How Signal-Powered Marketing Is Transforming Theatrical Success

Unlocking the Future of Movie Marketing with Meta

The entertainment industry is experiencing a seismic shift. As moviegoers increasingly purchase tickets online and studios seek new ways to drive growth post-pandemic and industry strikes, Meta is at the forefront of revolutionizing ticketing campaign success.

With more time spent and tickets being sold online, the industry has a unique opportunity to directly engage audiences and usher in a new era of movie marketing—one where data-driven decisions drive box office results.

As digital content creation and distribution become more democratized, cinema faces intense competition for audiences’ time and attention. According to the Bain Media Consumption Survey, theatrical releases are not just entertainment—they’re social and cultural moments. Moviegoers live on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, sharing memes, video essays, podcasts, reaction videos, and cosplay.¹

The Impact of Reels and Creators on Moviegoers

Meta is an essential platform for movie marketing, with more people joining the conversation about cinema and films every day. The scale of content creation around theatrical releases directly impacts how people engage and make movie-going decisions.

The shift to short-form video is changing how audiences discover and decide what to watch. Creators also play a vital role in influencing purchase decisions, with over half of surveyed users reporting they are more likely to buy tickets when promoted by creators on Instagram Reels.

• Cinema-related Reels increased 41% year over year, demonstrating how short-form video is supercharging movie interest on Meta.²
• 53% of people are more likely to make a purchase if promoted by a creator on Instagram Reels.³

Signal-Powered Marketing and Data Partnerships Unlocks Box Office Growth

To succeed in this competitive environment, studios and exhibitors are innovating new ways to influence moviegoers. The shift to signal-powered marketing means that, for the first time, studios, film exhibitors, and ticketing platforms can optimize their advertising directly to box office sales and precisely measure incremental impact.

In this context, “signal” refers to a real, actionable data point, such as a ticket purchase or engagement, that allows marketers to optimize campaigns for outcomes that matter, rather than relying on proxy metrics.

Traditionally, movie marketing relied on limited consumer signals and delayed metrics to evaluate success. With more tickets than ever being sold online, the industry now has the opportunity to directly optimize for box office sales and measure impact with greater accuracy.

Meta’s data partnerships enable ticketing platforms to privately share aggregated ticket sales with studios, unlocking new ways for the industry to benefit from the full power of digital marketing. By sharing transaction signals, Studios can now focus on outcomes that matter most: ticket sales and revenue growth.

How Advantage+ Drives Incremental Ticket Sales

Meta’s Advantage+ solutions are at the heart of signal-powered marketing, driving precision and scale across campaign activation and measurement. Advantage+ dynamically allocates budget, creative, and audience targeting to maximize ticket sales and return on ad spend (ROAS).

For the first time, using ticketing data, advertisers directly measured the impact of advertising on Meta on box office sales. Partnering with 8 studios in the US and leveraging signal-powered campaigns as part of their film release strategies, we applied a test-and-control methodology and found that:

• Signal-powered campaigns drove 10% incremental ticket sales.⁴
• About 50% of film strategies achieved double-digit lift in incremental ticket sales when running Meta Ads.⁴
• Data partnerships across multiple ticketing platforms scaled revenue, driving a 40% higher incremental ROAS compared to single platform strategies.⁵

Scaling Success in EMEA: Collaboration and Measurable Impact

Across EMEA, the shift to signal-powered marketing is enabling studios and exhibitors to optimize directly to box office sales and measure true incremental impact using purchase data.

We recently partnered with our studio and exhibitor partners via Movio (Vista Group), to test a signal-powered approach evaluating offline and online box office sales impact via a test-and-control methodology.

Ads on Meta drove 4% lift in ticket sales and 4% incremental customers. Meta ads also drive earlier ticket purchases, with exposed audiences more likely to watch films in the first two weeks after release.⁶

Getting Started with Best Practices

Let Advantage+ Find Ticket Sales

• Allocating a mix of your marketing budget for ASC and Advantage+ powered solutions can help find efficiency pockets and increase ROAS.⁷
• 20% improved cost per action when using Advantage+ sales campaigns.⁷
  

Let Advantage+ Help Find More Moviegoers

• Heavy-up media during the week of release can help scale results by reaching millions of potential moviegoers.
• Combining Reach & Advantage+ strategies, studios saw +6% lift in incremental ticket sales on top of business-as-usual strategies.⁸

Stick to Creative Best Practices

• 50% of time spent on Instagram is now watching Reels.^{9
  It’s crucial that messages are tailored to the platform, optimized for mobile (9:16 ratio), and use Reels-native cues like text overlays.}
• Cut multiple thematic versions of trailers—theme-led, character-led, cast interviews, and behind-the-scenes content—to appeal to diverse audiences.

Unlock Value with Creators

• Studios have a unique opportunity to tap into real-time trends, reviews, and audience reactions, partnering with creators to connect the film’s universe to its audience.
• Collaborate with creators, embracing the content people want now, to promote fan-made content and build trust and authenticity.

Signal-powered marketing lets studios and exhibitors optimize campaigns for the outcomes that matter most, ticket sales and audience growth, while precisely measuring impact and unlocking deeper performance insights.

By working together and sharing signals, the industry can drive unprecedented box office performance and redefine the future of movie marketing. In uncertain times, harnessing the full potential of signal-powered marketing has never been more important.

With robust digital measurement, marketers can move beyond proxies and optimize directly for ticket sales and audience growth. The rise of loyalty programs and new partnerships means the industry is perfectly positioned to leverage the entirety of sales data for even greater impact.

Ready to unlock your next blockbuster?

Connect with Meta to start your signal-powered journey and turn creative excellence into box office success.

1. Bain Media Consumption Survey, 2025. Bain Whitepaper
2. Meta Consumer Trends Tool, May 2024 – May 2025.
3. Meta-commissioned research with GWI, 2023. Base: 6,758 heavy short-form video consumers aged 16-64 who are at least weekly Reels users.
4. Conversion Lift Studies Measuring Content View events across 9 Entertainment Advertisers, 54 Conversion Lift Studies Measuring Initiate Checkout events across 8 Entertainment Advertisers, in the US between Jan-Dec’2024.
5. Median ROAS and Incremental Ticket Sales, based on 14 Conversion Lift studies in the US, across 3 Advertisers between Jan-Dec’2024, tracking Multiple Ticketing Platforms (Purchase event). Advertisers from this analysis represent 33% of the potential clients that could leverage the same signal strategy.Bayesian meta-analysis showed a +99% confidence test outperformed control.
6. Meta-analysis of 13 Partner Lift studies ran in the UK, between October 2024 and May 2025. Confidence in positive impact >97%. EMEA Whitepaper
7. This result is based on an experiment run globally across verticals during Sep 9, 2025 and Sep 14, 2025 on 10,107 campaigns using the Sales objective. Campaigns with Advantage+ Sales on had 20% lower cost per result than those that did not. This potential outcome is provided to give you an idea of possible performance but isn’t guaranteed.
8. Median Lift across 16 Conversion Lift studies measuring Purchase/Ticket Sales across 3 Entertainment Advertisers in the US between Jan-Dec’2024. Bayesian meta-analysis showed a +99% confidence test outperformed control.
9. Meta Q124 Earnings, April 2024. Meta Q124 Earnings