Well, it’s been a week and a day. I know I promised daily updates, but yeah.

Here’s the good news: the Google AdSense campaign finally kicked it. It started delivering ads on 6/25 and has been running at full tilt since. I can only assume that, since this was an image ad, the Google Robotic Brain had been holding it until a human being could review it and approve it. I didn’t see any kind of note to that effect, though, which is annoying, if that’s what happened. I didn’t do anything else, make any changes to the campaign or any of that, so I can’t imagine what else the problem could have been.

But no matter. The ads are running now. Here’s the data:

Google AdSense

Clicks:

Google count: 154
Our internal count: 232

Impressions: 425,980
Click-Through Ratio: 0.04%
Average cost-per-click: $0.39
Average CPM: $0.14
Total spent so far: $60.08

Facebook

Clicks:

Facebook’s count: 162
Our internal count: 254

Impressions: 197,729
Click-Through Ratio: 0.08%
Average Cost-Per-Click: $0.53
Average CPM: $0.43
Total spent so far: $85.76

Project Wonderful

Click-Throughs:

PW count: 225
Our internal count: 327

Impressions: 1,458,332
Click-Through Ratio: 0.02%
Effective CPM: $0.07
Total spent so far: $103.22

Note: click-through ratio and cost-per-click are based on the click numbers provided by the ad platform, not on our internally tracked numbers. Our own internal click-through count has been consistently higher than any of the ad platforms’ numbers. I have a new theory. Some of the extras are caused by the ad server itself (Google’s, or PW’s, or Facebook’s) double-checking the URL to make sure that the page it’s supposed to be linking to is still in existence. I arrive at this theory because, even before Google started showing the ads, there were exactly two “hits” a day to the tracking URL I used when I set this campaign up. That had to have been Google. Our internal tracking simply counts the number of times a particular URL is hit, and I used a different unique URL for each ad. People could also, possibly, be passing the URL’s around to their friends. This is unlikely, but would be a pleasant reason to have your stats screwed up, wouldn’t it? Either way, I am going to stop reporting our internal click-tracking numbers from now on, and just go with the ones provided by the ad networks. If our numbers had been consistently lower, or if they’d been higher for some networks, and lower for others, I would still care about them. But I don’t.

ComicSpace blog reader (and creator of Calamities of Nature) Tony Piro made some helpful suggestions in the comments of the Day Three post. In particular, he reminded me that the people commenting on the blog can be helpful resources, who may be able to point the way to improving the performance of the campaigns, but only if I share more information about the campaigns themselves. So here’s the banner we’re running through Google and PW:

And here’s the ad that’s running on Facebook:

One of Tony’s suggestions was that we might get more clicks if the ads weren’t obviously for merchandise — and that once somebody clicked, he or she might actually poke around and look at stuff and maybe buy something. We considered that before starting this campaign, but decided to be very, very upfront about the t-shirtiness of the thing you’re clicking on, not out of any benevolent goodwill or anything, but just because we wanted to only get clicks from people who were actually honestly interested in buying a t-shirt, maybe. This is a very different prospect from advertising a free webcomic, just to get people to pop over and have a free bit of entertainment. I think those kinds of clicks are a lot easier to get — but it’s also impossible to measure ROI on them, or, at least, very very difficult to.

Speaking of ROI: there is none yet. We still haven’t made any shirt sales as a direct result of these ads. We’re selling shirts here and there, mind you. But none as a direct result of these ads. Yipes.

Note: this is day three of my experiment in collecting data for the effectiveness of advertising webcomics merchandise using three popular ad platforms: Google AdSense, Project Wonderful, and Facebook. To keep the experiment simple, we’re advertising one, and only one, t-shirt from the ComicSpace store. For the full intro, go to the first post, which happened yesterday (day two of the experiment, but day one of the postings — because I waited to collect a full day’s worth of data before posting anything. Confused yet? I am!).

I’ll just cut straight to the numbers.

Google AdSense

Okay, I’m definitely doing something wrong here. Even though I’m offering to pay Google $10/day for a month on banners (a $300 purchase, basically), they’ve displayed nothing, nada, zip on their network for two full days. I can’t imagine that they’re not willing to take our money. I think I’ve just set this up wrong somehow. I’m going to have to ask somebody else here at the office to look at my settings and figure out the problem. I’m such a loser. ROI is neutral, since we haven’t spent any money.

Project Wonderful

We’ve spent $34.46 of the $500 we’re willing to spend on PW ads this month (a little over $13 today). According to PW’s stats, we’re up to 116 clicks so far. Our internal tracking says 149. Still no sales, though, so the ROI is still negative to infinity (just because you can’t divide by zero).

Facebook

We’ve spent $30.00 of the $300 we’re willing to spend on Facebook ads this month (note: Facebook cuts the expense of exactly at $10/day, which is surprising, that they can be so precise). We’ve had 59 clicks, according to their internal tracking. Our own more generous internal tracking reports 88 clicks. Still no sales. ROI negative to infinity.

Blah. Bleh. Blurg.

Stay tuned for more numbers — and hopefully the solution to my Google problems — tomorrow!

So yeah, the title of this post is a mouthful (or an eyeful, assuming you’re not moving your lips as you read this). I’ll start with the title, then. Taking it piece by piece, buzzword by buzzword:

ROI means “Return on Investment.” It’s one of those concepts that is fairly simple on its face, but can sometimes dissolve into blurry meaninglessness the harder you stare at it. As it relates to advertising, ROI means: how much money did you get back in the form of sales, versus the amount you spent promoting the product? Like I said, it seems simple. In a direct sales mindset, it is simple. If your product nets you $1 in profit, and you spent $1000 on an ad, and sold 2000 products as a direct result of the ad, then you had a 2x ROI. But it’s only in the world of direct sales advertising that ROI is simple. Most advertising on television, for example, or in magazines and newspapers, is not measurable by direct sales. You can’t click a Wii commercial to buy one. Those kinds of ads are called “branding” campaigns, and they have very different goals. The idea isn’t that you’ll buy a product as a specific result of viewing a specific ad, but that over time you’ll grow more and more familiar with the product, and be more likely to buy it, versus its competitors, thanks to the warm fuzzy branding messages you’ve received. Large advertising agencies spend millions of dollars “proving” ROI for branding campaigns — using focus groups, decades-long sales trends, demographic data, polls, etc. We won’t be doing that kind of analysis here, in part because I’m not qualified to do it, in part because we don’t have that kind of budget, and in part because ROI for a branding campaign is only measurable at the highest levels of saturation (Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, etc), and a product designed to appeal to hundreds of people, like, say, a t-shirt by a webcomic creator, is just too small to make any kind of noticeable branding impact in a poll or a focus group. Our experiment is strictly being conducted to determine a direct sales ROI: how much did we spend, how much did we make, and how do those two compare to one another.

Oh, did I mention this is about t-shirts? This is about t-shirts. Specifically, it’s about one particular t-shirt, the God Is Cute t-shirt by James Kochalka. I have chosen that shirt for this experiment because a). it hasn’t sold as well as James’ other shirts in the ComicSpace store, but b). it outsold all of our shirts when we exhibited at MoCCA, and c). it has a potential audience that exists outside of the standard “James Kochalka fan” audience — specifically, people who believe in God, and think He’s, you know, cute. As opposed to the people who think he’s all about fire and brimstone or whatever. Reaching out to this audience is key to ComicSpace’s online sales strategy, because, let’s face it, anybody can sell a t-shirt to the fans of the webcomic it came from. You, yourself, as a comics creator, can sell stuff to your own fans, all by yourself. You don’t need help. Unlike some of the other online stores that serve the webcomics space, ComicSpace is committed to finding audiences outside the already-existing fan audience for any individual creator’s merchandise. Part of that is identifying designs and concepts that might be able to “hook” other audiences, and then reaching out to them.

Here is the experiment: I have taken out ads for this shirt on three popular advertising platforms: Project Wonderful, Facebook, and Google AdSense. These ads will stay up for one month (through July 22, since I launched the campaigns yesterday). Every day between now and then, I’ll let you know how each ad platform is doing, in terms of generating clicks, and (more importantly) in terms of generating sales. If any. That’s the “liveblogging” part of this, the constant updates, for those who might be interested. If I tweak a campaign, change keywords, or target it to different websites, I’ll mention that, too, and share the results. I’ll also let you know how much we’ve spent, so far, on each platform. At the end of the month, I’ll wrap this all up with my conclusions. If any.

So, to get started, here are the parameters as the exist today:

Google AdSense

I set a budget of $10/day, bidding on the keywords “webcomic,” “comic” “kochalka” and the keyphrase “God is”.

So far, there have been no clicks (no impressions, either, which is weird — maybe I’ve done something wrong here) and the cost is zero. ROI is neutral.

Project Wonderful

I set this up to run across the entire PW network, with conservative bidding strategy and a cap of $500/month.

So far, there have been a few clicks. PW itself tracks 72 clicks. Our internal stats track 91. We have spent $19.46. There have been no sales. ROI is currently negative to infinity (because you can’t divide by zero).

FaceBook

I set this up to display only when the Facebook member has specified an interest in “comics,” “webcomics” or the phrase “God is Love”. According to Facebook, that’s 145,000 people.

So far, there have been a few clicks. Facebook itself tracks 25 clicks, while our internal stats track 31. We have spent $13.95. There have been no sales. ROI is currently negative to infinity (see above).

It’s likely that the difference between our tracking and PW’s and Facebook’s relates to their attempts to cancel out “click fraud.” We don’t have any such filters on our own click-tracking. Since I can’t imagine that anybody has any reason to commit click fraud, I actually trust our numbers more than theirs at the moment. I’ll keep watching this and see how it plays out, though.

A little while back, ComicSpace launched its t-shirt store in beta, featuring the designs of several popular webcartoonists. Now we are looking for more. Specifically, we want to find talented, enthusiastic t-shirt designers — who maybe have a webcomic, but maybe don’t — who want to work with us to sell their designs through our store.

We know that the store is a diamond in the rough. We have only begun this process and are taking one step at a time. Other t-shirt stores look cooler, and, frankly, are cooler. But here’s the thing. The ComicSpace network of sites reaches more than one million people worldwide in a given month. Our t-shirt program is a key part of our business, and we know we are going to make this work, and work well, for everybody involved. A partnership with us at this point in our product development cycle will mean that you will get more favorable terms than you’re likely to get from more established online stores.

As they used to say in the car rental ads: “We’re number two! We try harder!”

Deal details will come once we’re in talks with you, but here’s the basics: we pay to have the shirts printed; we sell the shirts on our store and other venues (at conventions, for example, or through banner ads we run across our network); we manage the warehouse, and do all shipping and fulfilling; we pay you a 30% share of the gross revenues from sales on a quarterly basis. You collect money and maybe design some more shirts.

To get started, email me, Joey Manley, joey@comicspace.com, with the following information:

1. A low-rez image file showing the basic graphic for the design, along with a textual description of the shirt itself (what color you think the shirt itself should be, whether it’s a pocket tee or a babydoll or a hoodie, or all three, etc). If you have any preference about the brand of the shirt “blank” (Hanes Beefy Tee, Fruit of the Loom, American Apparel), tell me that, too. If the design requires any unusual technical process, let me know about that. Etc.

2. If you have a webcomic, or a blog, and are willing to promote the design on your own site, I’d like a sense of how popular that site is. Note: it is not required that you have a webcomic, or a blog, or that you promote the design on your own site. It does help us get past the “do we think we can sell this” question, though, so it’s a definite plus if you’re already popular. That said, this is more about the actual design of the shirt itself — we want shirts we can sell to people who have never heard of you or your site, even if you are popular — so don’t stress too much if you’re not. We will work with a mix of popular and less-well-known cartoonists, ideally.

3. If I don’t know you already, make sure that you let me know that you are over 18 and able to enter into a legally-binding contractual agreement within the United States of America. If you’re not, we won’t be able to work with you yet. Sorry. Blame our lawyers!

Here’s something to keep in mind. Since we’re paying to have the shirts printed, and are responsible for the sales, we will only accept a small number of designs — the ones that we think we can actually sell to our existing ComicSpace audience. I’ll be the person doing the initial triage on submissions, but the final decision will be in the hands of the entire ComicSpace team. If we reject your design, it simply means that we’re not sure that we could sell a few hundred copies of it, in wearable form, to our audience. It doesn’t mean we don’t love you and your work! You are not allowed to be a sourpuss! Ha!

So yeah. What are you waiting for?