What our ad accounts actually did last 30 days: $1,608, 17 conversions, and one very expensive lesson

The number I keep staring at

31% of our Google Search spend, $136 of $445, went to searches that never converted. Not a bad keyword. Not a bad campaign. 200 distinct search terms triggered our ads, and roughly a third of the money on that channel bought clicks from people who were looking for something adjacent to what we sell, not what we sell.

That is the single most useful thing I learned running Plyto's own ads for the last 30 days. Here is the rest of it, honestly.

The top line

Across three campaigns we spent $1,608, got 9,182 impressions, 488 clicks, and 17 conversions at a $3.30 average CPC.

• AI Ad Generator Search (Google): $797 spent, 3,183 impressions, 255 clicks, $3.12 CPC, 8.01% CTR, 17 conversions
• Plyto: AI runs your ads (Facebook and Instagram): $536 spent, 5,060 impressions, 158 clicks, $3.39 CPC, 3.12% CTR, 0 conversions
• Free CRM Alternatives Search (Google): $275 spent, 939 impressions, 75 clicks, $3.67 CPC, 7.99% CTR, 0 conversions

Every conversion we booked came from one campaign. Two campaigns produced zero.

The searches that paid us back

Eight search terms converted. Every one of them names the thing we do:

• "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

Notice the pattern. Short, product-shaped queries. "ad generator" and variants. A couple of competitor names. Even the oddball, "ai garage sale ad," is a person trying to make a specific ad right now.

The searches that ate our budget

Here are 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

Three tells in that list. First, "how to make" queries are tutorial-seekers, not buyers. Second, "free" queries ("free crm," "free email lists for marketing," "opensource mailchimp") do exactly what the word says. Third, "scalio ai" shows up on both lists: 3 clicks and 1 conversion at $3.06 in one row, and 3 clicks with zero conversions at $7.50 in another. Same term, different auction days, wildly different outcomes. Competitor bids are volatile.

What the landing pages did after the click

We log two behaviors past the visit: read past 15 seconds, and started typing in a form field.

• /: 426 visits, 287 read, 22 started
• /go/chatgpt-ads: 309 visits, 154 read, 9 started
• /go/ai-ad-generator: 239 visits, 171 read, 48 started
• /go/ai-ads: 87 visits, 76 read, 0 started
• /go/free-crm: 80 visits, 51 read, 3 started
• /lp/nw96wj0jy76s: 42 visits, 31 read, 0 started

/go/ai-ad-generator is the star. 239 visits, 171 read past 15 seconds, and 48 people started typing. That is a 20% start-typing rate. Compare it to /go/ai-ads, where 76 of 87 visitors read the page and not one touched a form field. People will read a great page and still not act if the page is not asking them to.

/go/free-crm mirrors the campaign it belongs to: traffic, some reading, almost no intent to sign up.

Signups, and the number nobody counts

37 signups in the window. 17 attributed to ads. 20 came in without an ad click. More than half our new accounts had another origin: direct, organic, word of mouth, something we cannot see in the click data. If we judged the month by ad conversions alone, we would undercount our own pipeline by 54%.

Three things a small business can do tomorrow

1. Pull your search terms report and cut the tutorial queries. "how to make" and "free X" phrases almost never buy. In our account, killing those alone would have recovered a meaningful chunk of the $136 we burned on non-converting searches.

2. Match landing pages to intent, and put the form above the fold. Our /go/ai-ad-generator page had a 20% start-typing rate because it does one thing. /go/ai-ads got readers and no typers. Reading is not buying.

3. Do not judge a channel by last-click alone. 20 of our 37 signups had no ad click. Ads still mattered. So did everything else. If you shut off the campaigns because the attributed number looks small, you may find the unattributed number shrinks a week later.

That is the month. One winning campaign, two that need surgery, and a reminder that a third of paid search spend can vanish into curiosity clicks if you are not watching the terms.