Case study · Live entertainment and ticketing
Zealous Productions: a 5.7x return selling a Perth theatre season
Zealous Productions is a Perth theatre company founded by Dixie Farinosi. In July 2026 they staged Throbbin' Wood, an adults only pantomime and their first, across eight performances at the Regal Theatre in Subiaco. We ran the Meta advertising that sold the seats, built the landing page the newer ads sent people to, and designed and built the company's website. This is what the advertising returned.
5.7x
return on ad spend: $39.2k tracked ticket sales on A$6.8k spend, 25/06/2026 to 01/08/2026
$34.67
Cost per ticket order, 197 orders tracked at the ticketing checkout
128,040
People reached in Perth for an eight performance season
The situation
A theatre season is the hardest thing there is to advertise. There is:
You cannot decide to catch up next month, and every unsold seat is gone for good the moment the curtain falls.
Throbbin' Wood added two more problems:
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it was the company's first adults only show, so the audience built over six Christmas seasons of family pantomime was not automatically the audience for this one
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the tickets sell through Ticketek, which means the purchase happens on a domain we do not control and cannot change
What we did
We built the campaign around the ticket sale, not the click. Every ad set optimised for completed purchases on Ticketek, and every ad was judged on the value of the tickets it sold rather than on how cheap its clicks were. Tickets sell in two price bands, so an ad that only bought cheap clicks would have looked busy in the account and sold nothing. The campaign finished at $34.67 per ticket order, 197 orders tracked at the ticketing checkout. Across every dollar in the account the return was 5.42x.
The launch ad sent people straight to the show's Ticketek booking page, and it carried most of the season: 70.8% of the spend. The newer ads pointed at a landing page we built for the show, which put the poster, the dates and the 18+ warning in front of people before handing them to Ticketek.
Because the purchase happens on Ticketek, the sale is reported back to Meta by Ticketek's own checkout, with the real value of the tickets in the basket. Every dollar on this page is a ticket somebody bought, not a value we typed in.
Then we kept the creative moving while the season ran. Three weeks in, as the launch ad started to tire, we added seven new concepts, and three more went live on opening night. Average frequency finished at 5.2 across 128,040 people. In one city over 38 days that is close to the ceiling, and the only way to keep people clicking that deep into a run is to keep changing what they are looking at.
5.2 average frequency, 128,040 people
One city, 38 days. At that frequency the creative has to keep changing or people stop clicking. Link click-through held between 1.8% and 2.1% every week of the run.
A season does not get a second chance. Every seat we did not sell before opening night was gone.
What happened
The campaign ran 25/06/2026 to 01/08/2026. The 5.7x is tracked ticket sales value over the campaign's A$6.8k spend, measured at the ticketing checkout. The reach, click and frequency figures were read from the Meta ad account on 18/08/2026.
Return on ad spend
5.7x
$39.2k tracked ticket sales value on A$6.8k spend, 25/06/2026 to 01/08/2026
Return across every dollar in the account
5.42x
All account spend, including boosted posts
Ticket orders
197
Tracked at the ticketing checkout. $34.67 per order
Click through rate, all clicks
4.73%
662,706 impressions. Outbound CTR 1.85%
Cost per click, all clicks
$0.22
31,350 clicks. Cost per link click $0.56
People reached
128,040
One city, eight performances
Average frequency
5.2
Times each person saw an ad
How is the return on ad spend measured?+
The 5.7x is tracked ticket sales value over the A$6.8k the one sales campaign spent, 25/06/2026 to 01/08/2026. 197 ticket orders were tracked at the ticketing checkout.
Are these campaign figures or account figures?+
The 5.7x and $34.67 per order are on the sales campaign's A$6.8k spend. Across every dollar in the account, including boosted posts, the return was 5.42x. Reach, clicks and frequency are for the Throbbin' Wood sales campaign.
What counts as a click here?+
Click and click through rate figures are all clicks, which includes reactions, comments, shares and expands as well as clicks to the site; the link based equivalents are given beside them so you can use whichever you prefer.
How is the revenue visible if tickets sell on Ticketek?+
Tickets sell through Ticketek rather than on the client's own site, and the purchase event is sent to Meta by Ticketek's own checkout, carrying the real ticket value, which is why the revenue is visible at all.
Source and method. Meta Ads, campaign THROBBIN' WOOD - 25/06/2026 - SALES. Orders and ticket sales value measured at the ticketing checkout; the 5.7x is on the campaign's own spend. Reach, clicks and frequency read on 18/08/2026.
The website
We designed and built the replacement for zealousproductions.com.au: a dark, show first single page build in Bebas Neue and Cormorant Garamond that opens on the tagline and moves straight into what is on sale.
Ads have nowhere to land if the site cannot hold the visit, and a theatre site that buries the season under a company history is a site that costs money every time somebody clicks an ad.
The part of the brief that mattered most was accessibility. Zealous run:
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AUSLAN interpreted performances
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audio described performances
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sensory friendly performances
For them that is a genuine reason people choose the company rather than a compliance line, so it stayed visible instead of being pushed into a footer. The 18+ marking on Throbbin' Wood stayed prominent for the opposite reason.
zealousproductions.com.au as it stands today, captured 23/09/2026, designed and built by us. On the left the page opens on the tagline; on the right, one scroll down, is what is on sale. The site now carries the Christmas season.
A SINGLE PAGE, DARK AND SHOW FIRST
Built in Bebas Neue and Cormorant Garamond, so the poster art carries the page rather than fighting it.
THE SEASON, NOT THE COMPANY HISTORY
A theatre site that buries what is on sale costs money every time somebody clicks an ad.
ACCESSIBILITY ON THE PAGE, NOT IN THE FOOTER
Auslan, audio description and sensory friendly options sit in the About block, because they are a reason people choose the company.
+338%
times shown in Google's AI answers
Where it goes next
Zealous have a Christmas pantomime season at the Regal and a Melbourne debut. Both are the same problem again: a fixed season, a fixed number of seats, and in Melbourne a city where the audience has to be bought rather than inherited.
The difference is that the account now has history. The first season started from nothing and had to find its audience while the clock ran. Any campaign for the next one starts with 128,040 people already known to the account, and with a creative library that has been tested against a real deadline.
See how we market events and ticketed shows in Perth →NEXT SEASON, PERTH
Rapunzel
A Traditional Christmas Pantomime. December 2026, Regal Theatre, Subiaco WA. The same problem again: a fixed season and a fixed number of seats.
NEXT SEASON, MELBOURNE
Peter Pan
A Traditional Christmas Pantomime. December 2026, The National Theatre, St Kilda VIC. A city where the audience has to be bought rather than inherited.
Seasons and venues read from zealousproductions.com.au, 23/09/2026.
