Proof, not promises.
Every number on this page comes straight from Meta Ads Manager, for recruitment campaigns run for research studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 2023 to today. Nothing is rounded up, and nothing is invented.
Impressions and clicks don't fill studies. Every TrialFill campaign is judged on the metrics that actually move your enrollment forward, and you see all three throughout the campaign.
The count that matters: people who passed your screener's self-assessment and left contact details, not raw clicks or impressions. Your staff confirm eligibility.
Exactly what each qualified inquiry costs, so you can see how every dollar of budget converts into real candidates.
How quickly those inquiries translate into progress against your goal, tracked week over week until you're enrolled.
Nine paid campaigns for UAB research studies on Facebook and Instagram, covering neurology, adolescent epilepsy, and women's health research.
Source: Meta Ads Manager, all UAB campaigns with spend, September 2023 to October 2026. Total ad spend $5,049. Study names are withheld until each research team approves publication.
Each card is a real campaign or series of campaigns. Inquiry counts live in the study team's own screener, so cost per qualified inquiry is added as teams share their numbers. For how these numbers compare with published benchmarks, see the recruitment cost statistics, see how the campaigns are built on the clinical trial advertising page, and size your own study with the recruitment rate calculator.
You don't have to wait until the end to know whether a campaign is working. Here's the rhythm of a typical engagement.
Once a campaign is live, eligible people begin reaching your screener within days, not weeks.
You receive regular updates on inquiries and cost per inquiry, with budget shifting toward what's working.
The campaign is optimized week over week and scaled if enrollment is behind, until your target is met.
Across nine Meta campaigns TrialFill ran for University of Alabama at Birmingham research studies from September 2023 to October 2026, the average was $0.42 per link click, with a 1.51% link click-through rate. The best campaign round reached $0.23 per click, and the highest-cost studies ran about $0.70 per visit to the study page. Audience, study topic, and creative move the number more than budget does.
In one completed women's health study, $1,000 of Meta ad spend over 30 days produced 1,782 visits to the study page, about $0.56 per visit, with a 2.24% link click-through rate. Results vary by study, population, and recruitment area.
Interested people go straight to the study team's own screener, such as an institutional REDCap form, so TrialFill never sees their responses. Meta reports clicks and page visits; inquiries and enrollments live with the study team. Those figures are added here as research teams share them.
Real creative from client studies is shared on request, with each research team's permission. For a full example of what a compliant recruitment ad contains, see the clinical trial advertising page.
Clicks and visits are the numbers Meta can see. What happens next, inquiries and enrollments, lives in your own screener, and that is the number your study team reports back. Every campaign is measured on both, and as research teams share their inquiry and enrollment counts, they are added here.
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