Ahrefs spent $800K on marketing with no ROI tracking — here's what they learned

Executive overview

Most marketing budgets are tied to measurable returns. Ahrefs deliberately ran $800K+ in campaigns with zero ROI expectations. The result: a set of hard-won principles about attribution, brand-building, and what "good marketing" actually means.

Untrackable marketing can still be worth it — if you build secondary value into every campaign from the start.

Campaigns tested and what they cost

• Google Ads for backlinks — $16,100 to test whether paid search traffic earns organic links; 101 backlinks acquired at $159/domain, 36 quality links at $447/domain
• Homepage copywriting — $33,000 across three agencies; none chosen outright, final page was a composite of all three
• Podcast ads (round 1) — $14,200 across 5 podcasts; 339 page views, 11 trial signups, ~$1,291/lead
• Podcast ads (round 2) — $37,775 across 6 more podcasts; clicks and signups not tracked
• Creator sponsorships — $200,000 reallocated from Google/Facebook ads; 72 videos, 108 podcast episodes, 138 newsletters, 11 events, and more; $400K additional spend in 2022
• Conference sponsorships — ~$100,000 in 2022 (fees only, no travel or swag)

Three takeaways

1. Make campaigns multipurpose. A failed campaign can still produce a case study. The $52K podcast experiment earned backlinks, industry coverage, and speaker invitations — all from writing up what happened. Secondary content turns suboptimal results into net positives.

2. Accept that ROI is often untrackable. Attribution is a nightmare: conference sign-ups happen months later, touch points multiply, and custom links only capture a fraction of the picture. Making decisions from incomplete attribution data produces bad decisions. Common sense is sometimes the better input.

3. Spend on things you believe in. Creator sponsorships were partly motivated by Ahrefs' belief that platforms underpay creators — consistent with building yep.com to return 90% of ad revenue to publishers. Campaigns grounded in conviction feel different to run and to receive.