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1071 points mtlynch | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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mtlynch ◴[] No.39398013[source]
Author here. As always, I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.
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W-Stool ◴[] No.39398587[source]
Thanks for writing a great summary of year #6 for your business. Question: where do your advertising dollars go and how do you measure their success?

Good luck in year #7!

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1. mtlynch ◴[] No.39401288[source]
Thanks for reading!

>where do your advertising dollars go and how do you measure their success?

Sorry, but advertising spend is one of the few things I avoid sharing publicly. Most other things about my strategy, I think our execution is what makes the difference, so I don't care if competitors know. With advertising, it was expensive to figure out a successful strategy, and it's the kind of thing that a competitor can copy perfectly.

I can talk about measuring their success, though. The metric I focus on primarily is revenue on ad spend. Material costs make up about 33% of the revenue from TinyPilot's product sales, so if we get $1.50 for every $1 we spend on ads, we'd end up about breakeven ($1.50 from revenue - $1 for the ad - $0.50 for materials), so I aim to be at 2.25 ROAS or higher on any channel so we have a comfortable margin.