What does your ad budget actually buy?
Every ad calculator will tell you a budget buys 36 clicks and 0.7 conversions. Almost none will tell you that 36 clicks cannot tell a 2% conversion rate from a 5% one, which means the second number was never worth printing. This one does both.
Clicks
36
Conversions
0.72
Cost per conversion
$277.78
Return on spend
0.18×
What this budget can actually prove
36 clicks cannot distinguish a 0.0% conversion rate from a 6.6% one. Any result you get at this budget is mostly noise.
To read a 2.0% rate with any confidence you need roughly 750 clicks. Most calculators print the conversion figure above and stop there.
Below this channel’s working minimum. Below roughly $300 the campaign never leaves its learning phase, so the number you measure is not the number you would get at scale.
To break even at this budget you would need a conversion rate of 11.1% — higher than the 2.0% you entered.
The same $200 on every channel
| Channel | Clicks | Cost / conversion | Return | Enough to learn? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads (search) | 36 | $277.78 | 0.18× | no |
| Meta (Facebook / Instagram) | 180 | $55.56 | 0.90× | no |
| Display / programmatic | 12 | $833.33 | 0.06× | no |
| Newsletter sponsorship | — | — | 0.00× | no clicks to read |
| A twelve-hour slot on this board | — | — | 0.00× | no clicks to read |
A dash means the channel does not sell in units this budget can buy, or publishes no audience size a click count could honestly be derived from.
Where these figures come from
- Google Ads (search): WordStream / LocaliQ search advertising benchmarks (2026). 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): WordStream / LocaliQ Facebook advertising benchmarks (2026). Interest targeting is broad rather than intent-driven, so a click here means less than the same click from a search result.
- Display / programmatic: Nielsen Norman Group on banner blindness (2007, re-confirmed since). A 0.05% click-through rate means most of the budget buys impressions nobody registers, and a share of them are never rendered at all.
- Newsletter sponsorship: Paved newsletter advertising marketplace (2026). Sold per send, so you cannot buy a small test — the smallest purchase is one whole placement.
- A twelve-hour slot on this board: The board's own published rules (live). Ours, so weigh it accordingly. The board is young and small, and the honest limitation is reach rather than price.
How it works out the answer
Cost-per-click channels divide the budget by the benchmark click price. Cost-per-thousand channels buy impressions first and convert them at the channel’s published click-through rate. Flat-fee channels buy whole placements, and where a channel publishes no audience size, the click count is left blank rather than invented.
The confidence line uses the normal approximation for a proportion: an observed conversion rate is only worth acting on once its interval is narrower than about half the rate itself, which needs roughly 15 ÷ your conversion rate clicks. At 2% that is about 750 clicks, which at a typical search price is well over $4,000. Most small tests are not measurements, and the useful thing a small test does is eliminate the obviously bad rather than crown a winner.
Our own board is one row in the table. It is ours, so weigh it accordingly — the honest limitation is reach, not price, and the numbers it reports are published on the front page and on each brand’s own page.
Related reading
- What a $200 Google Ads budget actually buys — the same arithmetic, worked through in prose.
- CPM vs CPC vs flat fee — converting between the three pricing models before you compare them.
- Fast tests need honest numbers — why a thin result read confidently is worse than no result.
- Vanity metrics vs real clicks — which numbers deserve a budget decision.