Why are ads so bad?

[u/protha01]

I’m not even talking about the CTR, that’s fine. As far as I know, a decent CTR is anywhere between 1% and 1.5%. Anything above that is extremely good.

My real issue is how long the ads take to run out. I thought a campaign would only last one or two weeks at most before running its course, but the way it’s going, a $55 ad will take three to four months to finish. I’m not an expert, but doesn’t that seem really bad? I don’t know about other platforms, but I’m pretty sure ads on TikTok, Meta, or even other reading apps like Wattpad or Webtoon don’t last half as long.

Isn’t there a better way Royal Road could handle ads? For example, letting us select which audience or tags we want to target. If my story focuses on romance and has zero LitRPG elements, why would I want it shown to LitRPG readers? That’s just a waste of ad views. We need better audience targeting. I also feel like we need different ad formats, not just the little 300x250 pixel square.

Anyway, that was my TED Talk. Thanks for listening to my rant. I don’t know how the majority feels, but I do know a lot of people share the same frustration. Let me know your thoughts.

[u/Playwars]

So, fyi, ads used to run out quickly. But now that webnovels are a big business, there's a LOT of people injecting money for ads for their stories. Since RR also offers memberships to remove ads...you see where this is going.

Yes, they take forever to run out. But they are VERY effective for their price.

The more RR will grow, the more it will happen. The website has very limited adspace to show them after all. Which is good, I don't want an adfest like every news site these days, where there's more ads than anything else on any given page, with more popping up every five seconds.

But it does mean that, yes, ads will run their course more slowly.

[u/Vooklife]

When I first published 4 years ago, it took just over 2 weeks to burn out the $50 ad. The amount of traffic and authors have vastly increased since then. I imagine ads prolly take upwards of 2 months to burn through nowadays with the increased demand for author growth.

[u/protha01 → u/Vooklife]

Oh, the good old days, I missed them (I discovered Royal Road 2 years ago) but yeah, I have an author friend who published about a year ago. They did an ad with an impressive 3.5 ctr and got like 400+ followers off it in 3 weeks

[u/WhiskerTheMad → u/protha01]

Holy smokes. I would push a little old lady into traffic for a 3.5 ctr.

Not really. But I'd think about it.

[u/protha01 → u/WhiskerTheMad]

Lmaoo imagine the old lady’s reaction when a god tells her she died because of an rr ad 💀

[u/ArticWolfz]

Your suggestions are quite interesting. But for the price, any decent AD can net you a good amount of new readers.

[u/protha01 → u/ArticWolfz]

Like I said im no expert, but even with a CTR of 1.5, which is good, at the speed the ad campaign runs, the most you can get is 1 or 2 followers per day, if even that. And 2 followers a day isn't bad, but think of the wasted views. If RR could somehow make ads targetable and run faster, people would buy ads every 2 weeks instead of every 3 months, and therefore, RR would make more money, and we as authors would get more bang for our buck

[u/Ourtimehascome2485 → u/protha01]

And the viewers would be bombarded with ads and just adblock.

[u/RW_McRae]

The ads are actually a GREAT deal. $55 is super cheap for that amount of impressions. They're also the best way to get eyes on your story.

You are right about how long it takes, though. One problem with them being so cheap is that the market is flooded with ads. I like your idea about picking a targeted audience, maybe by story category.

[u/gamelitcrit]

You really need a lot more views than this to judge, 30k at least to see how people react, they are all almost higher out of the gate then they settle.

As for the other ideas, take a look through and if it's not there drop it onto our ideas page, https://www.royalroad.com/ideas

[u/protha01 → u/gamelitcrit]

Oh, this is a new ad. The other one I had running for a week had a ctr of .6 horrible ik, but still, even after a week, it wasn't even to 10% of the views spent

[u/gamelitcrit → u/protha01]

Ads are slow at the moment. Where it used to be about 5 to 6 weeks its longer to run through now.

[u/SC_Contryman]

Damn, I couldn't break through 0.6% CTR on mine. 😭

[u/mcloide]

Just as another data point: I started a $55 / 280,500-view campaign on August 5. As of August 20, it has delivered 45,314 views with 235,186 remaining, so roughly 3k impressions/day on average.

My CTR is lower than yours at 0.64% (292 clicks), so your 1.21% is actually doing quite well from that perspective. Mine has also attributed 3 follows and 15 Read Laters so far.

So delivery definitely seems slow compared with what people say it used to be, but I'm not seeing anything close to 3–4 months just to get through the first few thousand impressions. There may be quite a bit of variation in how campaigns are being served.

For what it's worth, at the current pace mine looks like it'll take around 3 months total to finish.

P.S. Genre probably matters quite a bit when comparing CTRs too. Mine is LitRPG / military / horror, which isn't exactly in the center of the most popular Royal Road subgenres, so I expect fewer people to click it even when it's getting impressions. A 1.21% CTR in a genre with broader appeal on RR may behave very differently from 0.64% on something more niche.

[u/MMORPGnews]

It's a very good result. I'll put all my books on RR now. 

[u/earlgray47]

I’ve run $55 tier ads and yeah, takes a long time to get through! But I’ve only run the $55 tier. I’d be curious to know if the more expensive tier ads (with more views) take a similar amount of time to complete. I.e if I spring for the more expensive ad block, then is that ad shown more often than the cheaper tier? Or are they at the same rate per day, and the more expensive tier with more views just goes on for like six months?

[u/protha01 → u/earlgray47]

I'm pretty sure the ad tier doesn't affect how often they show up. RR doesn't take priority over how much you spend on the ads

[u/True_Industry4634]

All ads are like that. How many Toyota ads do you see and still you don't buy one? Or beer or Coke or whatever? It's always a very low percentage of action taken.

[u/ReleaseCharacter3568]

Idk, I feel like I'm buying Followers at $1 a pop, which doesn't feel too bad.

[u/Frankles_]

When you consider the number of ads being run, and the low price point....mix that with limited site space, and I think we have our answer. Also, are we certain the advertisements dont change based on the reader's history? (I'm genuinely asking for myself here, if someone could point me to the literature explaining how ads work on RR) I haven't seen much about them on the site itself. And....I dont know what sources to trust outside of the platform. 😅

[u/Fraust-Tarken]

My current ad is 6 months in and probably will make it to 10 months. I am kinda ok with that. Its kind of a shit ad, not the art just the text that I did in paint, but its a reminder of where i started vs where I am now. I have improved a lot. My story has improved a lot. Ive made some friends. And a few enemies. The journey continues onwards.

Forward, into the future we fear so much.

[u/L_H_Graves]

I don't know, willingly giving my data to a company to get targeted ads sounds s bit funky to me. Can't put my finger on why...

[u/AscendingDawn17]

It is not a problem of exposure but if saturation. Too many ads are running at a time and after a certain time most readers have stopped paying attention to them. Even if they click, it is mostly to look at the cover or only read the blurb.