← all free tools
What $200 of advertising buys
The same $200 on every channel, run through the benchmarks this site cites everywhere. Assumes a 2% conversion rate and $50 per sale — change them in the calculator.
| Channel | Clicks | Sales | Cost per sale | Enough to learn from? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads (search) | 36 | 0.7 | $278 | Below the $300 this channel needs. Below roughly $300 the campaign never leaves its learning phase, so the number you measure is not the number you would get at scale. |
Meta (Facebook / Instagram) | 180 | 3.6 | $56 | 180 clicks cannot distinguish a 0.0% conversion rate from a 4.0% one. Any result you get at this budget is mostly noise. |
Display / programmatic Nielsen Norman Group on banner blindness · 2007, re-confirmed since | 12 | 0.2 | $833 | 12 clicks cannot distinguish a 0.0% conversion rate from a 9.9% one. Any result you get at this budget is mostly noise. |
Newsletter sponsorship | 0 | 0.0 | — | This budget buys no measurable clicks on this channel, so there is nothing to learn from it. |
A twelve-hour slot on this board | — | — | — | Ours, so weigh it accordingly. The board is young and small, and the honest limitation is reach rather than price. |
How it works
$200 does not buy enough clicks on any paid channel here to measure a 2% conversion rate. It can still buy a placement you judge by the quality of the visitors, not the numbers.
Clicks come from each channel's typical price; impressions-based channels use their published click-through rate. Flat-fee channels buy whole placements, so a budget below one placement buys nothing.