NextAfter

How interest targeting affects conversion and cost

Experiment ID: #29633

NextAfter

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 03/31/2020

In this experiment, I started out simply wanting to refresh our housefile lookalike audience since our housefile has grown. In doing so, I wondered if we could actually see better performance by modeling off of a NIO Summit attendee list. Furthermore, I wanted to see how both of those compared to using pure interest based targeting.

The primary goal of these ads is to drive new traffic to our website.

Research Question

Which audience will generate more landing page visitors at the lowest cost?

Results

 Treatment NameClick RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Housefile Lookalike 1.0%
T1: NIO Attendee Lookalike 0.47%-55.5% 100.0%
T2: Nonprofit Fundraising Interest Targeting 0.86%-17.8% 95.1%

This experiment has a required sample size of 2,570 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 71,397, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.

Flux Metrics Affected

The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:

    55.5% decrease in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

Both the NIO Attendee list and the Interest Based Targeting list had significantly lower conversion rates. But, it was significantly cheaper to get acquire new traffic from the interest targeting list. In fact, the interest targeting was 28% cheaper per landing page view.

Furthermore, the interest based targeting traffic had a significantly longer average session duration:

  • Housefile Lookalike: 0:16
  • NIO Attendee Lookalike: 0:31
  • Interest Targeting: 0:59


Experiment Documented by Nathan Hill
Nathan Hill is Vice President, NextAfter Institute.

Question about experiment #29633

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.