At long last, I finally got around to crunching the numbers for the Google campaign optimization experiment. The bottom line is that it was definitely worth doing:

Stats For 10 Day Period Before

Optimization

 After

Optimization
# of Profiles Created 249 320
# of Sales 47 60
Commissions Earned $ 1,410.00 $ 1,800.00
Total Ad Spend $ 824.10 $ 1,005.02
Impressions 27,198 37,670
Clicks 4,480 4,410
Click Through Rate (CTR) 16.47% 11.71%
Overall Average Ad Position 2.2 1.9
Net Income From Campaign (Commissions - Ad Spend) $ 585.90 $ 794.98
Return on Investment (ROI) 71.% 79%
Average Cost per Click $ 0.18 $ 0.23
Average Number of Clicks Per Free Profile Completed 18 14
Cost to Generate Each Profile $ 3.24 $ 3.14

Although the average Cost Per Click increased, it appears that the “quality” of the visitors improved at the same time. Instead of taking 18 visitors before someone would set up a profile on the dating site, the figure was reduced to just under every 14 visitors. So overall, the cost of obtaining a profile decreased by 0.10 per profile.

It may not sound like much, but over time these small numbers really add up. So…. I think I’ll ditch my old campaign and keep the campaign that the Google people prepared.