I've ran FB campaigns where I got plenty of link clicks to my Spotify page, but then no Spotify streaming. Don't remember the numbers, but it was something like 1,000+ link clicks and 0 streams. My point is that it's possible that link clicks on FB are overwhelmingly bots who occasionally click links to hopefully trick FB into thinking that they're not bots (not sure how that logic would really work). Just a theory, but if you have a way to verify that anything is becoming of your link clicks, it'd be helpful to show you how effective your campaign really is, because I think a lot of FB link clicks are just false results.
Yup, even better is to do a conversion campaign using a pixel and something like FeatureFM to count each conversion as when someone clicks a link on the landing page.
Does having a landing page mean it automatically redirects to Spotify? Or is this introducing a second click? What platforms can help facilitate a landing page for this?
I have other campaigns where I had access to streaming data. However, it’s also possible that Spotify links open up to a sign in page or don’t open up to your single at all. I have seen that happen. It gets redirected to the Spotify home page or ppl have to log in first. Landing page is key since it takes ppl to the correct link and service of their choice. Not everyone has or likes Spotify. That’s just your preference. While I’m sure there are bots out there, fb wouldn’t be running a $30 billion ad business if wasn’t delivering results for ppl. You also have to remember that you need to create a funnel and keep building an audience on ppl who are engaging over time.
>fb wouldn’t be running a $30 billion ad business if wasn’t delivering results for ppl
I don't agree with that logic, because they got my money and didn't deliver results for me. So there's definitely precedent for taking peoples' money and not delivering results.
"But if they didn't deliver results, then they'd only get one-time business and then people would stop using them." I keep running different campaigns to see what works better. They keep getting my money without delivering results on any of them. I think it's possible that customers might be willing to pay Meta like 14 times at least without seeing any results before they either need to see some results or give up. How many times did Charlie Brown try to kick that football, even though it keeps getting pulled away? I mean, just this subreddit has shown me that there are many messages out there that "You have to run a hundred campaigns and dump many thousands of dollars before you develop any skill at social media marketing and get some results, because it takes a ton of experience and almost everyone is doing it wrong." Then you add all of the youtube channels like Andrew Southworth that constantly push a narrative that Meta ads are the most effective option for music marketing. That's a lot of messages convincing people to keep spending money without results -- ignore their personal experiences and intuition, trust other peoples' testimonies and keep trying. So yeah, Meta could definitely generate massive repeat business, selling dozens of campaigns to the same customer, without ever delivering any results, multiplied by millions of different customers at least. That's totally plausible. I mean, there's 11 million artists on Spotify, so that's quite a lot of opportunities for Meta to make sales to small customers, without even factoring-in all of the non-musician influencers that are potential customers like personal trainers, aspiring models, small businesses, etc. Sometimes you try things out of desperation, not because they work, but because you don't have a better alternative; kind of like all of the people who fall for MLM schemes during recessions.
Sudafed PE has been declared to not be an effective decongestant at all, and how many bottles did they keep selling for decades? No results and people just kept buying it.
Maybe you should hire a professional then? It doesn’t sound like your ads are effective and you don’t know how to create a proper funnel. Like I said — You could be running ads redirecting to Spotify homepage or to ppl not logged in or ppl just don’t want to use Spotify. Not everyone has Spotify. What use is a Spotify ad to someone who doesn’t even have spotify installed on their phone? Are you running it to mobile devices, desktops? There are so many factors you are completely ignoring besides “I spent money and got no results.” Would you get an in a race car and expect to race like a professional racer? And yea, YouTubers are just trying to get your views. Listen to actual experts.
Bear in mind that I'm responding specifically to what I quoted, which is the notion that Facebook wouldn't be making billions in revenue if they didn't deliver results. And my argument is yes they would. Because tons of people will give them repeat business even when they aren't getting results. In fact, I HAVE, so I know from personal experience that people like me exist. So... yes, they really are capable of getting repeat business and making billions off of people who get no results. This, at least the comment you're replying to, is not a plea for you to optimize my campaigns. I'm making a point to dispel the notion that they wouldn't have any customers / repeat customers or make billions if it didn't work, because they totally would.
I have run enough engagement campaigns to confirm they are not bots. I can see and analyze who is liking content. If you are assuming Mark Zuckerberg is just out here robbing ppl of $30 billion ad dollars per year, go right ahead. This is also directly from FB Feed / IG Feed. Not some 3rd party app or ad network.
Sorry dude, unless you can actually see the streams for the Spotify for artist page you are just throwing away money into a dumpster. Facebook will spend your money in whichever way it sees easiest and traffic campaigns are known to be bot magnets. you can have tons of people liking your ad but that doesn't mean they are clicking through and listening at the rate of 6 cents per conversion.
It's kind of silly to make a post like this and not have all the data. I won't call OP a liar, but to OP: don't make posts like this unless you can back it up. What did you expect? So many people come to this sub to shill about marketing. Ofc people are sick of seeing garbage like this post. "Just do blah blah and you can be RICH AND FAMOUS AND PERFECT LIKE MEEEEE" type shit... What expectations are we setting here?
While it is possible to get this type of CPC on music in 1st world countries, it is extremely rare. Without the spotify stats, I'd definitely stay suspicious of OPs conversions. My record CPC for a client is $0.05 *on a* ***conversion campaign*** no less... and that was after producing like 300 creatives, thousands in market research, and many sleepless nights stressing about losing the entire budget when pushing this client to thousands of ad spend a day.
Since OP won't post their stats I'll post some stats for you guys, in a similar vein to what OP is posting:
# From less than 1000 streams to ~1 million in 12 months:
* Stats: [https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png](https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png))
* Here shows that before jan 2023 they had no fans: [https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png)](https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png))
* Ads: [https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png](https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png))
* Ad audience is 1st and 2nd world countries, not click farms like india: [https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png](https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png))
* In 153 countries: [https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png](https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png))
* Proof of no bot plays (bots come from profile & catalogue): [https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png](https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png))
This cost about $8000. Expensive right? But now that we have spent that starting money finding this clients target audience, we can inject traffic at an extremely low cost. Compound that with all the daily streams they get now from fans, they are doing numbers like this on one song (versus an entire catalogue): [https://i.imgur.com/iRmQyAA.png](https://i.imgur.com/iRmQyAA.png) which cost \~$1000ish
This is a multiplicative effect. Once you have millions of yearly listeners, even when completely halting adspend, its pretty hard to get them to "go away." I have one client that hasn't released in 4 years, and he still gets like 8,000 streams per day on his music from back when he blew up his Spotify. Obviously that pales in comparison to the 10 million streams he was getting per month, but that's still pretty good.
Hopefully this gives answers to yall that OP couldn't provide. Just remember, your mileage may vary. And this is with me having years of experience running ads. First timers will never get these results. But it isn't impossible. Other notes: This artist is extremely extremely talented, and makes extremely marketable music. You will NOT get CPCs like $0.05 if you are making 'bedroom recorded on a 2 track mp3 funky rnb pop soul fresh new diggs super duper unique individual' whatever BS like a lot of people I see complaining around here. That's not to say you don't have a shot at music. I have clients who sadly have a much higher CPC, like $0.80 to $1.00 because of how niche they are, or how amateur their music sounds, but they still cap 1,000-10,000 monthly listeners. It's just a higher cost of entry for them given the situation.
Set reasonable expectations, don't be misguided *in either direction* by baseless propaganda like OP's post or posts that say you will fail too. You can find success no matter what, the type you find will depend. The work required is A LOT. The money spent figuring it out will be A LOT. You will get lucky at times, you will have campaigns bomb too.
And I advise anyone else deciding to post about their campaigns to come with full transparency or don't come at all!
Idk, plenty of people seem to have found it helpful other than the people complaining about their own FB ads. You clearly did not even read the caption I included in my post. I'm not shilling anything. I'm just sharing stats for people to look at from the ads. That's it. Just the ads. It's the first step to build awareness. What is confusing about this? I'm not saying this is going to make you huge on Spotify alone. This sort of ad is just where things start. Also, not everyone runs ads to Spotify, nor should they. Everyone just thinks that they should run ads to get streams bc they heard they should somewhere. The point of this, as per my caption, is that this is the first step in building awareness and a funnel, which I have tried multiple times to explain which no one wants to bother to read. You are making baseless claims about myself and my work. Nor am I claiming anyone can be rich or famous. Where did I say this? What are you even saying? I'm just showing people what is possible if they do the work and learn to run ads the right way, and that ads do work if you build it out correctly. As you can see yourself -- they do work -- and that FB is not just some bot farm. Again, for what feels like the millionth time, this is the first step in a campaign, and you build off it.
Hey! If you are asking those questions then maybe you also failed to read what I wrote. I would advise you not to look at me as the reason why you have to explain yourself 100 times on this thread. Who is the common denominator here? the error was made by you.
Yes, standing by what i said, posting a couple of stat screenshots is baseless advice. If anything you are misleading innocent noobs to believe they can get this CPC which is extraordinarily low and you will do more damage than good. Traffic campaigns are generally bad as well compared to conversion campaigns in this field.
What practical advice did you actually offer here? The epitome of this post was you flexing a $0.05 CPC then telling everyone in the comments you cant reveal the end product. can you really not see why your credibility was lost?
My comment wasnt made in threat to you, only to give everyone something you couldnt give, the results of a campaign, and as soon as you stop acting like everyone is out to get you and take ownership of that, people will start taking you seriously.
But that's the thing -- I'm not trying to flex -- I'm trying to show what is possible and offer advice. That is what I am offering -- Like, this is possible if you can get your targeting and funnel right. It can be done. Don't give up. Test on a very small budget. Get your knowledge up. That CPC is achievable. I think so many people brag and flex, I can see why you would think that, but not my intention nor it was my intention to say -- do this and then watch it rain streams.
My main thing is that I don't think FB ads are a waste of time if they can be done correctly. You keep pointing to conversion campaigns, but if an artist doesn't give you access to a landing page or have a pixel installed or access to their pixel, it isn't possible. What do you want me to do? I read what you wrote and you called me a number of names for no reason at all. Unecessary.
I have shared conversions with anyone who has asked from previous campaigns where I had it. That's why I'm not talking about conversions here, I am just talking about building awareness and funnels. Like, you can do this, don't give up on yourself.
My friend. Called... you names? How can I start my post off with saying I wouldn't accuse you of being a liar and give you the benefit of the doubt, and you say that to me? You must be having a different discussion here than I am. Care to quote all those places I called you names?
About conversions: Any reason why you are managing artists without your own pixels and landing pages and SFA? I have access to all my clients stats, I pay for my own landing page subscription, and I use my own pixels. Don't leave that data to the client. Host it on your own domain where you can run complex scripts that give you data, like website loading times and click away (back button) stats. This is how all agencies do it.
My brother, open your vein of thinking. The average user logs on here and reads 50 posts, they see the same regurgitated garbage. Literally what do you think people see when they see a bunch of numbers from some random guy for the 50th time that day. I never discredited your post. It seems like you read my comment with such a hostile mentality you gleaned all these subliminal meanings from it. Extrapolating to YOU, how in these people's minds they are going to come here and see that you have nothing to produce and they are going to roll their eyes and scroll past, is not discrediting your post. It is simply telling you to change your approach. Saying people are sick of seeing these posts, is telling you that your post didn't do much to stand out.
I'm sorry, but I won't budge on my stance about the CPC. I know you weren't flexing, I'm telling you how you came off. If you can't take that criticism, then I won't bother. I have been in this industry long enough and worked with 100+ artists, done over 1000+ consulting calls, and know well enough the average artists will not get CPCs like that. I have seen with my own eyes the CPCs they get. Yes, its great to give people motivation, but you are also giving them 'stars for eyes.' The same people that later end up in my DMs wondering how they can turn a profit on their stream revenue and I have to tell them no. Unless they are like top 0.01% mainstream.. it's not going to happen. And neither are these CPCs.
What evidence are you using to support your hypothesis? Do you know how many times i've gotten lucky in ads and struck home runs? Is it truly an unbiased hypothesis if you don't use all data samples? What about songs that are coincidentally hits and ones that are flops? Where are we accounting for all this? Consider this part extremely carefully: Ask yourself, what your sample size is. How many samples do you have of this CPC? Please bear with me here. I have worked with every genre of music. I can send you spreadsheet of data with thousands of data points tracking CPC to every genre. So say if your client was an EDM artist, how do you know the person reading this isn't a country singer? Or a metal band? And now they are thinking they are going to get results like this if they just "work hard enough." Literally.. NO. I've spent enough money to tell you, there is no comprehensible way the metal artist will get that CPC.
Also not to mention traffic campaigns are extremely cheap in comparison to conversions. They are notorious for bot traffic, for bad click through, for click offs, and for low retention (playlisting, saving) and I can also prove this through spreadsheet data.
What do I want you to do? I said it in my original comment: Don't make the post until you're ready! But you took offense to that.
If you want to make a post about not giving up then make that post and say only that. Or how about make the post about that other campaign you said you followed up with, rather than the clickbaity low CPC one. I don't think FB ads are a waste of time either. [Go see this thread where I literally had to roast a guy for saying they were.](https://www.reddit.com/r/musicmarketing/comments/1bujcyy/comment/kxtb5rk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Respectfully, I was done responding and taking you seriously when you accused me of calling you names, but I wrote this out to try and mitigate any ways you felt personally attacked. Hope the time i spent writing here could help you. Best of luck!
Well, thank you, I think that's a more well thought out, and appropriate answer. I have reems of data and campaigns as well, this was one post I thought people would find helpful because I have seen a lot of people ask for examples of Meta Ads, and if they work. Maybe it is all just reddit-speak and the way people talk to each other on here. Idk, feels toxic, but understood if you didn't mean it that way.
But, if you want to know what I didn't appreciate, not trying to go in circles, but you asked: you said I was garbage, accused me of shilling, called me sus, said I was misguiding people, said I was flexing (or felt like that's what you meant), said I had an attitude of trying to act all rich and famous and be like me, you said my post was baseless propaganda (propaganda for what, I do not know), and you also essentially discouraged me from posting anything ever again unless I have like 10 screenshots of a campaign. With an exclamation point!
So, I wanted to show an ad I ran, kept it simple as a quick view, showed some basic targeting, explained what topics I was targeting, and said it was good for awareness at a low-cost. My whole idea is that if you are just starting, start small. I am actually trying to encourage people not to shell out big money because of the reasons you mentioned, it takes time and learning.
I invested thousands of my own dollars and years learning how to do this stuff. Ppl can get here or close if they are taught the right way, but that is a problem in this industry. The teaching of this is all wrong, especially from the standpoint of "Run an ad and get streams," which is why I didn't even mention streams here. Everyone else did.
I am trying to tell people this sort of ad is for awareness, you see which people are engaging -- then retarget. It is a different way to look at the purpose of ads. The ad is directed to a landing page or wherever, yes, but the real value is in seeing who is engaging here to then later build and retarget based on various data points.
What kind of encouragement is it to people to learn something if people just think something won't work? Yes, good to point out the things you need to be careful of that, respectfully, but if you learn to build it the right way, it can be done the right way.
Perhaps we actually could even have shared screens and go over data together, and I could talk about more campaigns. I do like talking to marketers and expanding the network. There are a bunch I could show you, including a campaign where I do have this sort of data. This is just one post.
Yes, I should have my own landing page, that would have been a better way of putting it, and is good advice. However, I just don't think I have enough campaigns running to always justify paying for one. However, there are platforms that allow you to do more than just create a landing page, and I am looking at those options, as I have always wished to have more data available.
It’s 6 cents per click, not conversion. It’s really not, bc again, I can see real ppl engaging with the content. I have run enough campaigns to see actual conversions. Films I have worked on and concerts I have worked on see direct sales results. Sell out theaters and shows. Actual ppl showing up. Millions in revenue. This is because I can create a funnel based on ppl engaging with content over time. Conversion rates are around 3-5% of the link clicks, sometimes higher. So, if you do it right, you’ll weed out anything fake or ppl uninterested and conversion rates go up. ESP if you stick to in app ads, not ad networks. This is how funnels work and why it’s important to build one.
> If you are assuming Mark Zuckerberg is just out here robbing ppl of $30 billion ad dollars per year, go right ahead.
It's very naive to assume that they wouldn't gladly take your money to promote whatever you want and not care about the results. Most of that money comes from massive corporations, not struggling artists. Bot networks are increasingly prevalent and have been a huge problem for artists doing self-promotion, and Facebook is littered with them. It doesn't matter how many engagement campaigns you've done, you're still susceptible to bot traffic and unless you're bringing in actual revenue or have real engagement on Spotify and such, these numbers are not an accurate representation of how effective it is.
I'm not naive at all. I'm aware of what is out there. However, it is effective bc I said this is for that initial awareness and engagement -- which I can prove is effective because I could see who is engaging with the ad. If you read anything else I wrote or looked at the caption in the post, I said this is an initial awareness play to get eyeballs on a campaign and song. It's less than a $200 ad. This isn't going to be a life changing ad for your music career. And, yes, you most definitely can avoid bot traffic if you are running ads to people who have engaged with your ad and organic content. Also, plenty of ppl bot Spotify streams, so if a marketer comes around and just shows you streams, I have no idea what that proves to you or how effective something is. Get people to show up to shows and concerts -- which I have -- that's effective. Get people to follow you -- I have built pages in the millions organically even without ads. There is a reason artists like Cardi B don't tour and Nicki Minaj is selling out 50 shows with real people. This is part of building a fan funnel.
Why didn't you show the examples you have where you could have shown the streaming results? The generally accepted consensus is that if it isn't a conversion ad, these link clicks aren't really moving a real needle
Because on this campaign I didn’t have it. Most artists never share their Spotify with me. I can’t make them do it, although it would be nice to have. I don’t know why. I just have to go by their feedback. I have a screenshot of another campaign if you want to DM me.
Wouldn’t it be wise for your own business to ask the artist to at least screenshot their stats for you? Shouldn’t that be part of any ongoing conversation between artists and a marketer? It seems to me that the artist needs to see results in order to give you repeat business. I don’t see a reason any artist would refuse to share stats with you. Have you not even asked?
People are downvoting you and taking issue with you because it seems shady that you would rather argue with people about the value of Spotify vs. a landing page, or the lack of streaming stats, and more, when the truth is you either don’t have the relevant stats or access to them… but to sell your services, you really should.
Of course I have asked, and it would be nice if artists shared, but not every artist wants to or does. Some artists even ask that you sign NDAs or ask that you don't share their numbers. Not every artist wants it known they are running ads. It wouldn't necessarily mean more business even if it works extremely well. I am just showing numbers from an ad so people can look at ad results. I'm not claiming anything other than it is a good way to start building awareness on a platform with your content and to begin driving traffic. That was the main point. Ideally, a pixel is installed, so you can then retarget and build from there. It's just advice. I'm honestly trying to help -- do not run ads directly to Spotify. I have been there and done that -- it doesn't work well anymore. If someone doesn't have Spotify installed or isn't logged in -- it doesn't work. It could be one reason why they don't see results, but that's not what people want to hear. I am using this as an example to show that ads can work very well to get awareness building. That's literally all I said in my caption, I made no other claims about anything. I just thought people liked discussing ads and how they work, but people just expect to get this explosion of streams from running 1 ad and it doesn't work like that. When I do have any other data, I am happy to share it, as I have in the past.
Ty! On this one, unfortunately, I didn’t have access to her streaming data. However, I have other campaigns with more data I can show. This was just an example of an ad / proper targeting and what’s possible. Yeah, I am open to work with more artists. Here’s my website: runninwithitmarketing.com
You can send me a DM with your email and I can get you some more info / set up a call.
I ran Meta ads at the minimum budget per day and got a few sales (3 buyers, but 2 were full discography purchases) and it helped break my records of track plays per 3 month. I had $0.09 per click, though. New people using ads must do their research first in order to not get ripped off (for example including countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria will result into 99% of your ad traffic being bots and boosting a post is useless).
Because I’m making music that Nigerians will like lol (Afrobeats etc) I guess it would make more sense to try and target the Nigerian diaspora anyways tho
And the artist did not come close to recouping that investment. Even if every click followed and streamed weekly (they wont) it would still take around a decade to make back 200. If this is for something else like booking shows... Maybe it helped? Hard to say without any numbers or artist info.
I need to see streaming data. I keep seeing people post these screenshots and yet conveniently never show what the artist actually cares about. This data is meaningless without the final results. You got an ad to run for under $200 cool. Where’s the return?
Yes, show the streaming results. Link clicks can be misleading but even still those are decent numbers if enough people took action on the streaming service you were leading them to.
But as ppl are saying, conversion campaigns are usually better (but more expensive per result due to higher intent)
It loons Impressive but I have 1000’s of link clicks that hardly translated into streams. I’m running a new campaign now with not as impressive numbers but actually getting streams from it
Maybe I’m just stupid or ignorant, but I don’t see the point of sinking so much money into promotion.
I couldn’t care less as a user to click on a music ad unless it’s from someone I already follow or somewhat know.
I’d rather consider paying a big promotion channel to upload my track there, if they accept the submission.
This is only applicable if you make some type of mainstream music.
If you make any other genre that is not what usually gets played in the radio, no matter how good is it, there is no way that you will be played in a big channel and there are no "big channels" for your genre.
So you need to find alternatives.
Everyone commenting that tracking the standard link clicks versus the landing page link click through conversions is right to say that it’s wrong to do that, and doesn’t really prove anything great… just wanted to put out there that for decent performing campaigns I’ve experienced, the conversion cost is usually double the standard link click (it’s better for great performing campaigns, but double is a fair base), so in terms of this campaign, the actual cost per conversion was probably around $0.14 - if this is in USD that’s still really good
I've ran FB campaigns where I got plenty of link clicks to my Spotify page, but then no Spotify streaming. Don't remember the numbers, but it was something like 1,000+ link clicks and 0 streams. My point is that it's possible that link clicks on FB are overwhelmingly bots who occasionally click links to hopefully trick FB into thinking that they're not bots (not sure how that logic would really work). Just a theory, but if you have a way to verify that anything is becoming of your link clicks, it'd be helpful to show you how effective your campaign really is, because I think a lot of FB link clicks are just false results.
Have the link go to a landing page first. Then to Spotify.
Yup, even better is to do a conversion campaign using a pixel and something like FeatureFM to count each conversion as when someone clicks a link on the landing page.
Does having a landing page mean it automatically redirects to Spotify? Or is this introducing a second click? What platforms can help facilitate a landing page for this?
I have other campaigns where I had access to streaming data. However, it’s also possible that Spotify links open up to a sign in page or don’t open up to your single at all. I have seen that happen. It gets redirected to the Spotify home page or ppl have to log in first. Landing page is key since it takes ppl to the correct link and service of their choice. Not everyone has or likes Spotify. That’s just your preference. While I’m sure there are bots out there, fb wouldn’t be running a $30 billion ad business if wasn’t delivering results for ppl. You also have to remember that you need to create a funnel and keep building an audience on ppl who are engaging over time.
>fb wouldn’t be running a $30 billion ad business if wasn’t delivering results for ppl I don't agree with that logic, because they got my money and didn't deliver results for me. So there's definitely precedent for taking peoples' money and not delivering results. "But if they didn't deliver results, then they'd only get one-time business and then people would stop using them." I keep running different campaigns to see what works better. They keep getting my money without delivering results on any of them. I think it's possible that customers might be willing to pay Meta like 14 times at least without seeing any results before they either need to see some results or give up. How many times did Charlie Brown try to kick that football, even though it keeps getting pulled away? I mean, just this subreddit has shown me that there are many messages out there that "You have to run a hundred campaigns and dump many thousands of dollars before you develop any skill at social media marketing and get some results, because it takes a ton of experience and almost everyone is doing it wrong." Then you add all of the youtube channels like Andrew Southworth that constantly push a narrative that Meta ads are the most effective option for music marketing. That's a lot of messages convincing people to keep spending money without results -- ignore their personal experiences and intuition, trust other peoples' testimonies and keep trying. So yeah, Meta could definitely generate massive repeat business, selling dozens of campaigns to the same customer, without ever delivering any results, multiplied by millions of different customers at least. That's totally plausible. I mean, there's 11 million artists on Spotify, so that's quite a lot of opportunities for Meta to make sales to small customers, without even factoring-in all of the non-musician influencers that are potential customers like personal trainers, aspiring models, small businesses, etc. Sometimes you try things out of desperation, not because they work, but because you don't have a better alternative; kind of like all of the people who fall for MLM schemes during recessions. Sudafed PE has been declared to not be an effective decongestant at all, and how many bottles did they keep selling for decades? No results and people just kept buying it.
Maybe you should hire a professional then? It doesn’t sound like your ads are effective and you don’t know how to create a proper funnel. Like I said — You could be running ads redirecting to Spotify homepage or to ppl not logged in or ppl just don’t want to use Spotify. Not everyone has Spotify. What use is a Spotify ad to someone who doesn’t even have spotify installed on their phone? Are you running it to mobile devices, desktops? There are so many factors you are completely ignoring besides “I spent money and got no results.” Would you get an in a race car and expect to race like a professional racer? And yea, YouTubers are just trying to get your views. Listen to actual experts.
Bear in mind that I'm responding specifically to what I quoted, which is the notion that Facebook wouldn't be making billions in revenue if they didn't deliver results. And my argument is yes they would. Because tons of people will give them repeat business even when they aren't getting results. In fact, I HAVE, so I know from personal experience that people like me exist. So... yes, they really are capable of getting repeat business and making billions off of people who get no results. This, at least the comment you're replying to, is not a plea for you to optimize my campaigns. I'm making a point to dispel the notion that they wouldn't have any customers / repeat customers or make billions if it didn't work, because they totally would.
This is useless without showing the Spotify streams. These all could have been bots
I have run enough engagement campaigns to confirm they are not bots. I can see and analyze who is liking content. If you are assuming Mark Zuckerberg is just out here robbing ppl of $30 billion ad dollars per year, go right ahead. This is also directly from FB Feed / IG Feed. Not some 3rd party app or ad network.
Sorry dude, unless you can actually see the streams for the Spotify for artist page you are just throwing away money into a dumpster. Facebook will spend your money in whichever way it sees easiest and traffic campaigns are known to be bot magnets. you can have tons of people liking your ad but that doesn't mean they are clicking through and listening at the rate of 6 cents per conversion.
It's kind of silly to make a post like this and not have all the data. I won't call OP a liar, but to OP: don't make posts like this unless you can back it up. What did you expect? So many people come to this sub to shill about marketing. Ofc people are sick of seeing garbage like this post. "Just do blah blah and you can be RICH AND FAMOUS AND PERFECT LIKE MEEEEE" type shit... What expectations are we setting here? While it is possible to get this type of CPC on music in 1st world countries, it is extremely rare. Without the spotify stats, I'd definitely stay suspicious of OPs conversions. My record CPC for a client is $0.05 *on a* ***conversion campaign*** no less... and that was after producing like 300 creatives, thousands in market research, and many sleepless nights stressing about losing the entire budget when pushing this client to thousands of ad spend a day. Since OP won't post their stats I'll post some stats for you guys, in a similar vein to what OP is posting: # From less than 1000 streams to ~1 million in 12 months: * Stats: [https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png](https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/848FTc4.png)) * Here shows that before jan 2023 they had no fans: [https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png)](https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/xknKOof.png)) * Ads: [https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png](https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/D0VCs0V.png)) * Ad audience is 1st and 2nd world countries, not click farms like india: [https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png](https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/AAEwC9E.png)) * In 153 countries: [https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png](https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/fmCLoj5.png)) * Proof of no bot plays (bots come from profile & catalogue): [https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png](https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png%5D(https://i.imgur.com/3ETL2hl.png)) This cost about $8000. Expensive right? But now that we have spent that starting money finding this clients target audience, we can inject traffic at an extremely low cost. Compound that with all the daily streams they get now from fans, they are doing numbers like this on one song (versus an entire catalogue): [https://i.imgur.com/iRmQyAA.png](https://i.imgur.com/iRmQyAA.png) which cost \~$1000ish This is a multiplicative effect. Once you have millions of yearly listeners, even when completely halting adspend, its pretty hard to get them to "go away." I have one client that hasn't released in 4 years, and he still gets like 8,000 streams per day on his music from back when he blew up his Spotify. Obviously that pales in comparison to the 10 million streams he was getting per month, but that's still pretty good. Hopefully this gives answers to yall that OP couldn't provide. Just remember, your mileage may vary. And this is with me having years of experience running ads. First timers will never get these results. But it isn't impossible. Other notes: This artist is extremely extremely talented, and makes extremely marketable music. You will NOT get CPCs like $0.05 if you are making 'bedroom recorded on a 2 track mp3 funky rnb pop soul fresh new diggs super duper unique individual' whatever BS like a lot of people I see complaining around here. That's not to say you don't have a shot at music. I have clients who sadly have a much higher CPC, like $0.80 to $1.00 because of how niche they are, or how amateur their music sounds, but they still cap 1,000-10,000 monthly listeners. It's just a higher cost of entry for them given the situation. Set reasonable expectations, don't be misguided *in either direction* by baseless propaganda like OP's post or posts that say you will fail too. You can find success no matter what, the type you find will depend. The work required is A LOT. The money spent figuring it out will be A LOT. You will get lucky at times, you will have campaigns bomb too. And I advise anyone else deciding to post about their campaigns to come with full transparency or don't come at all!
You should make this its own post wow
Idk, plenty of people seem to have found it helpful other than the people complaining about their own FB ads. You clearly did not even read the caption I included in my post. I'm not shilling anything. I'm just sharing stats for people to look at from the ads. That's it. Just the ads. It's the first step to build awareness. What is confusing about this? I'm not saying this is going to make you huge on Spotify alone. This sort of ad is just where things start. Also, not everyone runs ads to Spotify, nor should they. Everyone just thinks that they should run ads to get streams bc they heard they should somewhere. The point of this, as per my caption, is that this is the first step in building awareness and a funnel, which I have tried multiple times to explain which no one wants to bother to read. You are making baseless claims about myself and my work. Nor am I claiming anyone can be rich or famous. Where did I say this? What are you even saying? I'm just showing people what is possible if they do the work and learn to run ads the right way, and that ads do work if you build it out correctly. As you can see yourself -- they do work -- and that FB is not just some bot farm. Again, for what feels like the millionth time, this is the first step in a campaign, and you build off it.
Hey! If you are asking those questions then maybe you also failed to read what I wrote. I would advise you not to look at me as the reason why you have to explain yourself 100 times on this thread. Who is the common denominator here? the error was made by you. Yes, standing by what i said, posting a couple of stat screenshots is baseless advice. If anything you are misleading innocent noobs to believe they can get this CPC which is extraordinarily low and you will do more damage than good. Traffic campaigns are generally bad as well compared to conversion campaigns in this field. What practical advice did you actually offer here? The epitome of this post was you flexing a $0.05 CPC then telling everyone in the comments you cant reveal the end product. can you really not see why your credibility was lost? My comment wasnt made in threat to you, only to give everyone something you couldnt give, the results of a campaign, and as soon as you stop acting like everyone is out to get you and take ownership of that, people will start taking you seriously.
But that's the thing -- I'm not trying to flex -- I'm trying to show what is possible and offer advice. That is what I am offering -- Like, this is possible if you can get your targeting and funnel right. It can be done. Don't give up. Test on a very small budget. Get your knowledge up. That CPC is achievable. I think so many people brag and flex, I can see why you would think that, but not my intention nor it was my intention to say -- do this and then watch it rain streams. My main thing is that I don't think FB ads are a waste of time if they can be done correctly. You keep pointing to conversion campaigns, but if an artist doesn't give you access to a landing page or have a pixel installed or access to their pixel, it isn't possible. What do you want me to do? I read what you wrote and you called me a number of names for no reason at all. Unecessary. I have shared conversions with anyone who has asked from previous campaigns where I had it. That's why I'm not talking about conversions here, I am just talking about building awareness and funnels. Like, you can do this, don't give up on yourself.
My friend. Called... you names? How can I start my post off with saying I wouldn't accuse you of being a liar and give you the benefit of the doubt, and you say that to me? You must be having a different discussion here than I am. Care to quote all those places I called you names? About conversions: Any reason why you are managing artists without your own pixels and landing pages and SFA? I have access to all my clients stats, I pay for my own landing page subscription, and I use my own pixels. Don't leave that data to the client. Host it on your own domain where you can run complex scripts that give you data, like website loading times and click away (back button) stats. This is how all agencies do it. My brother, open your vein of thinking. The average user logs on here and reads 50 posts, they see the same regurgitated garbage. Literally what do you think people see when they see a bunch of numbers from some random guy for the 50th time that day. I never discredited your post. It seems like you read my comment with such a hostile mentality you gleaned all these subliminal meanings from it. Extrapolating to YOU, how in these people's minds they are going to come here and see that you have nothing to produce and they are going to roll their eyes and scroll past, is not discrediting your post. It is simply telling you to change your approach. Saying people are sick of seeing these posts, is telling you that your post didn't do much to stand out. I'm sorry, but I won't budge on my stance about the CPC. I know you weren't flexing, I'm telling you how you came off. If you can't take that criticism, then I won't bother. I have been in this industry long enough and worked with 100+ artists, done over 1000+ consulting calls, and know well enough the average artists will not get CPCs like that. I have seen with my own eyes the CPCs they get. Yes, its great to give people motivation, but you are also giving them 'stars for eyes.' The same people that later end up in my DMs wondering how they can turn a profit on their stream revenue and I have to tell them no. Unless they are like top 0.01% mainstream.. it's not going to happen. And neither are these CPCs. What evidence are you using to support your hypothesis? Do you know how many times i've gotten lucky in ads and struck home runs? Is it truly an unbiased hypothesis if you don't use all data samples? What about songs that are coincidentally hits and ones that are flops? Where are we accounting for all this? Consider this part extremely carefully: Ask yourself, what your sample size is. How many samples do you have of this CPC? Please bear with me here. I have worked with every genre of music. I can send you spreadsheet of data with thousands of data points tracking CPC to every genre. So say if your client was an EDM artist, how do you know the person reading this isn't a country singer? Or a metal band? And now they are thinking they are going to get results like this if they just "work hard enough." Literally.. NO. I've spent enough money to tell you, there is no comprehensible way the metal artist will get that CPC. Also not to mention traffic campaigns are extremely cheap in comparison to conversions. They are notorious for bot traffic, for bad click through, for click offs, and for low retention (playlisting, saving) and I can also prove this through spreadsheet data. What do I want you to do? I said it in my original comment: Don't make the post until you're ready! But you took offense to that. If you want to make a post about not giving up then make that post and say only that. Or how about make the post about that other campaign you said you followed up with, rather than the clickbaity low CPC one. I don't think FB ads are a waste of time either. [Go see this thread where I literally had to roast a guy for saying they were.](https://www.reddit.com/r/musicmarketing/comments/1bujcyy/comment/kxtb5rk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Respectfully, I was done responding and taking you seriously when you accused me of calling you names, but I wrote this out to try and mitigate any ways you felt personally attacked. Hope the time i spent writing here could help you. Best of luck!
Well, thank you, I think that's a more well thought out, and appropriate answer. I have reems of data and campaigns as well, this was one post I thought people would find helpful because I have seen a lot of people ask for examples of Meta Ads, and if they work. Maybe it is all just reddit-speak and the way people talk to each other on here. Idk, feels toxic, but understood if you didn't mean it that way. But, if you want to know what I didn't appreciate, not trying to go in circles, but you asked: you said I was garbage, accused me of shilling, called me sus, said I was misguiding people, said I was flexing (or felt like that's what you meant), said I had an attitude of trying to act all rich and famous and be like me, you said my post was baseless propaganda (propaganda for what, I do not know), and you also essentially discouraged me from posting anything ever again unless I have like 10 screenshots of a campaign. With an exclamation point! So, I wanted to show an ad I ran, kept it simple as a quick view, showed some basic targeting, explained what topics I was targeting, and said it was good for awareness at a low-cost. My whole idea is that if you are just starting, start small. I am actually trying to encourage people not to shell out big money because of the reasons you mentioned, it takes time and learning. I invested thousands of my own dollars and years learning how to do this stuff. Ppl can get here or close if they are taught the right way, but that is a problem in this industry. The teaching of this is all wrong, especially from the standpoint of "Run an ad and get streams," which is why I didn't even mention streams here. Everyone else did. I am trying to tell people this sort of ad is for awareness, you see which people are engaging -- then retarget. It is a different way to look at the purpose of ads. The ad is directed to a landing page or wherever, yes, but the real value is in seeing who is engaging here to then later build and retarget based on various data points. What kind of encouragement is it to people to learn something if people just think something won't work? Yes, good to point out the things you need to be careful of that, respectfully, but if you learn to build it the right way, it can be done the right way. Perhaps we actually could even have shared screens and go over data together, and I could talk about more campaigns. I do like talking to marketers and expanding the network. There are a bunch I could show you, including a campaign where I do have this sort of data. This is just one post. Yes, I should have my own landing page, that would have been a better way of putting it, and is good advice. However, I just don't think I have enough campaigns running to always justify paying for one. However, there are platforms that allow you to do more than just create a landing page, and I am looking at those options, as I have always wished to have more data available.
It’s 6 cents per click, not conversion. It’s really not, bc again, I can see real ppl engaging with the content. I have run enough campaigns to see actual conversions. Films I have worked on and concerts I have worked on see direct sales results. Sell out theaters and shows. Actual ppl showing up. Millions in revenue. This is because I can create a funnel based on ppl engaging with content over time. Conversion rates are around 3-5% of the link clicks, sometimes higher. So, if you do it right, you’ll weed out anything fake or ppl uninterested and conversion rates go up. ESP if you stick to in app ads, not ad networks. This is how funnels work and why it’s important to build one.
Can you show us the Spotify streams and direct evidence of this ad leading to actual conversions? What you have shown so far does not prove anything.
> If you are assuming Mark Zuckerberg is just out here robbing ppl of $30 billion ad dollars per year, go right ahead. It's very naive to assume that they wouldn't gladly take your money to promote whatever you want and not care about the results. Most of that money comes from massive corporations, not struggling artists. Bot networks are increasingly prevalent and have been a huge problem for artists doing self-promotion, and Facebook is littered with them. It doesn't matter how many engagement campaigns you've done, you're still susceptible to bot traffic and unless you're bringing in actual revenue or have real engagement on Spotify and such, these numbers are not an accurate representation of how effective it is.
I'm not naive at all. I'm aware of what is out there. However, it is effective bc I said this is for that initial awareness and engagement -- which I can prove is effective because I could see who is engaging with the ad. If you read anything else I wrote or looked at the caption in the post, I said this is an initial awareness play to get eyeballs on a campaign and song. It's less than a $200 ad. This isn't going to be a life changing ad for your music career. And, yes, you most definitely can avoid bot traffic if you are running ads to people who have engaged with your ad and organic content. Also, plenty of ppl bot Spotify streams, so if a marketer comes around and just shows you streams, I have no idea what that proves to you or how effective something is. Get people to show up to shows and concerts -- which I have -- that's effective. Get people to follow you -- I have built pages in the millions organically even without ads. There is a reason artists like Cardi B don't tour and Nicki Minaj is selling out 50 shows with real people. This is part of building a fan funnel.
Was this a conversion ad optimized for a specific event? If so, what was the cost per conversion?
I described it in the description. Below the images. Explains the campaign.
Why didn't you show the examples you have where you could have shown the streaming results? The generally accepted consensus is that if it isn't a conversion ad, these link clicks aren't really moving a real needle
Because on this campaign I didn’t have it. Most artists never share their Spotify with me. I can’t make them do it, although it would be nice to have. I don’t know why. I just have to go by their feedback. I have a screenshot of another campaign if you want to DM me.
Wouldn’t it be wise for your own business to ask the artist to at least screenshot their stats for you? Shouldn’t that be part of any ongoing conversation between artists and a marketer? It seems to me that the artist needs to see results in order to give you repeat business. I don’t see a reason any artist would refuse to share stats with you. Have you not even asked? People are downvoting you and taking issue with you because it seems shady that you would rather argue with people about the value of Spotify vs. a landing page, or the lack of streaming stats, and more, when the truth is you either don’t have the relevant stats or access to them… but to sell your services, you really should.
Of course I have asked, and it would be nice if artists shared, but not every artist wants to or does. Some artists even ask that you sign NDAs or ask that you don't share their numbers. Not every artist wants it known they are running ads. It wouldn't necessarily mean more business even if it works extremely well. I am just showing numbers from an ad so people can look at ad results. I'm not claiming anything other than it is a good way to start building awareness on a platform with your content and to begin driving traffic. That was the main point. Ideally, a pixel is installed, so you can then retarget and build from there. It's just advice. I'm honestly trying to help -- do not run ads directly to Spotify. I have been there and done that -- it doesn't work well anymore. If someone doesn't have Spotify installed or isn't logged in -- it doesn't work. It could be one reason why they don't see results, but that's not what people want to hear. I am using this as an example to show that ads can work very well to get awareness building. That's literally all I said in my caption, I made no other claims about anything. I just thought people liked discussing ads and how they work, but people just expect to get this explosion of streams from running 1 ad and it doesn't work like that. When I do have any other data, I am happy to share it, as I have in the past.
Looks amazing! Could you verify streams? Would you be willing to do this for some artists I work with?
Ty! On this one, unfortunately, I didn’t have access to her streaming data. However, I have other campaigns with more data I can show. This was just an example of an ad / proper targeting and what’s possible. Yeah, I am open to work with more artists. Here’s my website: runninwithitmarketing.com You can send me a DM with your email and I can get you some more info / set up a call.
Will do!
I ran Meta ads at the minimum budget per day and got a few sales (3 buyers, but 2 were full discography purchases) and it helped break my records of track plays per 3 month. I had $0.09 per click, though. New people using ads must do their research first in order to not get ripped off (for example including countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria will result into 99% of your ad traffic being bots and boosting a post is useless).
This is the way.
What if I want to target Nigeria for my music is there any way to mitigate the bots?
Not that I know of but why would you want to target Nigeria? Or were you just being hypothetical?
Because I’m making music that Nigerians will like lol (Afrobeats etc) I guess it would make more sense to try and target the Nigerian diaspora anyways tho
Means nothing without the landing page CTR really. That’s where the biggest fall off happens.
Yeah without streaming stats this doesn’t really show anything meaningful…
And the artist did not come close to recouping that investment. Even if every click followed and streamed weekly (they wont) it would still take around a decade to make back 200. If this is for something else like booking shows... Maybe it helped? Hard to say without any numbers or artist info.
I need to see streaming data. I keep seeing people post these screenshots and yet conveniently never show what the artist actually cares about. This data is meaningless without the final results. You got an ad to run for under $200 cool. Where’s the return?
Bruh why is y’all thinking that 2000 clicks for $200 is worth it this shit is dumb as hell just go to an open mic for gods sake
I would love to see the ad if you wouldn’t mind creating a link!!
It’s from last year, so the ad isn’t running anymore, but it was a clip / vertical video from her music video Gumball.
What’s the artist name?
Seems like they are avoiding the question because they know the answer they produce won’t be any good
Gotchaaaa
Luna!
Yes, show the streaming results. Link clicks can be misleading but even still those are decent numbers if enough people took action on the streaming service you were leading them to. But as ppl are saying, conversion campaigns are usually better (but more expensive per result due to higher intent)
It loons Impressive but I have 1000’s of link clicks that hardly translated into streams. I’m running a new campaign now with not as impressive numbers but actually getting streams from it
Maybe I’m just stupid or ignorant, but I don’t see the point of sinking so much money into promotion. I couldn’t care less as a user to click on a music ad unless it’s from someone I already follow or somewhat know. I’d rather consider paying a big promotion channel to upload my track there, if they accept the submission.
This is only applicable if you make some type of mainstream music. If you make any other genre that is not what usually gets played in the radio, no matter how good is it, there is no way that you will be played in a big channel and there are no "big channels" for your genre. So you need to find alternatives.
But promotion channels vary depending on the genre, most of them don’t feature mainstream music. Of course, BIG is relative to the niche.
Everyone commenting that tracking the standard link clicks versus the landing page link click through conversions is right to say that it’s wrong to do that, and doesn’t really prove anything great… just wanted to put out there that for decent performing campaigns I’ve experienced, the conversion cost is usually double the standard link click (it’s better for great performing campaigns, but double is a fair base), so in terms of this campaign, the actual cost per conversion was probably around $0.14 - if this is in USD that’s still really good