The paid campaign plan for the 20-date UK tour. Meta + TikTok only. Built to be read in five minutes.
Everyone who watched, clicked or visited gets retargeted until they buy. Funded first.
Tracked per city, reconciled weekly. Cost per conversion is the only score.
Lead-gen ads are already live and stay out of this budget. This plan is purely ticket sales.
Two lanes, one starting line: $2,250 each in a three-week contest, Jul 7–28. Both enter the $9,500 performance pool from Aug 1, weighted by results. On Aug 17 we back one, or keep both if the numbers earn it.
No conversion data exists for this show yet, so nobody gets ranked on day one. The two live theories, experience seekers (Kevin’s read) and sci-fi FOMO (ours), run head-to-head from the same line, and the pool pays whoever sells cheapest, week by week. First read: Jul 29. Final call: Aug 17, one lane or two, whatever the numbers say.
Both lanes start $2,250 Pool $9,500 · results onlyMetropolis invented the robot, the mega-city, the mad scientist. So this lane runs as four sub-lanes. Each pairs one hook with the exact fandom it name-checks. No generic “sci-fi fans” bucket.
The imagery is already famous and the audience is precisely targetable by named fandoms: recognition, targeting and FOMO in one lane. Same stake as everyone; the pool confirms or corrects it.
Documented: C-3PO’s design was based on MariaKevin’s read on our strongest crowd, and it’s a real one. We target them through the events they already buy, and give the city-by-city ads one job: scarcity.
A real audience and a live debate worth settling with money, not opinions. Same starting stake as every lane; if it wins on cost per conversion, the pool pays it first. The data decides, in either direction. Lead hooks come straight from Kevin’s creative sessions, cut to 3-second opens.
Experience economy: 3M+ Candlelight tickets soldThe lanes make people care. This layer makes them buy: it re-serves ads to everyone who watched, clicked, visited or subscribed, and clones the buyers.
Warm audiences return 2.5–6x vs 1.2–2.5x cold. Cheapest tickets in the plan; every lane dollar keeps paying here.
Meta benchmarks 2025–26Both lanes start with the same $2,250 stake; the $9,500 pool does the ranking, released weekly by cost per conversion. Paid directly to the platforms; lead-gen ads already running are separate and not in these numbers. Overall platform mix lands ≈76/24 Meta to TikTok; the pool’s share follows performance, planned ≈70/30.
8 Birmingham · 9 Harlow · 10 Epsom · 12 Hove · 13 Colchester · 15 Harpenden · 16 Lytham St Annes · 17 Carmarthen · 18 Winchester · 19 Liverpool · 20 Gravesend · 22 Sunderland · 23 Hertford · 24 Worcester · 25 Ilkley · 26 London (Greenwich)
7 Bath · 8 Whitley Bay · 10 Hever · 11 Stockport
Each lane = one campaign covering all 20 venue zones. City + date creative rotates in for each show’s final 2–4 weeks, and the slowest three rooms get reserve money each week. London books last-minute, so it gets a dedicated final-10-day surge.
Most rooms hold 300–600; one venue ≈1,300, so room math caps these 20 dates near ≈12,700. The 10,000–25,000 sometimes quoted is a tour total, never a per-night number; this plan uses the conservative ≈10,000 throughout.
A three-week contest opens the flight: both lanes compete head-to-head from day one. After the Aug 17 call, ≈62% of the budget lands where tickets actually sell: each city’s buying window. Amber = reserve for the slowest cities.
= $4,500 lane stakes + $300 closer. Both lanes at ≈$100/day each, decision-grade data in three weeks. First read Jul 29 tilts the pool.
= ≈$2.2K pool + ≈$0.5K closer. Pool pays weekly by contest results: a blowout sends it all to the winner, a close race splits by performance. Final call Aug 17.
= ≈$7.3K pool + ≈$2.7K closer. Winner(s) scale into each city’s final 2–4 weeks, closer uncapped, reserve to the slowest rooms weekly.
One number opens each gate: blended cost per conversion (one conversion is one checkout, averaging two tickets), reconciled weekly against real venue sales.
If cost per conversion runs above $32, no new money goes in; we fix creative and lane mix first. You never spend $40K on a $20K result.
It’s tighter than industry standard: Meta’s 2026 all-industry average is ≈$38 per conversion (sales campaigns ≈$30). At $24 on a ≈$76 two-ticket order, ads take ~31% of revenue, a ≈3.2x return, inside Meta’s healthy 2.5–4x band.
Kevin called this early: don't ask Meta to carry the whole tour. Here's the price tag on that strategy, at $24 or less per checkout.
≈10,000 seats at ≈2 to 2.2 seats per checkout. Every one of them bought with ad spend.
The realistic ads-only price. Nearly 3x the full $40K plan, for the same tour.
Only if creative beats target at ≈$18 per checkout, sustained for 14 straight weeks.
Linear math flatters an ads-only plan. Costs climb as the 25-mile audiences saturate, and a 400-seat Tuesday room in a small town caps out no matter what the budget is. The real ads-only number lands higher.
$40K buys roughly 1 in 3 seats at a third of the ads-only price. Venue lists, PR, email and word of mouth sell the rest for close to nothing. Ads are the accelerant, not the whole engine.
Most tickets sell on voxlumiere.com through Wix Events, so we track real purchases end to end and campaigns optimise to purchases from day one. Venue-sold allocations get reconciled in weekly on top.
Every ad UTM-tagged: lane / creative / city
Wix native: Meta Pixel + CAPI, TikTok Pixel + Events API, GA4
Purchase happens on our own site, tagged by city + show
Browser + server-side to both platforms, with order value
Wix order reports + any venue-sold allocations = the true number
KILL creative at 2x target cost after $150 spent
SCALE winners +20% every 3 days, never doubled overnight
DEMOTE any lane 1.5x worse than the leader for 14 days
Cost per conversion is the only number that matters: target ≤ $24, alarm at $32. One conversion is one checkout and averages two seats.
Ticket pricing, verified: £30 general · £37 VIP · £23 child / senior 65+, plus small booking fees (≈$36–38 blended; varies slightly by venue). Capacity, stated plainly: most rooms hold 300–600, one venue ≈1,300. Room math caps these 20 dates near ≈12,700; the “10,000–25,000” sometimes quoted is a tour total, never per night. Bars use the conservative ≈10,000. Ads are the accelerant, not the whole engine: venue lists, PR, email and word of mouth sell on top.
$20K ÷ $24 per conversion ≈ 830 checkouts × 2.0–2.2 seats each = ≈1,650–1,850 tickets. Same math at $40K = ≈3,100–3,700, the low end if costs drift to the $26 step-two tolerance. If costs run at the $32 alarm level instead, the same money buys ≈1,250 / ≈2,500, which is exactly why the hold rule exists. And $24 is a ceiling, not a cap on sales: beat it at $18 and the same $40K buys ≈4,400–4,900 tickets. Group bookings raise it further, and venue lists, PR and email sell on top of everything here.
Sign off $20K + the plan. Tracking stack goes onto voxlumiere.com immediately.
Both lanes live with vault cuts + statics. Wave-2 creative lands mid-contest, Jul 10–14.
Early signal on both lanes. First read Jul 29; final call Aug 17.
USD budget · tickets £23–£37 + booking fee, ≈$36–38 blended (verified 6 Jul; confirm per venue) · checkout on voxlumiere.com via Wix Events (venue-sold allocations reconciled weekly) · audience sizes confirmed in Ads Manager pre-launch.