Featured image for the UNTOLD Festival Dubai case study

Music & Live Events

Music & Live Events

Music & Live Events

UNTOLD Festival

6.37x

6.37x

ROAS on ticket sales

ROAS on ticket sales

2.47x

2.47x

Ahead of forecast

Ahead of forecast

company

company

About

About

Dubai's Mega Festival

Dubai's Mega Festival

Industry

Industry

Music & Live Events

Music & Live Events

Company size

Company size

10 – 100 employees

10 – 100 employees

Founded

2003

01

01

The Company

The Company

UNTOLD is one of the world's largest music festivals, and its Dubai edition is the Middle East's biggest, billed as Dubai's Mega Festival and named Best Festival, Middle East. The 2025 event brought more than 100 global superstars across multiple stages to Dubai Parks & Resorts, drawing a crowd of over 250,000 from more than 150 nationalities, with tickets sold direct to consumers across international markets.

UNTOLD is one of the world's largest music festivals, and its Dubai edition is the Middle East's biggest, billed as Dubai's Mega Festival and named Best Festival, Middle East. The 2025 event brought more than 100 global superstars across multiple stages to Dubai Parks & Resorts, drawing a crowd of over 250,000 from more than 150 nationalities, with tickets sold direct to consumers across international markets.

02

02

The Challenge

Convert enormous, worldwide interest into efficient ticket revenue. A festival with this profile has no shortage of attention, but attention is not the same as a sale. The task was to cut through a crowded live-events market, reach genuinely high-intent fans across multiple audiences and markets, and turn demand into ticket sales while keeping cost per acquisition low.

Convert enormous, worldwide interest into efficient ticket revenue. A festival with this profile has no shortage of attention, but attention is not the same as a sale. The task was to cut through a crowded live-events market, reach genuinely high-intent fans across multiple audiences and markets, and turn demand into ticket sales while keeping cost per acquisition low.

03

03

The Playbook

The Playbook

Lead with a precision audience strategy, prioritising the highest-intent pools, recent purchasers and their lookalikes, warm retargeting of engaged fans, then expanding into broad reach where it added incremental sales efficiently. Match message to intent, pairing day-specific ticket messaging and offer-led creative with the audiences most ready to buy. Keep a clean, streamlined campaign structure and optimise continuously to ROAS and cost per acquisition.

Lead with a precision audience strategy, prioritising the highest-intent pools, recent purchasers and their lookalikes, warm retargeting of engaged fans, then expanding into broad reach where it added incremental sales efficiently. Match message to intent, pairing day-specific ticket messaging and offer-led creative with the audiences most ready to buy. Keep a clean, streamlined campaign structure and optimise continuously to ROAS and cost per acquisition.

04

04

The Results

The Results

The campaign delivered a 6.37x ROAS on ticket sales, 2.47x ahead of forecast and around 69% above typical sales-campaign benchmarks, from 1,281 tracked ticket conversions. Lookalikes of recent purchasers were the standout audience at 6.99x, and day-specific ticket creative reached as high as 9.95x.

The campaign delivered a 6.37x ROAS on ticket sales, 2.47x ahead of forecast and around 69% above typical sales-campaign benchmarks, from 1,281 tracked ticket conversions. Lookalikes of recent purchasers were the standout audience at 6.99x, and day-specific ticket creative reached as high as 9.95x.

See how other teams are winning with OnSocial