How do I run campaigns and measure ROI effectively (Meta ads, TikTok campaigns, fan growth, playlist ROI)?
TL;DR - Plan, Instrument, Test Small, Compare cost per outcome, Scale only what wins
Case Study - “Satellite Bloom”
Channel (2-week test) - Spend - Outcome - Key metric
IG or FB Reels ads, Meta - 150 dollars - 21,000 three-second views, 5,400 link clicks, 620 saves - 0.24 dollars per save
TikTok Spark Ad - 120 dollars - 76,000 plays, 1,800 profile taps, 520 saves - 0.23 dollars per save
Playlist batch, One Submit starter plus SubmitHub credits - 95 dollars - 14 playlist adds, 11,300 streams, 1,480 saves - 0.06 dollars per save
Email re-target, Mailchimp - 18 dollars - 420 opens, 78 clicks, 40 saves - 0.45 dollars per save
Decision: pause TikTok spend due to rising CPM, triple playlist budget, keep a small Meta retarget loop, redesign the email hook.
Define success before you spend
Funnel stage and example targets
Awareness - cost per 1,000 impressions at or below 6 dollars
Consideration - link click through at or above 1.5 percent
Engagement - cost per save at or below 0.20 dollars
Ownership - cost per email or SMS signup at or below 1 dollar
Algorithmic lift - at least 25 percent of total streams by week 3
Choose a single north-star, often cost per save or cost per follower, then two to three supporting metrics.
Instrument everything
UTM parameters on every smart-link, utm_source and utm_campaign.
Pixels.
Meta events: PageView, OutboundClick, custom conversion “Stream 30 s”.
TikTok events: ViewContent, CompleteEvent after 25 seconds via EventBridge.
Spotify Ad Studio tag to retarget anyone who streamed at least 30 seconds in the last 14 days.
Playlist platform exports, SubmitHub, Groover, One Submit, include placement IDs, follower counts, and cost, and paste into the same sheet as ad spend.
Run Meta ads like experiments
Audience - stack lookalike 3 percent plus an interest layer for similar artists
Objective - Conversions to a custom save event, Stream 30 s plus Save
Creative - 15 second vertical Reel, hook in the first 1.5 seconds, auto captions
Budget - 5 to 10 dollars per day per ad set, kill loser ads at 1.5 times your target CPA
Spark TikTok the right way
Post an organic clip first and watch 24 hour performance.
Whitelist the top performing post as a Spark Ad and duplicate with two captions.
Ceiling CPM about 10 dollars, if cost per save climbs above 0.30 dollars, pause.
Comment and pin the smart-link to track saves.
Playlist spend is top of funnel, measure mid funnel
Track cost per playlist add and cost per save, target at or below 0.10 dollars per save.
Use Chartmetric to verify save to stream on each playlist, 7 percent or higher is healthy.
Platforms with auto exports such as One Submit save manual matching time, drop cost and stream columns straight into the ROI sheet.
Build a one source of truth dashboard
Columns and example values
Date or Week - 2025 W38
Channel - Meta_Reels_A1
Spend, dollars - 50
Clicks - 1,230
Streams - 4,200
Saves - 510
Followers - 85
CPA, cost per save - formula Spend divided by Saves
Notes or Creative - Lyric teaser v2
Visualise in Looker Studio or use colour scale in Sheets, green is under target, red is over.
Decide and iterate
Week 1 - if cost per save is below 0.25 dollars, keep or scale two times. If cost per save is above 0.35 dollars, pause and rethink copy.
Week 2 - if algorithmic share is rising, extend the campaign.
Week 4 - if playlist add growth is flattening, re pitch a new batch.
Week 8 - ROI by channel logged, re allocate budget.
Common mistakes
No north-star metric, which makes scaling rules impossible.
Judging playlist ROI by stream volume instead of saves or followers.
Overlapping big ad and playlist pushes, which muddies attribution.
Forgetting skip rate, high skips can kill algorithmic reach even with saves.
Leaving data in four dashboards, merge weekly while it is fresh.
Key takeaways
Plan and instrument first, pixels and UTMs make or break ROI tracking.
Start small, 50 to 100 dollar tests reveal cost per save before bigger spend.
Compare apples to apples, playlist adds, ads, and emails all boil down to cost per save or follower.
One spreadsheet to rule them all, merge ad, playlist, and revenue data weekly.
Scale only the green rows, cut anything that cannot beat your blended targets.
Run campaigns this way and every dollar you spend either compounds into real fan growth, or stops before it burns your budget.