The first run is a lesson, not a launch
A first run tells you four things you cannot know beforehand: which placement people respond to, which hours and days, which area, and whether the ad itself earns clicks. Those four answers are worth more than the handful of sales a first budget could buy, because every later run is built on them. So size the budget by what you can afford to spend on finding out — and write that down before you start, so a run that teaches you something and sells nothing still counts as the success it is.
Three ways to size it
- What one customer is worth. Think about what a new customer brings you over the months you expect to keep them, then about how many of those you would be glad to win. A first budget that is a fraction of that is easy to justify; one that is several times it is not, until you know the ad works.
- What you spend on other ways of being seen. A stack of flyers, a market stall, a listing, a sign: you already have a sense of what being seen is worth to you. Start in that range, and compare the report with what those bring.
- What you can lose without wincing. An amount that, if the first run taught you only what not to do, would change nothing else in the business. Whichever of the three is smallest is a fine place to start.
Enough for a full week, spread evenly
Whatever the amount, let it cover a full week: a Tuesday afternoon and a Saturday morning are different markets, and a report that saw only one of them cannot tell you which to buy more of. Ailumic is built to spread the budget evenly across the days you chose, so it lasts the run rather than the first morning. If the amount feels thin across a week, narrow the area or the placements rather than the days.
Where the money goes
Your budget buys viewings, one at a time, in the same auctions the biggest advertisers buy in; our guide to the price per thousand explains how a budget turns into a number of viewings. With Ailumic the terms are these five sentences. Start with what you have — there is no minimum. You pay only for ads that are actually shown. The price is in front of you before you confirm, and nothing runs until you do. No long-term commitment: pause, change the budget or stop whenever you like. What you have not spent stays on your account.
The rules of thumb you will read elsewhere
You will find rules that tie an advertising budget to a share of revenue, or a platform’s suggested daily amount. They were written for businesses with revenue and a history of what advertising did for them. A first run has neither, which is why this guide sizes it by what you can afford to learn from instead. Once you have a few runs behind you and a report for each, a share of what those runs brought in becomes a budget you can defend.
The second run
Read the report, change one thing — the placement, the area, the days, the ad — and run again with the same budget, so the two runs can be compared. When a run clearly works, add budget to it rather than starting over; the next run begins from what the last one learned. Our guide on reading an ad report says what to look at first.