242: What asset category performed best in Facebook ads during 2024?

2024 Aggregate

Last year, I built 815 Facebook campaigns.

As you can see in the chart above:
• vehicle auctions achieved the lowest cost per click
• foodservice equipment auctions drew the highest click-through rate
• livestock auctions saw the lowest cost per 1,000 prospects reached
• commercial equipment garnered the most average link clicks

I’m transparent with my anonymized results because they help us all calibrate our expectations.

Auctions in 5 time zones 

In 2024, my clients and I partnered on campaigns spanning 4 North American time zones and Greenwich Mean Time. (For auctions where we had multiple locations, I chose just one address per campaign.) The top three states: North Carolina (99), Tennessee (95), and Michigan (92).

One of several Biplane records in 2024

Last year across 859 campaigns, I marketed 929 auctions spanning 42 states. For comparison, that’s 189 more auctions and 171 more campaigns than in 2023. August saw more job orders than any other month with 104 new campaigns. (Second was May at 88 and then April at 86.)

What we advertised together in 2024

As you can see above, farm equipment fell from first to second place this past year, supplanted by residential real estate. I was assigned more aircraft auctions in 2024 than in any year since I first hung my shingle—enough that I plan to start tracking it as its own asset category. [There is a discrepancy between farm equipment & commercial equipment stats here and above happened because (1) I track my job tickets and Facebook results in different spreadsheets, (2) several of my auctions contain both types of equipment, and (3) I ran out of mental energy to search for the mismatches.]

That’s a lot of auctioneer trust!

In 2024, I worked for 95 different auction companies—22 of them for the first time. Both of those numbers would’ve been higher, but I closed my client list on Labor Day weekend and turned away new accounts multiple times a month after that. I will be accepting new clients in 2025 until I again reach max capacity.

I created:
• Facebook ads for 94 of those clients
• direct mail or fliers for 11 of those clients
• print ads for 6 of those clients

Call the moving trucks!

Last year, my clients and I marketed 427 properties together across 269 real estate campaigns. (I counted multi-tract land sales as one property each unless the parcels were in noncontiguous locations. I considered parcels contiguous even if a road ran between them.)

Slight changes in bidding format proportions

In 2024, my clients’ sealed bid auctions fell off the map; and offline auctions (particularly for real estate) blipped higher than last year.

I probably shouldn’t have tried to quit caffeine.  

In 2024, I spent more time in the office than usual. I’m grateful for an understanding wife, as I slept in my office multiple nights this year after burning the midnight oil.

My folder racks were stuffed this past year.   

Yep: I even keep track of stats like these. I could even sort these by asset type, client, or state. (I don’t currently do that.) Next to my desk, I have a full-size folding table mostly covered in racks of auctions grouped by when proofs are due or when Facebook campaigns end. Sticky note flags in different colors tell me when each campaign’s Facebook ads will finish distributing and whether the Facebook ads were built in my client’s Ads Manager account (37%) or mine (63%).

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