How much should I spend on ads?
How to work out a sensible ad budget, why platforms need enough to learn, and how to scale what works.
There's no single right number, but there is a sensible way to work it out.
Start with what a customer is worth
Work out roughly how much profit a new customer brings you. That tells you how much you can afford to pay to win one, which is your target cost per acquisition (CPA). See What is a conversion?
Give the platforms enough to learn
Ad platforms learn from results. A budget that only produces a handful of conversions a month gives them very little to learn from, so performance takes longer to improve. If your budget is small, it's usually better to focus it on one or two platforms than to spread it thinly across four.
Commit to a test period
Plan for at least a month. The first one to two weeks are the learning phase, so judging results before then is misleading. See The learning phase explained.
Scale what works
Once you know your cost per result, increase your budget where it's working. In Snifferdog, edit your brief with the new budget and run it through again.
Rules of thumb
- Only spend what you're comfortable treating as a test for the first month.
- Fewer platforms with more budget each usually beats more platforms with less.
- Make sure tracking is working first, or you won't know what your money achieved.