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Digital Marketing Deep Analysis: Who's Actually in the Seat?

  • Writer: Leah Baumgartner
    Leah Baumgartner
  • 52 minutes ago
  • 5 min read


Every channel publishes its demographics, and those numbers shape a lot of media plans.


At PAC Digital, we asked a different question this year: Not who is on the discovery platforms, but who actually buys from it?


We pulled a full fiscal year of campaign data across 13 client accounts spanning college athletics, performing arts, and national touring properties—totaling $2.8M in ad spend, 287,000 orders, and $36M in attributed ticketing revenue. 


The Bottom Line

Reach fills the room, but revenue fills the seats. They are frequently not the same

people, and how far apart they sit depends almost entirely on what you're selling.


Three Questions, Not One


For every campaign, there are three separate metrics worth tracking:

  1. Who did we reach? (Share of ad views by age group)

  2. Who bought? (Share of orders by age group)

  3. What did they spend? (Share of ticket revenue produced by age group)

Most reporting stops at the first question. A lot of optimization stops at the second. The third is where the surprises live.


💡 Quick Definition: 

Average Order Value (AOV) is simply the total dollar amount of a purchase. For example, a patron or fan buying four seats at $60 has an order value of $240.


  1. META: THE BIG SPENDER ACROSS ALL GENRES


College Athletics: The Age vs. AOV Divide



The Key Takeaways:

  • Under 35: Accounted for >50% of orders, but <20% of revenue.

  • 45 and Older: Accounted for ~33% of orders, but ~62% of revenue.

  • The AOV Gap: An 18–24 conversion is worth $20; a 65+ conversion is worth $236. That is nearly a 12-fold difference in value within the same campaigns.


What The Gap Costs In Real Dollars

When we examine ad spend vs. revenue return for those same seven programs: 



Investing roughly the same amount in fans 18–24 ($57k) as fans 65+ ($48k) yielded $379k from the younger group vs. $1.36M from the older group—a 4x return per dollar.


🛑 Don't Cut Student Targeting Just Yet!


Many programs deeply discount or comp student tickets. The $20 AOV measures ticket prices as much as buying behavior.


Why keep targeting young fans?

  • New-to-file customer acquisition

  • Long-term season ticket pipeline

  • Live game-day atmosphere


The Actionable Fix: Platform algorithms optimized for "Maximum Conversions" will happily chase comped $20 orders all day. Ensure your ad platforms are set to optimize for Conversion Value (revenue), not raw volume.


Performing Arts: Aligned Audiences


The same analysis across four performing arts organizations shows a completely different environment:



Arts patrons buy in close proportion to how they're reached, and AOV moves from $152 to $253 across a forty-year age range. That's a spread of about 1.7 times, against college's twelve.


For arts marketers, this is genuinely good news: Your audience delivery is aligned with your revenue, which means demographic reallocation isn't where your next gain is hiding. Look at show-level targeting, creative, and timing instead.


National Touring Brands: The Frequency Play


Across our national touring properties, the pattern tips the other way. Fans 45 and older absorbed 36% of ad views and generated 46% of revenue. AOV was essentially flat across every age group, from $193 to $228.


For our promoter partners age groups spend similarly per order; older fans just order more frequently. Your strategic lever here is frequency and broader reach into older demographics, not upselling basket size.



  1. TIKTOK: THE PRIMARY BUYER IS NOT GEN Z


TikTok carries the loudest demographic reputation of any channel, so we checked it. The conversion data tells a different story for live event ticketing.


At one national touring property, TikTok delivered 53% of impressions to fans under 35 and generated 31% of the orders from them. Fans 55+ received 8% of the delivery, but  drove 17% of the orders at $54 cost per acquisition (compared to $109 CPA for the youngest group). Exactly half the cost.


A performing arts center in the study ran the same direction. The 25–34 segment took half of all impressions but underperformed on orders, while the 35–44 group heavily converted. 


📌 Marketer Takeaway: If you’ve been avoiding TikTok because your target audience isn't Gen Z, you’re missing out. TikTok reaches young, but for live events, it sells to the middle. 


  1. SOCIAL & VIDEO CHANNEL COMPARISON

When we isolate accounts running TikTok, Meta, and YouTube simultaneously over 12 months, clear channel personas emerge.



Our discovery platforms sold older than it reached—without exception. However, how each channel behaves across the funnel dictates how you should buy it. 


🎵 TikTok: The Long-Term Reach & Short-Term Secret

  • What the Data Shows: TikTok delivers the youngest reach by far (26% of impressions go to under-25s), but that same cohort produces only 13% of orders. Meanwhile, fans 55+ represent 5% of TikTok’s reach but deliver 10% of orders—doubling their share.

  • The Strategic Play: Buy TikTok with a two-pronged strategy. Use its unmatched young reach for brand exposure and long-term pipeline building, but recognize that its older cohorts are quietly driving the highest ROAS today.


📱 Meta: The Balanced Revenue Engine

  • What the Data Shows: Meta is the most balanced channel in the mix. Reach stays relatively steady across age groups (9% to 28%), but conversion efficiency skews older, with the 55+ demographic generating 25% of orders from an 18% reach share.

  • The Strategic Play: Meta is your reliable baseline for full-funnel efficiency. It’s effective for discovery and conversion across almost every demographic, making it the most forgiving platform for mid-funnel retargeting.


📺 YouTube: The High-Intent Visual Finisher

  • What the Data Shows: YouTube reaches the oldest overall audience (26% of reach is 55+), and that older group converts heavily, returning 32% of all orders. Conversely, 10% of YouTube's reach goes to under-25s, but they return only 5% of orders.

  • The Strategic Play: YouTube is often bought on the assumption that video attracts a younger audience. Our data says the opposite — buy it as an upper-to-mid-funnel driver aimed at older, higher-AOV patrons, and don't expect its young reach to convert. 


No single channel covers the entire house on its own. Diversifying across social and video platforms ensures you aren't leaving money on the table with older buyers while still feeding the top of the funnel for tomorrow's fans and patrons.



BEFORE YOU BORROW ANYONE'S PLAYBOOK…


Ad platforms don't have inherent gender profiles—genres do.


The exact same platform delivered a 73% female audience for a performing arts center and a 38% female audience for a touring property. YouTube is consistently the most male-skewing of the three, but the underlying property always establishes the baseline.


There is no universal "young channel" or "female channel." Your specific audience is the only metric that matters.



🛠️ CURIOUS? TRY THIS ON YOUR OWN ACCOUNT


Work with PAC Digital to try this analysis on your own accounts today:

  1. Check Revenue vs. Volume in Meta: Pull your last season by age group. Look at revenue columns instead of raw conversions. Is your top-ordering age group also your top revenue generator? 

  2. Calculate Segment ROAS: Compare ROAS across age brackets. If your youngest bracket returns less than half of your oldest, implement value-based bidding. 

  3. Audit Optimization Goals: Transition conversion campaigns from "Maximize Conversions" to "Conversion Value" to align algorithms with high-value buyers. 


Connect with your PAC Digital representative today to analyze your account's buyer behavior profile. Don’t work with us? Let’s talk! Email: LBaumgartner@Paciolan.com. 


 
 
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