Topix: Facebook adverts Success Story

Success Story

Maximising page views

The entertainment media company ran a test campaign to determine whether optimising for conversions or clicks would draw more people to its website, resulting in 4.6 times more content views at a 79% lower cost per view.
  • 4.6 times more content views using conversion optimisation
  • 79% lower cost per content view using conversion optimisation
  • 5.8 times more link clicks using conversion optimisation
  • 83% lower cost per link click using conversion optimisation

Their Story

Entertaining content

Topix is an online entertainment and media company that publishes a range of stories about celebrities, pop culture, health, animals and more. Its 18 million monthly website visitors spend an average of 13 minutes per session engaging with the content.

Their Goal

Increasing content views

Topix wanted to compare conversion optimisation and click optimisation to determine the best strategy to encourage people to view the content on its website.
We will continue to experiment with optimising for conversions and use this strategy in our daily buying. We also plan to experiment with other custom conversions to see how we can continue to improve our traffic quality and lower our cost per visit.
Sara Davis, Director of Audience Acquisition, Topix

Their Solution

Testing the optimised waters

Topix partnered with Facebook to test the most effective advertising strategy: optimising its advertising objectives for conversions or for clicks.
Conversion optimisation ensures an advertiser’s campaign reaches people most likely to take the selected conversion action – for Topix, that action was "view content". Click optimisation, meanwhile, aims to drive website traffic, which is a big part of Topix’s business goals.
For this campaign test, however, the team took the conversion action a step further by creating a custom conversion event that equated one "view content" action with a reader who views at least 40 pages. This custom conversion event enabled Topix to optimise its campaign for something even more valuable than single-page views.
To prepare for the test, the Topix team developed two identical campaigns that used a link advert to direct people to an article featuring 21 hilarious photos of cats. The advert was targeted at women in the US aged 25-60, as well as a Custom Audience of people who had previously viewed the Funny Notes section of the Topix website, and a Lookalike Audience based on this Custom Audience.
The Topix team also set the campaigns to automatic bidding to ensure both would use the entirety of their identical budgets, giving the team the most accurate test results.

Products used

Goals

Their Success

A viral success

The week-long campaign, which ran from 10-17 March 2017, reached hundreds of thousands of people and unveiled clear results for the Topix team. Optimising for conversions significantly outperformed optimising for clicks:
  • 4.6 times more content views using conversion optimisation
  • 79% lower cost per content view using conversion optimisation
  • 5.8 times more link clicks using conversion optimisation
  • 83% lower cost per link click using conversion optimisation
Our primary performance indicator is page views per visit. This can vary wildly based on targeting, advert creative or the content itself. Being able to optimise for users who are likely to view a specific minimum number of pages per visit takes some of the guesswork out of a campaign’s initial performance and allows us to bid more effectively.
Sara Davis, Director of Audience Acquisition, Topix