30 days, $1,739, 17 conversions: what our own ad accounts actually did

The number that stopped me

Our Facebook and Instagram spend last month: $667. Conversions from it: zero.

Not one. We ran two Meta campaigns, "Plyto: Replace your tools (visits first)" and "Plyto: AI runs your ads," burned through $63 and $604 respectively, pulled in 285 clicks combined, and closed nothing attributable to either. Meanwhile Google Search delivered all 17 conversions of the window on $1,072 of search spend.

I run an AI marketing CRM. I should probably know better by now. Sharing the full 30-day picture anyway, because the pattern inside the numbers is more useful than the headline.

The full window

• Total spend: $1,739
• Impressions: 12,257
• Clicks: 615
• Average CPC: $2.83
• Conversions: 17
• Signups: 429 total, 396 from ads, 33 organic

By campaign:

• AI Ad Generator Search (Google): $797, 3,183 impressions, 255 clicks, $3.12 CPC, 8.01% CTR, 17 conversions
• Free CRM Alternatives Search (Google): $275, 939 impressions, 75 clicks, $3.67 CPC, 7.99% CTR, 0 conversions
• Plyto: Replace your tools (visits first) (Meta): $63, 2,791 impressions, 121 clicks, $0.52 CPC, 4.34% CTR, 0 conversions
• Plyto: AI runs your ads (Meta): $604, 5,296 impressions, 164 clicks, $3.69 CPC, 3.10% CTR, 0 conversions
• Agency Alternatives Search (Google): $0, 48 impressions, 0 clicks, 0 conversions

Every conversion in the window came from a single campaign. That is the honest picture.

Where Google Search leaked money

200 distinct search terms triggered our ads. Those searches ate $445 of the total, and 31% of that ($136) went to searches that never converted.

The most expensive non-converting terms:

• "verts ai": 4 clicks, $13.50
• "how to make ai flyers": 4 clicks, $13.18
• "email marketing free products": 3 clicks, $11.59
• "free crm": 3 clicks, $9.68
• "how to make ai ads on facebook": 3 clicks, $9.21
• "arcads ai pricing": 3 clicks, $9.06
• "scalio app": 3 clicks, $8.46
• "free email lists for marketing": 2 clicks, $7.98
• "commercial ai video": 2 clicks, $7.84
• "scalio ai": 3 clicks, $7.50
• "ai ad generator": 2 clicks, $7.49
• "opensource mailchimp": 2 clicks, $7.42

And the terms that actually converted:

• "ad generator": 3 clicks, 1 conversion, $9.34
• "pippit ai": 2 clicks, 1 conversion, $7.28
• "ai commercials": 2 clicks, 1 conversion, $6.56
• "ai ad": 2 clicks, 1 conversion, $6.12
• "ai banner prompt generator": 1 click, 1 conversion, $3.59
• "ai commercial generator": 1 click, 1 conversion, $3.31
• "scalio ai": 1 click, 1 conversion, $3.06
• "ai garage sale ad": 1 click, 1 conversion, $2.33

Two things jump out. First, "scalio ai" appears on both lists. Three clicks for $7.50 converted zero, one click for $3.06 converted one. Same query, different sessions, wildly different outcomes. Second, the winning terms are almost all narrow, intent-loaded phrases with the word "ad" or "commercial" in them. The losing terms are either free-tool shoppers ("free crm," "opensource mailchimp," "free email lists") or how-to browsers ("how to make ai flyers").

Landing pages tell the same story

Six pages received ad traffic in the window:

• /go/chatgpt-ads: 1,740 visits, 1,268 read past 15 seconds, 115 started typing
• /: 1,609 visits, 1,003 read, 228 started
• /go/free-crm: 311 visits, 239 read, 22 started
• /go/ai-ad-generator: 275 visits, 190 read, 48 started
• /go/ai-ads: 271 visits, 210 read, 14 started
• /go/switch: 161 visits, 131 read, 16 started

/go/ai-ad-generator has the best start-to-visit ratio of any page: 48 started out of 275, roughly 17%. The homepage is second at about 14%. /go/ai-ads gets people to read (210 of 271) but only 14 begin typing. Attention without motion.

Three things a small business could do tomorrow

1. Negative out the free-tool crowd. If "free crm," "opensource mailchimp," and "free email lists for marketing" are burning your budget and never converting, add them as negatives today. We are about to. That is $28.68 recovered from three terms alone, and the pattern is clear across the losing list: shoppers looking for zero-cost tools do not become paying customers.

2. Kill or rebuild the campaigns that produced zero. Three campaigns spent $942 of our $1,739 and produced zero conversions. "Free CRM Alternatives Search" gets an 7.99% CTR, almost identical to our winning campaign, and still closes nothing. High CTR without conversions is a message-market fit problem, not a bidding problem. Rewrite the offer or shut it off.

3. Send more traffic to the page that gets people typing. /go/ai-ad-generator converts intent into action better than any other landing page we run. If you have one page that clearly outperforms on a mid-funnel signal like form starts, move budget toward the campaigns that feed it and stop optimizing the pages that only produce readers.

What I am not concluding

One 30-day window is one 30-day window. Meta produced 285 clicks at a blended cost lower than search, and some of those visitors may still convert on a later session that gets credited elsewhere. 33 of our 429 signups arrived with no ad click at all, which means brand and word of mouth are doing quiet work the dashboard cannot see.

But the money is the money. $1,739 out, 17 conversions in, one campaign carrying the whole quarter. Next month we cut the losers, feed the page that gets people typing, and report back.