Advertiser Overview
•  Annual festival promoting local vendors, musicians, and more
•  Long standing tradition with origins dating back nearly a century
•  First event since the start of the pandemic Agency Overview
•  Full-service advertising and PR agency
•  Focused on consumer, retail, B2B, industrial, and financial sectors
•  Partnered with Simpli.fi for omnichannel capabilities and precise audience targeting
   and track online-to-offline conversions Results
•  6,025Website Visits
•  916 Online Ticket Sales
•  210 Foot Traffic Visits
•  98.2% Video Completion Rate for OTT/CTV

 

EVENT MARKETING FOR HISTORIC FESTIVAL

After more than a year without any large gatherings, event marketers are looking to drive attendance at a low cost as they face more challenges than ever before. In fact, 57% of event marketers are operating with decreased budgets in 2021 (Bizzabo). For an annual outdoor festival in Florida, that meant identifying a programmatic advertising partner that could precisely target their relevant audience and accurately track conversions. The long standing outdoor festival supports local businesses, musicians, and artists, typically drawing hundreds of thousands of people over the course of several days.
 

ESTABLISHING A BUDGET FRIENDLY STRATEGY

The festival worked with their advertising agency of ten years to craft a three-week, omnichannel programmatic strategy leading up to the event. The agency is a full-service advertising and PR group that partnered with Simpli.fi in 2021 to expand their omnichannel advertising capabilities, offer unique targeting solutions, and deliver transparent reporting. The festival had a smaller budget than previous years due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the agency needed to make every dollar count by leveraging precise targeting tactics to minimize wasted impressions.
 

DRIVING FESTIVAL ATTENDANCE

Together, the agency and festival entity, sought to build awareness and ultimately drive online ticket sales and in-person visits with large-screen OTT/CTV advertising, programmatic display, and social media display and pre-roll video ads. They leveraged Simpli.fi’s addressable programmatic solutions to curate a custom audience for household level targeting, in addition to using other location- based and behavioral targeting tactics. The advertiser also took advantage of Simpli.fi’s managed service for Facebook offering to coordinate their social media and programmatic efforts and maximize reach. Furthermore, Simpli.fi’s cross-device matching capabilities enabled the agency to attribute conversions from both online ticket sales and in-person attendance.
 

PRECISE LOCATION-BASED TARGETING

First, the agency used Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to build a custom household-level audience in real-time based on location data and by choosing from more than 500 demographic variables. They curated a list of 824,500 households featuring parents ages 25-54 who had children present and were located in western and central Florida. After creating their custom audience, Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing solution used GPS data paired with plat lines to match each address to the exact physical location, shape, and size of the property. The system then automatically built a target fence around each property to serve OTT/CTV ads on large-screen devices.

Additionally, Simpli.fi and the agency developed a strategy to use Geo-Fencing with Conversion Zones to drive physical visits to the festival. Simpli.fi drew target fences around more than 430 local parks, community centers, zoos, and other common family outdoor spots within approximately 30 miles of the location to capture those that might be interested in attending the festival. Capturing a custom audience from these locations enabled the advertiser to target them with display ads for up to 30 days after leaving those locations. Finally, Simpli.fi drew a Conversion Zone around the festival grounds to measure the number of users who attended the event in-person after having been delivered an ad.
 

GRANULAR BEHAVIORAL TARGETING WITH WEB-BASED CONVERSIONS

The team also wanted to target users who would be interested in attending a festival by leveraging Keyword Search Retargeting and Site Retargeting tactics. Simpli.fi implemented more than 930 keywords including fairs, zoos, parks, festivals, entertainment, music and more to serve relevant OTT/CTV and display ads to users searching for those terms. Additionally, Site Retargeting allowed them to serve display ads to users who had visited their website.

In order to measure the direct impact of the behavioral targeting, the brand leveraged Simpli.fi’s online attribution capabilities. Using conversion pixels on the festival website, the agency reported on two types of online conversions:

1. Ticket sales: any user who was served an ad and then purchased a ticket on the website.

2. Website visits: any user who was served an ad and then visited the website but did not purchase a ticket online.

FACEBOOK VIA SIMPLI.FI’S MANAGED SERVICE

The organizers had previously used Facebook advertising to entice potential new attendees. Working with Simpli.fi, they were able to manage their social ads and programmatic ads all in one place, making it easy for them to continue using display and pre-roll video ads on Facebook. The Simpli.fi team created and managed the social media campaigns alongside the programmatic campaigns, and provide comprehensive and side-by-side reporting. The agency and organizers benefited from streamlined management of their entire digital strategy and consolidated reporting from a single source.
 

SUCCESSFUL EVENT MARKETING

Overall, the three-week campaign was a success and the festival and agency were thrilled with the results. The campaign delivered 916 online ticket sales and another 6,025 website visits.
Additionally, the advertiser attributed 210 offline conversions to the festival itself via the Geo Fencing with Conversion Zones tactic. Simpli.fi also achieved a 98.2% Video Completion Rate for OTT/CTV ads. Finally, when comparing performance, Simpli.fi more than doubled the amount of Facebook impressions and beat their previous engagement metrics for past campaigns.
 
 
Interested in targeting custom audiences to drive event ticket sales and attendance?
Get in touch at hi@simpli.fi, or contact your Simpli.fi representative.