Theater ticket sales: 800+ sales through PPC advertising

Client: Sergey Yankovsky — Russian theatre actor, director and screenwriter.

In this case study I describe how I attracted buyers for theatre show tickets. The client approached me with the task of selling tickets for performances in Moscow and the Moscow region. This was the summer of 2024.

Strategy

The first priority was to develop the ad campaign structure, select search queries and negative keywords, and write compelling ads.

Analytics setup

Ticket sales were handled through the ticketscloud service. After clicking an ad, the user was taken to the purchase page. To capture data I installed the ticketscloud widget and configured the data integration.

Stage 1. Preparing ad campaigns

I developed the ad campaign structure in detail, setting up ads for both Search and YAN. For precise targeting I gathered over 1,000 keyword phrases and optimised them using 1,300 negative keywords.

Stage 2. Preparing ads

In the ads I used sitelinks so that the creative took up more space in search results. For YAN ads I used photos from the productions with a relevant offer and a clear call to action.

The campaign launch was originally planned for Moscow and the region, but during campaign management it was decided to narrow the geographic targeting to Moscow only.

Tereza Durova Theatre in Moscow — the main hall capacity is 1,027 seats.

While the campaigns were running I analysed their results daily and continuously added new negative keywords and excluded placements to reduce the bounce rate and improve conversions.

Results

During the ad placement period, 800+ tickets were sold.

Conclusion

Today 85% of theatre tickets are purchased online. Contextual advertising for cultural and entertainment events demonstrates high effectiveness — it enables fast audience acquisition and sustained attention.