How We Used Dynamic Ad Formats to Improve SpeakEasy Stage’s Campaign Results

SpeakEasy Stage is a non-profit theatre company located in the South End of Boston producing 28 weeks of new plays and musicals each season since their founding in 1992. SpeakEasy Stage has distinguished itself as Boston’s premiere theater, consistently winning acclaim for presenting top-quality productions of contemporary, cutting-edge plays and musicals. 

Capacity Interactive has partnered with SpeakEasy Stage since 2018, and during their 2023-2024 season, we switched to dynamic campaigns on Meta midway through. With this strategic shift, we saw ROIs attributed to Meta campaigns greatly increase despite a reduction in manual creative output (which was especially important when they lost a member of their team near the end of the season).

While programming certainly played a role, there is much to be said for how much less lift was needed from the SpeakEasy team to run the campaigns in the second half of the season, and how running multiple dynamic campaigns helped Meta’s machine learning achieve better results.

*NOTE: 28-day post-impression/28-day post-click attribution window, comparing cumulative results of the first two shows in the season vs. the second two shows in the season. 

THE SWITCH TO DYNAMIC ADS

For the first two shows of the season (POTUS in Sept/Oct and A Case for the Existence of God in Jan/Feb), our Meta creative strategy was more “traditional,” in the sense that we used one piece of copy and one visual asset per post–from key art with clever use of stock imagery, to rehearsal photos, production photos, and reviews. For A Case for the Existence of God, we tried a different version of this, still with one piece of copy and one visual asset per post, but now running multiple posts at the same time.

As marketing planning ramped up for shows #3 and #4 (Cost of Living in March and A Strange Loop in Apr/May), SpeakEasy wanted to find ways to be more efficient with their content creation (as well as their internal team resourcing!)–plus, we had been getting plenty of feedback from ad platforms that opting in to more dynamic content was (and is) the way of the future.

In March 2024, we pivoted our Meta campaign strategy to rely entirely on Dynamic (now called Flexible) ads. This ad format enables us to build just one ad that utilizes up to 5 options for text, headlines, and descriptions and up to 10 options for visual assets. Meta’s machine learning then chooses the combination of assets it thinks will resonate with specific people. Because we are just using one ad for the entire campaign, it eliminates the need for weekly post swaps. Instead, we are able to swap content only when there is new content available, such as production photos or pull quotes from reviews.

THE IMPACT

Meta campaign results improved dramatically. With just a 22% overall increase in spend during the second half of the season, attributed revenue increased by 123%. Also, the average campaign length increased by just 6%, meaning that SpeakEasy was able to spend more media, more efficiently, over a similar period of total campaign days.

Again, it must be acknowledged that programming certainly played a role: A Strange Loop has been a hit in most cities it’s played in! The number of show-specific purchases (purchases for A Strange Loop influenced by the Meta campaign focused on A Strange Loop) was 212% higher for this show compared to the average of the season’s other three shows. However, this would be expected regardless, given its spot on the calendar as the season’s final production. Also, the dynamic campaign for A Strange Loop was able to achieve these enormously more efficient results even with a 9% higher proportion of spend towards middle- and top-of-funnel targeting than the average across the prior three show campaigns.

READY TO SAVE TIME AND INCREASE REVENUE?

Let’s talk about how our digital advertising team can help you shift to more dynamic strategies!