How We Drove 68,000+ Podcast Clicks Across Search, Social & Display for $0.33 Each

A scrappy omnichannel campaign that delivered 7.6M impressions and proved you don’t need massive budgets to make noise

The Challenge: Supporting Sleep-Deprived Parents

Our client, a major children’s media company, had a problem most brands would kill for: amazing podcast content that wasn’t getting the listens it deserved. Their challenge? Reach parents who were buried in responsibilities, scattered across platforms, and had zero patience for content that wasn’t immediately valuable.

The mission was simple but not easy: drive podcast listens while building mind-share with parents as a trusted storytelling partner. And we had to do it across search, social, and display—all while keeping costs lean enough for the campaign to actually scale.

Campaign Snapshot: The Numbers That Matter

Flight Period: July 2024 - December 2024

Budget: $22,500

Results:

• 7.6M impressions across channels
• 68,389 clicks to podcast pages
• 0.90% average CTR (well above display benchmarks)
• $0.33 average cost per click to podcast landing pages
• 5% average engagement rate across paid channels

Let’s be clear: these aren’t earth-shattering numbers if you’re working with Super Bowl budgets. But for under $23K? This is how you build repeatable, sustainable growth.

Strategic Approach: Why We Went Omnichannel

The Play: Meet Parents Where They Actually Are

Too many campaigns pick one channel and pray. We took a different approach:

1. Search & Display (Google): Capture intent when parents are actively looking for content
2. Social (Meta): Build awareness and connection with parents in their downtime
3. Cross-Platform Learning: Use insights from one channel to optimize the others

The goal wasn’t just to drive clicks—it was to identify reliable, repeatable strategies for podcast growth that could scale beyond this initial flight.

What Made This Different

We leaned into platform strengths instead of fighting them:

• Google: Leveraged search intent and vast display network to catch parents at decision moments
• Meta: Focused on engagement and building relationships with parents who actually care about children’s content
• Smart Targeting: Applied learnings from previous brand campaigns to focus on audiences who would actually listen—not just click

The Results: What Actually Worked

Social: Meta Delivered on Engagement

Key Performance:

• 7.31% engagement rate (Facebook outperformed at 7.31% vs Google’s 2.69%)
• 2.7M paid views
• Average CPM: $5.05

What Worked: One animated character-driven campaign targeting parents with Apple devices and existing fans delivered exceptional performance:

• $0.24 cost per click to podcast page (75% better than campaign average)
• Strong engagement from audiences who already had affinity with the content

What Didn’t: Broad “unique daily reach parents” targeting bombed with a $0.98 CPDC and $6.40 CPM. Lesson learned: specificity beats reach when you’re driving action.

Search & Display: Google Drove Volume

Key Performance:

• 60,000+ clicks to podcast pages
• 3.6M paid views
• 48,825 unique users
• 100,000+ guaranteed viewable impressions
• 22.35% completion rate on video ads

What Worked:

• Display campaigns promoting animated adventure content: $0.28 CPC
• Search campaigns for character-specific queries: $0.29 CPC

The search strategy was ruthlessly simple: show up when parents were looking for kids’ content, make it dead simple to click through to the podcast.

Strategic Insights: What We’d Do Again (And What We’d Change)

The Wins

1. Platform Diversification Paid Off By spreading budget across channels, we identified what worked fast. Meta delivered engagement, Google delivered volume. Both mattered.

2. IP-Driven Targeting Actually Worked When we targeted parents who already knew and loved specific characters, performance improved dramatically. Cold audiences? Not so much.

3. Device Targeting Matters More Than You Think The Apple device targeting on Meta wasn’t random—parents who invest in premium devices tend to invest in premium content for their kids. That $0.24 CPDC proved it.

4. Video Completion Rates Tell You Everything That 22.35% completion rate on video ads? It meant our creative was actually resonating. When people watch your ad all the way through, they’re way more likely to click.

What We’d Change

1. Start Social Earlier We had a “slower start” on Meta, which was a nice way of saying we should’ve tested social creative from day one. The engagement rates proved it was worth the investment.

2. Kill Broad Targeting Faster That $0.98 CPDC from broad parent targeting? We should’ve pulled the plug after two weeks, not two months. When something’s not working, scrappiness means cutting it fast.

3. Build More Creative Variants We only brought two main creative assets to Meta. More variants would’ve given us more data, faster.

The Playbook: How You Can Replicate This

1. Start with Platform-Specific Strengths

• Search: Capture demand that already exists
• Display: Build awareness at scale
• Social: Drive engagement and affinity

2. Let Performance Drive Budget Allocation

We didn’t split budget evenly. We let early performance dictate where dollars went. That’s how you stay scrappy.

3. Specific Targeting > Broad Reach

Every time we got specific (Apple device users, character fans, intent-based search), performance improved. Resist the temptation to cast too wide a net.

4. Creative Matters More Than Budget

Our best-performing ads weren’t our most expensive. They were just better matched to audience intent.

5. Track Completion, Not Just Clicks

Video completion rates told us which creative actually resonated. CTR told us what was compelling enough to click. Both mattered.

The Bottom Line

For $22,500, we delivered:

• 7.6M impressions
• 68,000+ clicks to podcast landing pages
• Proven, repeatable strategies across three major channels
• Cost per click 40% below industry benchmarks for digital audio promotion

This wasn’t about having unlimited budget or fancy technology. It was about understanding platform dynamics, being ruthless about what worked, and killing what didn’t fast enough to redirect budget to winners.

The ongoing nature of this campaign means we’re still learning, still optimizing. But the foundations are solid: when you meet parents where they are, speak to what they care about, and make it stupid-simple to take action, even modest budgets can drive real results.

Key Takeaways

1. Omnichannel doesn’t mean equal channel - Let performance dictate budget allocation
2. Specificity beats scale - Targeted audiences outperformed broad reach every time
3. Platform strengths are real - Meta for engagement, Google for volume and intent
4. Kill losers fast - Broad targeting that doesn’t work in week one won’t magically work in week ten
5. Creative quality > creative quantity - But you still need enough variants to test

Want to talk about running similar campaigns for podcast, audio, or video content? The framework is proven. The playbook is repeatable. The results speak for themselves.