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The Book Is the Funnel · Part 5 · $4.95
Get Part 5 for $4.95
The Book Is the Funnel · Part 5 · $4.95

Five steps on what you're actually buying when money leaves the ad account, and it isn't traffic.

Run two campaigns on one purchase event, judge on settled cost per purchase, set a kill threshold dynamically, cap your total loss, and open a second front door.

Get Part 5 for $4.95 What's inside
Instant PDF download. One payment. 4,600 words.
The problem this part solves

You could read ad spend as buying traffic. It isn't. You're buying information about which of your ideas is right, and traffic is only how the information arrives. Ask what would have to be true for this to work, write the answer down, then design the first tests to find that out, not to make sales.

Campaign, objective, ad set, creative and conversion are five words that carry this part. Delivery has three states, learning, learning limited and active, and only the third is a normal operating condition. Last significant edit, not launch date, is what everything you judge by age should be counted from.

A whiteboard sketch of a row of coins flowing toward a brick wall labelled Loss Ceiling, with a lightbulb bouncing back, showing ad spend buys information and stops at a hard limit.
Part 5 treats ad spend as buying information, with a hard loss ceiling a machine cannot raise.
What's inside

The steps, and what you walk away with.

The steps
31. Run two campaigns on one purchase event, broad
32. Judge on settled cost per purchase, and treat a high click-through as a warning
33. Set the kill threshold dynamically, and give a test long enough
34. Set the total you're prepared to lose, and a ceiling a machine cannot raise
35. Open a second front door
What you produce
Two campaigns built on one purchase event
A settled-cost-per-purchase judging rule
A dynamic kill threshold
A hard loss ceiling a machine cannot raise
A second front door into the funnel
See the actual pages
Cover of Part Advertising: buy information, not traffic Preview page 1 from Advertising: buy information, not traffic Preview page 2 from Advertising: buy information, not traffic Preview page 3 from Advertising: buy information, not traffic Preview page 4 from Advertising: buy information, not traffic Preview page 5 from Advertising: buy information, not traffic
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Excerpt, verbatim from Part 5

You could read the spend as buying traffic. It isn't. You're buying information about which of your ideas is right, and traffic is only how the information arrives.

Delivery has three states, learning, learning limited and active, and only the third is a normal operating condition.

Buy this if
You're about to set up or restructure ad campaigns and want a rule for judging them.
You want a hard loss ceiling and a kill threshold before you spend.
You already have creative ready and need the campaign structure around it.
Skip it if
You haven't built your ad creative yet. Part 4 comes first.
You want page or checkout mechanics, not campaign structure.
Ryan Richardson
A note from Ryan

I built analytics models for banks and miners before this. Every step in The Book Is the Funnel is one we ran on our own funnel first, failures included. This part is sold on its own because most people need one piece of it, not all sixty at once.

Ryan RichardsonFounder, Onwards Analytics
Before you buy

Three questions people ask first.

Do I need the rest of the book?
Loosely. This part works best once you have creative from Part 4 to put into the campaigns it describes, but the campaign structure and loss-ceiling rules stand alone.
What format is it?
A PDF, delivered by email within minutes of payment. No app, no login, no subscription.
What if it isn't what the page says?
Reply to your receipt email and say so, any time in the first 60 days. You get the $4.95 back, no form, and we want to know what went wrong.
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Advertising: buy information, not traffic
Part 5 of The Book Is the Funnel · steps 31–35 · PDF
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