How a campaign is planned, launched, and reported

Before the discovery call: a 3-minute prep checklist

The discovery call is more productive when you have a few specifics in front of you. None of these are required — we can fill in the gaps on the call — but having them saves an exchange of follow-up emails.

• The official contest URL and the exact name of the contest
• The voting window: start date, end date, and time zone if specified
• A copy or summary of the contest rules, especially any rule that mentions external promotion, paid traffic, or third-party services
• Your current vote tally and approximate audience size on any platform you already use
• A rough budget range you are willing to consider, or the constraint that you have no budget yet and are exploring
• One or two examples of what a "good outcome" would look like to you, even informally

What an audience projection actually looks like

Every proposal we send includes an audience projection that we share the assumptions behind. The headline number — for example, "5,000 to 12,000 unique users reached over 14 days" — is derived from three inputs:

• Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on each chosen ad platform, sourced from our historical data for the contest category and region. Typical CPMs in 2026 range from $4 in cost-efficient regions on TikTok to $25+ on Meta in North America.
• Click-through rate (CTR), also based on category benchmarks, used to project clicks from impressions.
• Estimated conversion-to-vote rate — how many people who clicked an ad will actually go through the contest page voting flow. This is the most variable number and is presented as a range with confidence interval, not as a point estimate.

You receive the spreadsheet alongside the written proposal. You can change the inputs and immediately see how the projection moves — useful when comparing one tier to another.

Daily optimization in plain English

During an active campaign, the following decisions are made by the campaign manager every day:

• Which creatives are over-performing and should receive a larger share of budget the next day
• Which audience segments are responding well and should be expanded with similar look-alike audiences
• Which segments are not responding and should be paused to avoid wasted spend
• Whether the bid strategy (CPC, CPM, or conversions) is still the right one given live performance
• If frequency capping is needed because users are seeing the same ad too many times

A concrete example: on day 3 of a typical Growth-tier campaign, two of the four creatives are usually clearly outperforming the others. We pause the two weaker ones, redistribute their share to the winners, and brief a small refresh of two new creatives that get uploaded on day 5. By day 7 the campaign typically runs on the two best original creatives plus the two refreshes.

How the wrap-up report is structured

The final report is a single document delivered within five business days of the campaign ending. It contains:

1. Executive summary in plain language — what we set out to do, what was delivered, what was learned
2. The numeric outcomes: total impressions, unique reach, clicks, click-through rate, cost per click, cost per thousand impressions, and the conversion-to-vote rate where we can measure it
3. A platform-by-platform breakdown so you see where each share of budget went and how each channel performed
4. Audience demographics — country, age bracket, gender, device type — anonymized as required by GDPR and never linked to individual users
5. A "lessons learned" section: what we would do differently in a future campaign for a similar contest, what assumptions held, what surprised us
6. A short recommendations section if you are likely to participate in similar contests in the next 12 months

The report is your property to keep, share with stakeholders, or use as a portfolio piece in your own work. We retain a copy for accounting and reference purposes only.