Google Ads for a bank: 23.2M impressions at $0.78 CPM

The brief: maximum reach in Google at minimum CPM

The bank came with a volume task rather than a lead task: the widest possible reach in Google at the lowest possible cost per thousand impressions. The second condition was to keep the cost per click no higher than $0.07.

A brief like this appears when a product needs to become recognisable. Banking products are rarely chosen from the first ad: a person meets the name several times and decides later. So the campaign is judged by the price of contact, not by applications per week.

What the work involved

The order of work here is reversed. First you decide which metric defines success, then you build the ad groups and creatives around it.

We connected the analytics tools. Without them you cannot separate a cheap impression from a useless one, or see which query groups bring people to the site.

We compiled the semantic core and wrote the ads for it. In a reach campaign the temptation to take broad queries is strong, but they are exactly what pushes CPM up: the system shows the ad to people it was never written for.

We produced advertising creatives for Google's formats.

Then came management and regular optimisation: switching off groups with expensive impressions and moving budget to where impressions cost less.

What sits behind the numbers

On a budget of $18,200 the campaigns delivered 23,232,150 impressions and 568,255 clicks. CPM came out at $0.78 and the cost per click at $0.03 against a target of no more than $0.07. CTR was 2.45%.

A CTR of 2.45% is a normal level for a volume campaign. The job here is not to collect as many clicks as possible but to appear in front of the right audience enough times. The click is a side signal of interest.

A $0.03 click against a $0.07 plan means the budget bought roughly twice the traffic planned. But CPM matters more: in a reach task it is the primary metric.

What is worth taking from this

First, reach campaigns and lead campaigns are built differently. One setup cannot deliver both a cheap impression and a cheap application at the same time, because those are different buying objectives and different auctions.

Second, figures from someone else's case are not a planning benchmark. CPM depends on the category, the season, the region and how many advertisers fight for the same audience. What transfers is the logic: define success first, then build the campaign around that metric.

Let us size up your case

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