The Brooklyn-based concert promoter fueled interest in its music shows by boosting Facebook Events to generate ticket sales, resulting in 137x return on ad spend.

AdHoc Presents: Their Story

Promoting indie musicians

AdHoc Presents is a Brooklyn-based concert promoter and music publication with a focus on emerging artists. The brand produces hundreds of events annually, in addition to a daily editorial website and quarterly print ‘zine. Emilie Friedlander, a former Vice Media editor, founded AdHoc in 2011, and today, serves as its editorial director. Ric Leichtung, the company's co-founder and events director, is a former Webster Hall talent buyer who has booked thousands of shows in New York.

Their Goal

Maximizing ticket sales

The concert promoter wanted to build awareness for its music events with an eye to increasing its ticket sales.

Their Solution

Targeting local music lovers

AdHoc turned to Facebook's one-stop shop for concert promotion, community-building and ticketing, which is managed through Eventbrite's “Buy on Facebook” feature.

Targeting fans
AdHoc starts with its baseline audience of people 14 years or older within 50 miles of the Manhattan metropolitan area, then filters for fans of the artists, the fans’ friends and interest in other artists of similar or related genres.

Boosting event
Once a concert is booked, AdHoc uses Facebook Events to create a promotional post that includes details of the venue. When the post is published on AdHoc’s Facebook Page, the concert organizer amplifies the event by boosting the post. This creates an ad that Facebook serves to AdHoc’s target audience.

Selling tickets
If people click the ad’s call-to-action button, they arrive at an Eventbrite page. Here, people can read about the performer and purchase tickets. By pointing people to Eventbrite when they clicked its Facebook ads, AdHoc easily built awareness for its events, generated ticket sales and issued tickets.

Widening its reach
To create greater awareness and expand its reach, AdHoc co-markets the concerts with its performers. It allocates some of its marketing budget to boosting the posts on the performers' Facebook Page and designates the performers as the event's co-hosts so that the AdHoc posts also appear on the performers’ Pages, allowing them to invite their fan base to the event and get more people interested in the upcoming concert.

Saving time
Hosting an average of 6 shows a week, AdHoc saves time by managing the shows’ promotions and ticketing in one place. By adding the performers as the events’ co-hosts, these artists also automatically become admins of the Facebook event, making it unnecessary for AdHoc to request that artists post the events to their own Facebook Pages.

Their Success

Hitting the high notes

AdHoc now sells tickets directly on Facebook via Eventbrite’s integrated music solutions. Between January–April 2018, its boosted events campaigns generated these results:

• 137X return on ad spend (an ad spend of $4,352 generated about $600,000 in ticket sales)
• 20% of AdHoc’s tickets are sold through Facebook Events and Eventbrite
• 100,000 people, on average, reached per month through Facebook ads
• 15 hours saved per week using Facebook and Eventbrite