Best Practices: Driving Ticket Sales

Setting up a ticket-driving campaign and ad set at Quantcast, especially using the Ticketmaster integration and our sizable list of targeting tools, can be highly effective. The following practices will help you drive more ticket sales through effective targeting and campaign structure.

Ticketmaster

A comprehensive tagging strategy sets your campaign up for success and provides robust audience insights. Adding your Quantcast p-code to Ticketmaster will allow your Quantcast campaigns to target and learn from your Ticketmaster pages. The following instructions walk you through the process for placing the Quantcast P-Code in Ticketmaster.

Conversion Events as Ticket Sales Drivers

Best Practice: Use the Conversion Objective for Ticket Sales

Full Funnel Performance in the Conversion Objective (using both prospecting and retargeting) will drive the platform's best CPA/ROAS performance. This tactic allows Quantcast’s proprietary algorithms to adjust the balance of tactics in real time between prospecting new customers and retargeting visitors to achieve the best overall performance possible. 

Best Practice: Set your lookalike event to your conversion event only.

Targeting other pages/events is unnecessary, though it can be helpful if ad set reach or uniques to the conversion page are a concern.

It is always a best practice to tag and define your conversion event well. To drive ticket sales, your conversion event should be the purchase confirmation page or whatever taggable page is closest to a confirmed ticket sale. To generate leads to learn about intenders, tag that event’s page.

Note: If your conversion tag has not collected the minimum amount of data required to populate in the event dropdown, we advise using an event slightly earlier in the website that has more traffic. For example, instead of the check-out page you could use the homepage or event’s main page.

Best Practice: Avoid tight restrictions in your ad set settings

To maximize CPA/ROAS, limit targeting restrictions.

• Avoid Over-Targeting: Quantcast’s bespoke AI modeling handles much of the audience targeting on your behalf. Limiting your targeting to Lookalike and Retargeting allows our models to find your ideal ticket purchaser.

• Target all devices: Finding the right person who is ready to buy a ticket means targeting them wherever they are and on whatever device they are using. Limiting targeting to specific devices may impact the ability to reach all people who may convert on your campaign.

• Viewability: Keep your viewability target realistic.  Increasing the viewability goal lowers the number of opportunities available, which may hurt performance.

• Site lists: Keep your site lists broad. Limiting allowlists to just a few sites or blocking too many sites could negatively impact performance. Our models are looking to reach the right person at the right time, so blocking inventory may limit the ability to get to the right internet users wherever they are across the internet.

• Frequency Caps: Avoid restricting delivery wherever appropriate. Ad sets with a strict frequency cap can prevent an ad from being shown to a user at the right time to get their attention when they are ready to convert.

• Full Coverage: Target across multiple channels, such as online video and CTV. Targeting across multiple channels puts your content in front of the largest audiences.

Audience Segmentation

Best Practice: Use audience tools and geographic targeting to identify key audience groups

• Audience Targeting: Quantcast’s real-time data effectively identifies users with past behaviors indicating interest (e.g., concertgoers, sports fans, etc). Especially in the absence of pixel data or for awareness objectives, Audience targeting is a simple way to find event intenders while they are in the initial researching/planning stages of their ticket purchase.

• Geographic Targeting: Target users within specific geographic areas, such as near event venues or areas with high ticket buyers. Use precise geo-targeting to reach potential attendees in relevant locations (e.g., cities or postal codes with a high fanbase).

Creative Optimization

Best Practice: Use a good mix of dynamic creatives in various formats.

• Ad Formats: To capture attention, use a mix of video, display, and rich media formats. Video often drives higher engagement for ticket-related campaigns.

  • Ensure the messaging is clear and includes calls to action like Buy Tickets Now or Limited Seats Available.

  • Limited-time offer (LTO) messaging and copy that calls out low-cost tickets also perform well, e.g., "For a limited time only, tickets are $59.” 

• Dynamic Creative: Implement dynamic creatives to tailor messaging to different cities or audiences (e.g., specific event dates and locations).

• A/B Testing: Test different versions of creatives (e.g., artist image vs. event image, promotional codes, etc.) to see which drives higher conversion.

Budget Allocation & Bidding Strategy

Best Practice: Use Quantcast tools to allocate the budget to the right locations at the right time.

• Geographic Prioritization: Allocate budget based on regions with high ticket demand, adjusting for areas with lower sales or interest to avoid wastage.

• Event Proximity: Scale up bidding and budget closer to the event date to drive urgency and last-minute ticket sales.

Timing & Frequency

Best Practice: Let Quantcast handle ad scheduling and use our tools to handle when and how often people see your ad.

• Ad Scheduling: Run ads at times when people are more likely to engage (e.g., during work breaks and evenings). Good news! Quantcast’s bespoke modeling and AI will automatically prioritize finding your audience at the right time, so there is no need to over-constrain your ad set’s delivery by time.

• Frequency Cap: Make sure ads aren’t overexposed. Capping frequency helps avoid ad fatigue and reduces wasted impressions. Remember, over-constraining your ad set will limit the reach and impact of your campaigns. If needed, we recommend a high Freq Cap set at the Campaign level to balance all of the ad best sets within the campaign. 

• Pre-event Ramp-Up: Start campaigns at least three weeks before the event, with an increasing budget allocation as the event approaches, especially for last-minute weekend planners.

Attribution and Performance Tracking

Best Practice: Quantcast’s tools help you keep track of your important KPIs.

• Full-Funnel Attribution: Use Quantcast’s measurement tools to track performance across the entire funnel, from awareness to conversion.

• KPIs: For ticket sales, focus on metrics like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), and engagement rates like CPSV (Cost per Site Visit).