting only NSFW subs your ad will show up on other
NSFW subs, but if you're not targeting NSFW subs your ad will never show up on
a NSFW sub). You are also able to exclude any specific subreddits you don't
want to show up on.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Who decides what is "brand safe"? If it's not the ad buyer, that seems like a
huge problem.

The whole point of marketing is to build an association between a context and
a brand - if you can't control what context in which your ad appears then the
platform becomes nearly useless.

Worse than useless, actually, since you could be paying to build association
with context you that damage your brand. I would be outraged if my ad for
/r/luxury ran on /r/couponing, regardless of whether you consider it to be
NSFW.

~~~
soared
Brand safety is about nsfw/extremist/gore/etc content. Brand safety is not the
difference between r/luxury and r/couponing. I've never advertised on reddit,
but many platforms allow categorical targeting, and categorical exclusions so
you can explicitly exclude things that are outside the realm of brand safety,
but would still hurt your brand.

~~~
jackgolding
I agree with soared, there are standards for this (generally around not
getting penalised by the ad exchange you are running on.)

------
Semaphor
That explains why I've recently been seeing so many crap ads all over reddit.
Guess it's time to re-enable my adblocker over there.

------
michaelbuckbee
Agreed that they should make every change documented and explicit - if you
didn't realize they made this change -> that's squarely on them.

That being said, this is a welcome change because up until now the inventory
has been so small on almost any individual subreddit as to make the time spent
setting up and managing ads on the platform ROI negative.

------
pryelluw
Thanks for the heads up. I wasnt aware of the changes. Reddit had proven to be
a good ad platform for my clients (I do media buys for others). Will have to
reconsider using it.

------
mod
FWIW I saw a jerky club ad, probably yours, on my new account in the past day
or two. I have never visited /r/jerky or anything else remotely related to
jerky.

Either the algo is wrong or you bought it wrong or it was someone else's ad.

It was a terribly annoying ad, it read like "hey, i like jerky but it's so
expensive, so i set up a club where you get jerky every month blah blah blah"

Basically tried not to look like an ad.

------
thenomad
Thanks for posting this.

I was considering an ad buy on Reddit next month to promote a niche product -
I'll probably still do it, but I'll be a lot more ready to pause if the ROI
isn't backing out, because now I know why.

(/u/bored_panda - please consider reinstating the tight subreddit targeting
option of the past!)

------
cm2012
This has been true for years I thought.

------
apexalpha
Reddit has ads? I thought the Reddit Gold funded them?

------
SomeStupidPoint
Don't worry, reddit is hurting themselves too:

Now about 50% of the time I go to reddit, I have a jarring, awkward experience
that reminds me they're datamining my history instead of a mellow, nearly
invisible on that made subreddits feel more like a community.

I'm sure _reddit 4: digg sum moar!_ will be a great production by the reddit
team and look forward to all the change it'll bring.

~~~
AlexandrB
Yup, I always appreciated how ads on reddit were tied to the subreddit I was
on. Now it sounds like they're not and it's going to be the same shitstorm of
irrelevant ads as on the internet at large. I look forward to seeing ads for
products I already bought over and over again on every subreddit I visit.

------
nla
All they're doing is retargeting people, which is no different than what the
rest of the online ad industry does.

------
grepthisab
This seems pretty annoying. Do/did they tell you anywhere that your ad would
_only_ appear on the specified subreddit previously, or was this just expected
behavior?

In any case, you should stop advertising with them if you don't like their
business practices. Semi-unrelated, but I stopped using Reddit a bit ago, it
became too much of a haven for racism, misogyny, and an endless stream of
sockpuppets touting white supremacy views.

~~~
jasondemeuse
Reddit is way more valuable if you subscribe to smaller discussion-based subs
that have stricter rules. I haven't gone on r/all or any default subs in years
but I still get a lot out of my front page since I try to be selective about
which ones I subscribe to.

------
IAmGraydon
The fact that a $10 CPA was every considered acceptable is crazy, specially
for the product you sell. Considering how cheap Reddit's impressions are, your
conversion rate must be just a hair above zero. How do you know that your
results aren't due to saturation and burnout? Once you've squeezed every bit
of blood from a turnip, it becomes exponentially expensive to continue to do
so. Maybe there just isn't a market for your product. IMO, if you have to show
more than 1000 people your product to sell one, you have a product problem.

~~~
zer00eyz
> The fact that a $10 CPA was every considered acceptable is crazy,

I know plenty of industry where a $10 CPA would be a massive discount. $100
clicks aren't unheard of or uncommon for niche high value products.

> IMO, if you have to show more than 1000 people your product to sell one, you
> have a product problem.

This is how niche products work, you need to hit a lot of eyeballs before you
find the RIGHT person who converts.

If you have high customer satisfaction and a good retention program you can
make a business out of numbers like this. Are you going to make a billon
dollars on it, probably not but you can live comfortably off of it.

