Four8 · Paid media monthly report

May 2026

Prepared by arkyard · vs April 2026

Generated

£2,980

Meta spend

↑ 106% vs Apr

13,656

Link clicks

↑ 393% vs Apr

£0.22

Blended CPC

↓ 58% vs Apr

182k

ThruPlays

↑ 9% vs Apr

63.0k

YT views

↑ 40% vs Apr

131k

YT watch minutes

↑ 476% vs Apr

May was the first full month of S2 + a boosted-post wave + a new Testing campaign — three layers stacked. Read MoM directionally, not as a steady-state read.

£2,980 spent · 13.7k link clicks · 182k ThruPlays

S2 BAU - Traffic to YT delivered 6.5k link clicks at £0.07 CPC — first full month at scale. Boosted post spend increased (£591) on the Walk In A Bar series relaunch. CPTP held at £0.009 inside S1 (Walk In A Bar Cutdown 3 leading at 62.6% Hook / 50.8% Hold).

YouTube

63.0k views · 131k watch minutes

Net subs +203 (vs +32 April), avg view duration 2:05 (vs 30s April). The single driver of the watch-time surge is "Is Your Life Already Decided?" — 8,712 views at 9:19 avg duration, alone responsible for 62% of Four8TV's May watch time.

⚠ Neither April nor May is a clean baseline yet

April only had 3 days of S2 spend (launched Apr 28). May saw the first full month of S2 with a heavy boosted-post wave (£591) returning alongside it. A new YT: Thumbnail Testing workstream (£601) is reported in totals for completeness but evaluated separately.

True baseline read still pending — needs at least one month of intended-strategy steady state (full S1 + S2 + light/no Boosted) before MoM means anything.

Meta performance

MAY 2026 vs APRIL 2026

Overall scorecards

Account-level totals across all activity. Deltas coloured green where the direction is favourable.

Why these movedSpend +106% MoM (£1.4k → £3.0k). Link clicks +393% (2.8k → 13.7k). The headline movements are mix-driven, not creative-driven. April was dominated by S1 BAU (85% of spend); May added a full month of S2 + a heavy Boosted wave + a new Testing campaign, so the bigger spend pot flows into traffic-objective and engagement-objective campaigns where CPC is structurally cheap. Blended CPC dropped to £0.22 because the mix flipped, not because any single ad got better.

Stages overview

Where the budget went, and how each stage performed against its own KPI. Detail per stage below.

Budget split · £2,980 total

Boosted

Testing

S1 £1,329 (45%)

S2 £458 (15%)

Boosted £591 (20%)

Testing £601 (20%)

S1 · BAU Video Views

£1,329 ↑ 8.1%

Cost / ThruPlay

£0.0090

↑ 17.0%

ThruPlays

147,964

↓ 7.6%

vs benchmark ↑ 8.2%

S2 · Traffic

£458 ↑ 916%

Cost / link click

£0.071

↑ 15.4%

Link clicks

6,489

↑ 780.5%

May = first full month — comparisons informational only.

Boosted posts

£591 ↑ 247%

Cost / engagement

£0.0126

↓ 10.9%

Engagements

46,850

↑ 289.4%

Re-entered May after April pullback — treat May as the baseline.

▤

Testing · YT: Thumbnail / Headline workstream

£601 in spend, 1,727 link clicks, 74.7k impressions across 6 ad-sets. Diary-of-a-CEO-style thumbnail variants tested against the Four8TV catalogue. Included in totals above for platform-spend completeness; performance evaluated separately — not assessed alongside S1/S2/Boosted KPIs.

Scope: all four workstreams (S1, S2, Boosted, Testing) included in spend totals · MoM = May 2026 vs April 2026 · cost-per metrics use the same definitions as the stage drill-downs · Testing is included in totals but evaluated separately below.

S1 · BAU Video Views

Upper-funnel always-on video views — broad audiences, low CPM. KPI is cost per ThruPlay.

Spend

£1,329

↑ 8.1%

Impressions

499,621

↓ 2.8%

ThruPlays

147,964

↓ 7.6%

Cost / ThruPlay ★

£0.0090

↑ 17.0%

CPM

£2.66

↑ 11.2%

Cost / ThruPlay — 7-month trend

Benchmark: £0.0083 · 3-month rolling average (Mar–May)

Top ads by spend

Ad name	Spend	Impressions	ThruPlays	CPTP	Hook %	Hold %
Walk In A Bar - EP1: Cutdown 3 -(5min)	£745.54	260,460	394	£0.0090	62.6%	50.8%
Pinned post 1 (Imrhan)	£287.80	122,034	147	£0.0080	60.5%	48.6%
TFJ - Summer - Teaser	£205.42	83,096	31	£0.0107	43.8%	52.5%
EP3: Cutdown 4	£57.05	21,409	34	£0.0087	60.9%	50.5%
EP1 : Cutdown 1	£8.16	3,269	6	£0.0088	70.6%	40.2%

S2 · Traffic

Mid/lower funnel — drives engaged clicks through to YouTube. KPI is cost per link click.

Spend

£458

↑ 916%

Impressions

100,627

↑ 853%

Link clicks

6,489

↑ 780%

Cost / link click ★

£0.071

↑ 15.4%

Link CTR

6.45%

↓ 0.5pp

Cost / link click — 7-month trend

Baseline status: S2 launched Apr 28 2026 — May is the first full month at scale. MoM vs April reflects launch trajectory (3 days vs 31 days), not creative optimisation. No fixed benchmark yet; treat May as the reference for future months.

Top ads by spend

Ad name	Spend	Impressions	Link clicks	CPC	Hook %	Hold %
ROUNDTABLE: EP2: Cutdown 1	£350.98	76,375	4,941	£0.071	53.7%	31.5%
WIAB: EP1: Cutdown 3 -(5min)	£47.27	10,325	730	£0.065	58.5%	46.6%
ROUNDTABLE: EP3: Cutdown	£30.42	6,792	466	£0.065	51.2%	39.6%
ROUNDTABLE: EP 4 CUTDOWN 5	£23.74	5,967	294	£0.081	52.4%	44.0%
WIAB: EP1: Cutdown 2	£2.42	428	21	£0.115	52.8%	30.5%

Boosted posts

Reactive boost layer over organic IG content. KPI is cost per post engagement.

Spend

£591

↑ 247%

Impressions

77,600

↑ 267%

Link clicks

4,824

↑ 258%

Engagements

46,850

↑ 289%

Cost / engagement ★

£0.0126

↓ 10.9%

Cost / engagement — 7-month trend

Baseline status: Boosted re-entered the mix in May (£591) after April pulled back to £170 — so May is the working baseline for this workstream. No fixed benchmark yet; comparisons against pre-restructure months (e.g. March, £7.8k spend) reflect a structural strategy shift rather than performance change.

Top ads by spend

Ad name	Spend	Impressions	Link clicks	CPE	Hook %	Hold %
Instagram post: Walk In A Bar is back! 🍸 ‘A...	£49.68	7,586	444	—	55.9%	46.5%
Instagram post: WALK IN A BAR is BACK for series...	£47.60	8,955	590	—	46.5%	25.7%
Instagram post: Resistance through movement 🔥...	£13.94	1,359	54	—	52.0%	35.2%
Instagram post: “Nigeria isn't really so much a...	£13.94	2,003	103	—	56.2%	33.0%
Instagram post: Is all shame bad? @gr4ce_moore...	£13.93	1,046	59	—	47.7%	44.7%

Impressions over time

Daily impressions stacked by ad or by ad-set. Hover for breakdown. Showing May 2026.

Filters applied: All stages · By ad-set · May 2026. Ad-set daily impressions come directly from Meta. Ad-level daily is estimated: each ad's monthly impressions distributed across the month in proportion to its parent ad-set's daily pattern.

YouTube organic

MAY 2026 · FOUR8TV (FOUR8FILM SKIPPED)

Channel headlines

Organic views and subscriber movement, May 2026 vs April 2026.

Views & watch time — 12-month trend

Apr 2025 through Mar 2026. Toggle channel visibility in the legend.

Content type:

ReboundFour8TV views +40% MoM (44.9k → 63.0k) and watch minutes +476% MoM (22.8k → 131.4k) — a step-change. The single biggest driver is "Is Your Life Already Decided?" which alone delivered 8,712 views and 81,207 watch minutes at a 9:19 average view duration. That one video produced 62% of Four8TV's May watch time.

ChannelsFour8Film totalled 302 views in May (vs 398 April) — pattern unchanged. The channel doesn't justify dedicated reporting attention; total platform watch time is concentrated on Four8TV.

Traffic sources — May 2026

Where Four8TV viewers came from. Refreshed monthly via YT Studio export.

Source	Views	% of total	Watch min	Avg view duration

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DepthShorts drove 75% of May views (47.2k of 63.0k) but only 5.2% of watch time (6.9k of 131.4k min). Long-form is 25% of views but 94.8% of watch time — an even more extreme ratio than April. The Shorts engine is producing reach, not depth — the watch-time surge this month is entirely a long-form story.

Subscriber movement

Gained vs lost per month, combined across both channels.

ChurnNet subs +32 in April (37 gained, 5 lost on Four8TV). This is a clean positive month after several months of churn — the lower volume hides a quieter, more loyal subscriber pattern. Worth checking whether the lost-subs number is genuinely low or whether the YT Analytics API isn't reporting churn for this period (will validate next month).

Meta × YouTube

MAY 2026 · FOUR8TV

Joins Meta paid spend to actual YouTube engagement. From April onwards, External traffic is split by referring domain (Meta paid vs other) using a monthly export from YouTube Studio — so we can finally separate Meta-driven views from organic shares, search, and other sources.

Meta-driven YouTube performance

May 2026 — Four8TV. Sources counted as Meta: instagram.com + facebook.com + Instagram + FB. MoM comparison is vs April 2026.

Stage spend mix · May vs April

April was 85% S1 BAU (a single dominant stage). May rebalanced to 45% S1 / 20% Testing / 20% Boosted / 15% S2 — a mix that's directionally closer to the strategy but still distorted by the boosted-post wave + the new testing workstream.

Daily Meta clicks vs YouTube external views

May 2026 — daily YT external views by referring source (bars) and Meta link clicks (line). Full-month data.

How this page is built

YouTube doesn't expose traffic-source data via Windsor. Instead, this page is built from a monthly export from YouTube Studio (Analytics → Advanced mode → date range = report month → group by Traffic source → Export). Three CSVs per channel, saved into yt-exports/YYYY-MM/four8tv/:

totals.csv — daily total external views
chart.csv — top 5 sources, broken down per day
table.csv — monthly summary across all referring sources, with watch time