What our ad accounts actually did last month: $2,875, 1,155 conversions, 67 signups

The number that caught me off guard

2,687 clicks for $49.

That is what the campaign we call "Plyto - Optimized for usage - India etc" did on Google Search in the last 30 days. Two cents a click, 13.41% CTR, 1,096 conversions logged in the ad platform. On paper it looks like the best campaign we have ever run. In reality it drove zero of the signups we care about.

I am sharing the full picture because ad dashboards lie by omission, and I would rather you learn from our numbers than your own.

The 30 day totals

Across Google Search, Facebook, and Instagram we spent $2,875. That bought 100,436 impressions, 4,116 clicks at an average CPC of $0.70, and 1,155 reported conversions.

Signups: 67. Fifty five of those came from an ad click. Twelve came in without one.

So the headline ratio is $2,875 to 55 ad-attributed signups, or about $52 per signup across the whole mix. That is the honest number. The 1,155 "conversions" figure is what the ad platforms report, and as you will see, most of it is noise.

Campaign by campaign

AI Ad Generator Search (Google Search). $632 spent, 2,336 impressions, 195 clicks at $3.24, 8.35% CTR, 10 conversions. High intent, high CPC, small volume. The CTR tells us the ad matches the search.

Plyto campaign (Google Search). $900 spent, 43,742 impressions, 550 clicks at $1.64, 1.26% CTR, 29 conversions. Our biggest spend line and our biggest conversion count on Google.

Plyto - Optimized for usage - India etc (Google Search). $49 spent, 20,034 impressions, 2,687 clicks at $0.02, 13.41% CTR, 1,096 conversions. The outlier. Cheap clicks, huge reported conversion count, zero business impact we can trace.

Plyto: AI runs your ads (Facebook and Instagram). $604 spent, 5,296 impressions, 164 clicks at $3.69, 3.10% CTR, 0 conversions.

Plyto: Replace your tools (visits first) (Facebook and Instagram). $63 spent, 2,791 impressions, 121 clicks at $0.52, 4.34% CTR, 0 conversions.

Agency Alternatives Search (Google Search). $0 spent, 48 impressions, 0 clicks. Never got off the ground.

Plyto campaign - Conversions (Google Search). $626 spent, 26,189 impressions, 399 clicks at $1.57, 1.52% CTR, 20 conversions.

Add the Google Search conversion counts across the three real Google campaigns and you get 59 conversions on roughly $2,158 of spend. That lines up much more closely with the 55 ad-attributed signups than the all-in 1,155 does.

What the landing pages tell us

We sent paid traffic to six URLs. Visits, people who read past 15 seconds, and people who started typing in a form:

• /go/chatgpt-ads: 1,899 visits, 1,356 read, 131 started
• /: 1,670 visits, 1,036 read, 241 started
• /go/ai-ads: 292 visits, 222 read, 17 started
• /go/free-crm: 250 visits, 196 read, 19 started
• /go/ai-ad-generator: 212 visits, 145 read, 31 started
• /go/switch: 162 visits, 131 read, 16 started

A few things jump out.

The homepage got fewer visits than /go/chatgpt-ads but drove almost twice as many form starts (241 vs 131). People who land on the home page are self-selecting into a product tour and are closer to signing up.

/go/chatgpt-ads has the best read rate of any page (1,356 of 1,899, or about 71%). The content holds attention. The form conversion is weaker, which means the page sells the idea but does not close.

/go/ai-ad-generator is small but mighty. 212 visits, 31 form starts. That is a 14.6% start rate, the best in the set.

/go/switch, our tool-replacement page, pulled a 81% read rate on 162 visits. Tiny volume, strong engagement. Worth more spend.

Three things a small business could do tomorrow

1. Reconcile ad platform conversions against your own signup list every week. We reported 1,155 conversions and got 67 signups, 55 from ads. If we optimized bids on the platform number we would pour money into a campaign that produces nothing. Pick one source of truth, and let it be the one tied to revenue.

2. Kill or rework paid social if it is not converting. Facebook and Instagram cost us $667 across two campaigns and produced zero conversions. The clicks are there. The intent is not. Before spending another dollar there, change the offer, the audience, or the landing page. Do not just let it run.

3. Follow the form starts, not the clicks. /go/ai-ad-generator and the homepage are punching above their weight on form starts per visit. That is the signal to lean into. More budget to the campaigns feeding those pages, more experiments on the pages that get reads but not starts.

That is the month. $2,875 in, 55 ad signups out, and one campaign that looked like a miracle until we checked the signup list.