SOCIAL SALES STUDY

How social media activity connects to concert ticket sales

by Jessica Owens & Sameer Shah

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
What we did
We partnered with an events
company to demonstrate how
levels of social media activity can
predict ticket sales.
The hypothesis: social media
drives awareness that can
contribute to increased sales.
We used Pulsar, our proprietary
Social Data Intelligence platform,
to track the social media
discussion around three specific
concerts.
We analysed the entire online
ecosystem, including Twitter,
Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, as A 2014 rock
well as forums, blogs and news festival
sites.
We explored the correlation
between the volume of social
media messages about concerts UK tour of a top
and ticket sales for these events. female pop artist
(female audience,
Our method then used R- aged 18-24)
squared statistical tests on data
normalised logarithmically to
control for irregular distributions.:
A 1970s rock band
(predominantly
male audience,
30s-50s)
www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
The rock festival: The daily level of social media activity spikes dramatically
when acts are announced

1st announcement of acts,

plus early-bird tickets
notification
Social media
12000 messages

10000
2nd announcement
of acts
8000

6000 3rd announcement

of acts

4000

2000

0
14-Oct 21-Oct 28-Oct 04-Nov 11-Nov 18-Nov 25-Nov 02-Dec 09-Dec 16-Dec 23-Dec 30-Dec

Source: Festival 2014 data, Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
We then compared social media activity against ticket sales & website
visits, and showed the data on a log scale to see the correlation better

Social media messages Ticket sales Website visits

1000000

100000

10000

1000

100

10

1
14-Oct 21-Oct 28-Oct 04-Nov 11-Nov 18-Nov 25-Nov 02-Dec 09-Dec 16-Dec 23-Dec 30-Dec

Source: Festival 2014 data, Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Plotting each day's "pair" of social volumes & ticket sales shows there
is a 53% correlation between ticket sales and social media conversation

Ticket sales (log)

3.5

3.0
R = 0.5259
2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Source: Festival 2014 data,
Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013
Social media messages (log)

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
To put this in context Social media activity links to ticket sales almost as
strongly as visits to the ticket sales website (61% correlation)

Website visits Social media messages

61% 53%

Source: Festival 2014 data,

Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
To put it in plain English:
Each 9 extra messages link to a +1 rise in seat sales

Source: Download Festival 2014 data,

Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
The rock festival: Although Twitter drives most social media volume,
public Facebook messages have the highest correlation with ticket sales

Share of total volume Correlation with ticket sales

88% Twitter 38%

11% public Facebook 52%

1% News & blogs 17%

Total: 60,756 posts

Source: Festival 2014 data,

Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Who contributes to the conversation?

Share of total volume

Artists &
Festival official
account
Fans (20%)
(60%)

Promoters
(10%)

Media
(10%)

Source: Festival 2014 data,

Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013
Based on coding of random sample of 100 messages
www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Depending on the event, the predictive power of social can vary

Volume predicts Volume predicts Volume predicts

53% of sales 49% of sales 22% of sales

A 2014 rock festival UK tour of a world- A 1970s rock band

renowned female pop artist
Date range: 14 Oct 31 Dec 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Reason 1: Relevance
Social media discussion has to be tightly focused on the event itself

All discussion about the rock festival is about the concert event. There's no
other way people can mention it. So this even saw the strongest correlation
with sales figures (53%).

But for our pop artist, initial analysis of all social media buzz
about the artist found no correlation with UK tour sales at all.

It's only when we narrowed the social data down to specific

mentions of the tour by name, and in the UK only, that the
strongest relationship with social media data emerged.

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Relevance may explain the results of other social-to-sales studies too

Measuring: overall social buzz vs. sales

"We didn't see any statistically significant

relationship between our buzz and our
short-term sales." (Ad Age, March 2013)

Measuring: negative sentiment vs. sales

"The consulting firm found bad buzz for an

unnamed telecom client hurt signups by 8%,
offsetting their entire TV spend."
(Ad Age, June 2013)

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Reason 2: Demographics
Social predicts sales best for a younger audience who use it more

Social media demographics by age:

Age 65+ Age 18-24

26% use
social
95% use social networks
networks

6%
use
Twitter

39% use Twitter

Source: Kantar & TNS Omnibus study for eMarketer, 2013

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
In the case of the 1970s rock band, news visibility is the most predictive
factor still indicating that awareness is still key to sales

The older audience is less present on social networks like Twitter or Facebook news may be
a more relevant channel. News sites tend to have high visibility, Pulsar's proprietary metric for
establishing content's influence and reach.
While social media volumes correlated only 22% with sales, that rises to 30% when using
visibility, which weights the impact of the media most relevant to this audience more highly.

Ticket sales (log)

4.5
4.0
R = 0.298
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Source: A 1970s Rock band data, UK visibility (log)
Date range: Date range: 13 Nov 15 Jan
www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Other studies have also found stronger relationships when they look
beyond just social media volume

Measuring: social media shares vs. sales

In the UK:
A Facebook share generates 2.25 in
additional gross ticket sales
Twitter - 1.80
LinkedIn - 1.24
(Techcrunch, April 2012)

Measuring: influencers' messages vs. sales

"The number of overall Twitter mentions is a
poor predictor of box office sales [for Hollywood
films]. What did correlate to box office success
was the number of tweets from influential
tastemakers." (Readwrite.com, Dec 2012)
www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
Takeaways

1. Social media buzz and sales can correlate strongly over 50%
2. The type of social media activity that can predict sales may vary
between brands

3. We saw stronger results for products aimed at a younger audience who

use social media more

4. The social data you're measuring needs to be specifically about the

product in question results are weaker for general "brand buzz"

5. We see stronger results where social can provide a direct path to

purchase (e.g. event tickets)

6. Finding a relationship between social & sales takes exploration

of different aspects of social and different aspects of sales

www.facegroup.com
www.pulsarplatform.com
THANK YOU

Research team:
Jessica Owens (@hautepop)
Sameer Shah (@thesquidboylike)

If you want to find out more about this study

or about our research in general, please get
in touch at info@facegroup.com.