Case on targeted and contextual advertising for the “SKHID-ROCK” music festival
Tasks: increasing the volume of festival ticket sales.
Customer information: annual music festival held on the territory of Ukraine (Trostianets).
Target audience (TA) characteristics and portrait: men and women aged 18-45.
Geographical location: Ukraine. Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv.
Interests: rock, concerts, music, parties, music festivals, Serhii Babkin.
Economic situation: income level: average.
Project features:
- There was no opportunity to track the number of tickets purchased, as their sale was carried out through a third-party service;
- We tracked the number of clicks on the “Buy ticket” button on the Customer’s website;
- The period of targeted advertising is June–July 2017.
Targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram
Work stages:
- Development of a targeted advertising strategy.
- Selection of the target audience.
- Statement of the TA on the Facebook pixel code injection on the website.
- Development of banners, texts and ads for targeted advertising.
- Launching targeted advertising.
- Adjustment of advertising campaigns.
- Report on the work done.
As the target audience actively interacting both with Facebook and Instagram, so it was decided to show advertising in two placements. We have selected a relevant audience to get the maximum number of clicks at the best price:
At the banner testing stage, 6 different variants included both images drawn by the designer and photos from the previous concert were approved.
Example of the most effective ad:
Example of a branded ad:
Ad test:
Indicators achieved in 1 month of work:
- User coverage — 71,357 people
- Impressions — 119,044 impressions
- Number of clicks on the link – 1,730
- Average cost per click – USD 0.07.
- Placements indicators:
- Facebook: reach – 63.7 thousand people, result – 1.6 thousand clicks
- Instagram: reach – 9.4 thousand people, result – 113 clicks
Website traffic:
A total of 1,367 clicks were recorded.
Project conclusions:
- It is necessary to test ad groups, as well as the ads themselves (images and texts) to get the maximum effect from advertising campaigns.
- You can avoid “draining” the budget selecting a relevant audience and choosing the right placements.
- Evaluating the performance of advertising campaigns, it is necessary to take into account the features of the offer and the decision-making cycle of potential buyers/customers.
- In order to reliably interpret the results at the conversion level, it is necessary to be able to track the purchase of tickets directly through the project website (since clicking on the “Buy ticket” button and switching to a third-party resource is not equal to buying a ticket).
- You should never forget that users can comment on advertisements, like other publications in their feed. Therefore, daily monitoring of questions, comments and trolling under each active ad is important.
Google Ads contextual advertising
Work stages:
- Creating a semantic core for a search campaign
- Collecting a list of negative keywords
- Grouping keywords, creating a campaign structure
- Creating ads and their extensions
- Setting up and launching a search campaign
- Compilation of various types of targeting for advertising in the display network
- Creating creatives for a media campaign
- Setting up and launching a campaign on the Google Display Network
- Search campaign optimization
- Display campaign optimization
- Report on the work done.
Since the purpose of contextual advertising was primarily to sell tickets to a music festival, it was decided to use the following contextual advertising tools:
Search advertising. It allows you to attract the most targeted and most ready-to-buy users, since ads are shown only to those who are directly looking for a particular product, service or event. In this case, both keywords with concert artists and keywords for music festivals and concerts were used for search advertising. Since keywords had a low frequency, it was decided to use a wide-match modifier to get the maximum amount of traffic for all possible keyword forms, and to exclude irrelevant traffic, a list of negative keywords was carefully worked out at the initial stage. Example of keywords from a search advertising campaign:
Example of ads in search advertising:
Search campaign statistics:
The largest number of conversions in the search campaign was by keywords with the headliners of the festival, as well as by brand keywords of the “Skhid Rock” festival.
Advertising in the display network. This format allows you to reach a wide audience of users with certain interests. For advertising in the display network, three targeting variants were tested: themes in combination with keywords, interests in combination with keywords, as well as targeting on the collected list of theme-based websites. Examples of creatives in the display network:
Performance statistics for various types of targeting:
Statistics have shown that audiences created using the intersection of different types of targeting, in particular narrowing the coverage of relevant high-frequency keywords, work much more efficiently than audiences based on one type of targeting. The ad group with targeting by keywords and themes proved to be the most efficient.
After the start of advertising campaigns, work to optimize their performance was carried out:
- The report on search requests was analyzed to expand the semantic core and list of negative keywords.
- The ad variants were tested.
- The rates were adjusted to display ads in efficient positions.
- Based on the statistics obtained, rate adjustments were implemented by device type and location.
- A report on the performance of placements in the display network was regularly analyzed.
Indicators of advertising campaigns for 1 month of work:
Campaign | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Average CPC | Cost | Middle position | Conversions | Conversion cost | Conversion rate |
Search campaign | 383 | 4 818 | 7,95% | 1,64 | 778 UAH | 1,8 | 47 | 16,56 грн | 12,27% |
GDN | 543 | 292 827 | 0,19% | 2,03 | 889,43 UAH | 1 | 12 | 74,12 грн | 2,21% |
Total | 926 | 297 645 | 0,31% | 1,8 | 1 668 UAH | 1 | 59 | 28,26 грн | 6,37% |
Project conclusions:
- When collecting a semantic core for advertising events with the participation of famous personalities, first of all it is worth launching campaigns for keywords with the mention of personalities, as well as brand keywords. This will allow you to get results from contextual advertising as quickly as possible with a minimum conversion cost.
- To get maximum coverage in search campaigns, as well as in the presence of a large number of low-frequency keywords in Google Ads, you can use a wide-match modifier. It will allow you to cover the most relevant requests in various word forms. But at the same time, it is worth paying special attention to collecting negative keywords for a search campaign.
- Advertising in the display network works well for entertainment events. But at the same time, you should carefully select the types of targeting when compiling audiences.
- Audiences created using the intersection of different types of targeting, in particular narrowing the coverage of relevant high-frequency keywords, work much more efficiently than audiences based on one type of targeting.
- For the most efficient campaign work, it is necessary to constantly work on their optimization, making adjustments and changes based on the statistics obtained.
- In order to accurately assess the performance and profitability of advertising campaigns, it is necessary to be able to track the purchase of tickets directly through the project website (since clicking on the “Buy ticket” button and switching to a third-party resource is not equal to buying a ticket).
Expert in legal marketing. Head of marketing agency MAVR.
Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).