Facebook ads for festivals sell the most tickets when they run in phases around the onsale: build a warm audience before tickets go on sale, put most of your launch money on the first days of the onsale, then use retargeting and new announcements to keep sales moving until the gates open. The onsale is the biggest sales moment for most festivals, so the work done in the weeks before it decides how strong that moment is.
Key Takeaways
- Run the festival campaign in four phases (before onsale, onsale, the long middle, final weeks), each with its own goal, creative and audience.
- Before the onsale, the job is collecting people: video viewers, page engagers, sign-ups and ticket page visitors you can reach again on day one.
- After the onsale, every line-up drop, ticket tier change and day split is a new reason to buy, and the Meta pixel on your ticket shop shows which ads actually sold.
If you would rather hand the festival campaign to a team that does this every week, see how Adsome runs festival and tour advertising.
What is an onsale, and why does it shape the whole campaign?
An onsale is the moment tickets become available to the general public. A presale is a shorter window before that, when a smaller group (newsletter subscribers, past attendees, people who signed up) can buy first, usually with a code or a private link.
For a festival, the announcement, the line-up and the first price tier often land together, so months of built-up demand are released in a few days. People who already follow the festival and have seen your ads buy in that window. People who hear about it for the first time on onsale day often wait, and some never come back.
So the advertising splits into "before" and "after". Before the onsale you are building the group of people you will sell to. After it you are selling, and the question is how to keep sales going once the first rush is over.
The four phases of a festival ticket campaign
The timings are a rough guide, since a large camping festival announces much earlier than a one-day city festival.
| Phase | Typical timing | Main goal | Creative that fits | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before onsale | Several weeks to a few months before tickets go on sale | Build a warm audience and sign-ups | Atmosphere film from last year, teaser, "save the date" | Broad audience in your catchment area |
| Presale and onsale | The presale days and the first days of the onsale | Turn the warm audience into buyers | Line-up poster, headliner clip, clear date, place and price tier | Everyone collected before onsale, past attendees, sign-ups |
| The long middle | From a week or two after onsale until the final month | Keep sales steady | New line-up names, day splits, area reveals, tier changes | Ticket page visitors who did not buy, engaged viewers |
| Final weeks | The last three to four weeks | Sell the remaining tickets | "Last tickets", day tickets, timetable, practical info | Local audiences, visitors who did not buy |
Before the onsale: build the audience you will sell to
The most common mistake is switching ads on the morning of the onsale and expecting them to sell straight away. Meta's delivery system needs signals, and you need people who already know the name.
What to run before tickets go on sale
- Put the Meta pixel on your website and, if your ticketing platform allows it, on the ticket shop. The pixel is a small piece of code from Meta that records what visitors do on your site, such as viewing the ticket page or completing a purchase.
- Run a short atmosphere film from last year to a broad audience in the area people actually travel from. The aim is cheap reach and video views, not sales.
- Offer something worth signing up for, such as presale access or early bird prices, and collect sign-ups on your own site or through a Meta lead form.
- Save the people you collect as custom audiences. A custom audience is a list Meta builds of people who have already interacted with you, for example everyone who watched half your film or visited your ticket page.
Creative that works before onsale
You usually do not have the full line-up yet, and that is fine. What sells a festival before anyone knows who is playing is the feeling: the crowd, the site, friends on the campsite, a big sing-along. If you filmed last year, that footage is your most valuable asset. If you did not, film this year, because next year's campaign depends on it. Our guide on what to film at a concert so the video sells the next show covers what to capture, and our tour marketing timeline covers when each stage should start.
Presale and onsale day: spend where the demand is
The presale and the first days of the onsale are where the money should be concentrated. You have a warm audience, a fresh reason to buy and often the lowest price tier of the year.
What good looks like:
- The warm audience sees the ads first and most often. Sign-ups, past attendees and video viewers are the most likely day-one buyers.
- The ad says everything in the first second. Festival name, dates, place, the biggest names and "tickets on sale now", readable without the caption.
- Price tiers are explained plainly. If the first tier is cheaper and limited, say so.
- The link goes straight to the ticket shop, not the homepage. Every extra click loses buyers.
- Purchases are tracked, so Meta can see which ads led to a sale and find more people who look like buyers.
How exactly to split the budget between warm and cold audiences, how many ads to run and how to switch campaigns over on onsale morning is the part that takes experience to get right. The principle is simple: the people who already know you deserve most of the launch money, and the ads should be live and learning before the rush, not after it.
After the onsale: how to keep selling through the middle
Most festivals see the same shape: a spike at the onsale, a long flat middle, then a second rise in the final weeks. The goal after the onsale is to make the middle less flat.
Give people a new reason to buy
Each of these is a fresh ad and a fresh reason for someone who hesitated:
- A new line-up wave, ideally with a short video of the new names.
- The day split, so people who only want one day can buy a day ticket.
- A price tier closing, but only when it is true.
- Reveals of stages, food, camping or family areas, aimed at the groups who care about each.
Retarget the people who nearly bought
Retargeting means showing ads to people who have already shown interest, such as visiting the ticket page without buying. After the onsale, this is often where the steadiest sales come from. Meta lets you build website custom audiences from pixel data covering up to 180 days, which spans most festival sales periods.
People who looked at tickets but did not buy should see a different message from strangers, usually the line-up, the price and a clear reason to act. Leave out people who have already bought. Our guide on what to do when a concert is not selling tickets goes deeper on fixing a slow middle.
Use your buyers to find more buyers
As purchases are tracked through the pixel, Meta learns who your buyers are and can find more people like them, either through its automatic targeting or a lookalike audience, which is a group Meta judges similar to an existing list such as your buyers. In practice, good creative and clean purchase tracking matter more than hand-picked interests.
The final weeks: sell the last tickets
In the last three to four weeks, fewer people are planning a trip and more are deciding about a weekend. This is the time for local audiences, day tickets and the complete line-up.
- Short, urgent messages such as "Saturday almost sold out" or "Timetable out now", used only when true, because festival audiences remember.
- Local and nearby audiences, since people within easy travel distance decide late.
- The timetable, because a fan of one act can see exactly when that act plays, which turns a "maybe" into a day ticket.
Our article on how to sell out a concert covers the late push in more detail.
How to see which Facebook ads sold festival tickets
Without purchase tracking, you are guessing.
- Install the Meta pixel on your website and ticket shop. Many ticketing platforms have a field for your pixel ID; check your platform's help centre.
- Make sure the Purchase event fires on the order confirmation page, with order value and currency. These are Meta's standard events, listed in its developer documentation.
- Add the Conversions API where you can. The Conversions API sends purchase events from your server or ticketing platform straight to Meta, so fewer sales are lost to ad blockers and browser privacy settings. When both pixel and Conversions API send the same event, Meta removes duplicates using a shared event ID.
- In Ads Manager, add the Purchases and Purchase value columns so you compare ads by tickets sold, not clicks.
- Compare Meta's numbers with your ticketing platform's sales report. They will not match exactly, but the trend should agree.
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the ticket revenue Meta attributes to your ads divided by what you spent. Our guide to return on ad spend for a tour explains how to read it.
Europe and the US: what changes
The phases are the same on both sides of the Atlantic. US festivals often draw from several states and need a wider radius and a longer pre-onsale phase, while many European festivals pull from one country or a cross-border region, where language versions of the ads matter more than distance. Meta does not publish fixed ad prices, so plan the budget in EUR or USD per phase and review it weekly against tickets sold.
What we see in our own accounts
This is Adsome's own observation from making the film and running the Meta advertising for touring productions. The ads that announce an event and the ads that sell the last tickets are rarely the same film. Atmosphere and big moments build the audience early, while plain ads with the date, the place and a clear ticket message do more of the work near the end. We also see that people who engaged with the early video come back and buy when tickets go on sale, which is why we treat the pre-onsale phase as part of the sales campaign rather than a separate brand exercise.
Adsome is a Stockholm-based studio that makes the film and images and runs the Facebook, Instagram and Google ads for touring productions, for artists such as Smokie, Galenskaparna, Robert Wells and Magnus Carlsson.
Common Mistakes
- Starting ads on onsale day, with no warm audience and a pixel that has seen no traffic.
- No pixel on the ticket shop, so Meta cannot see sales or optimise for them.
- One ad for the whole campaign. Each phase needs its own creative.
- Showing sales ads to people who already bought. Exclude buyers.
- Fake urgency, which damages trust for next year.
- Going silent after the onsale spike, which makes the flat middle flatter.
Want your next tour to sell out? Adsome makes the film and images and runs the Facebook, Instagram and Google ads for touring productions.