Aykut Events Reaches New Audiences After Using Eventbrite Ads, With 488% ROAS

Every Aykut Events party is a calendar highlight—a date circled and time reserved to celebrate. Whether it’s Halloween, Cinco de Mayo, or Persian New Year, attendees are treated to lavish venue takeovers, open bars, fusion menus, and world-class DJs.

Since moving to San Francisco from Istanbul, Turkey, 25 years ago, DJ and Aykut Events founder Aykut Akcaoglu has been catering to a diverse, international crowd by throwing parties he felt were missing from the scene when he first arrived.

“I said, I’m going to come up with something different, something unique—international parties, international-themed events open to everyone,” he explains. “With our music style and our relationships to different communities, it really created something very unique.”

With more than two decades of San Francisco event experience (and many more as a DJ), Akcaoglu has had plenty of time to reflect on his success. The secret? Aykut Events get people up on their feet. “From the very beginning, what we wanted is for people to come and have fun,” Akcaoglu says. “We have great DJs, great music and people really come to dance. People have a great time, people come to celebrate.”

Another reason for Aykut Events’ success is its relationship with Eventbrite; Akcaoglu joined the platform when it first launched in 2006. During his 18 years on the platform, he has continued to explore and experiment with the platform’s innovative all-in-one marketing tools and has found huge success with Eventbrite Ads.

Amplifying the biggest event of the year using Eventbrite Ads

One of the biggest nights on the Aykut Events calendar is New Year’s Eve. To ring in 2024, Akcaoglu organized a massive NYE takeover of San Francisco’s W Hotel.

“At the W we have four different rooms and each room has different kinds of music and different DJs and people can go from room to room and enjoy the night,” he says. “They can listen to EDM, house music, hip hop, 80s, 90s, or go into another room and listen to reggaeton, salsa and in another room we have a Persian, Middle Eastern theme. It’s just like going to four parties at once.”

To help NYE at the W stand out for Aykut Events, Akcaoglu used Eventbrite Ads to promote events in top placements on the platform’s most highly trafficked areas, including the top of related search results, as well as on the homepage and category pages. 

With Eventbrite Ad campaigns, organizers choose between two campaign goals: increased awareness, which focuses on impressions, or driving traffic to generate more clicks on the event listing.

For the NYE event, Akcaoglu focused on the latter in order to sell tickets quickly in the final days before the event took place. “We try to encourage people to click and buy tickets, so we just want them to go directly to the source and see the event details and buy the tickets,” Akcaoglu says.

And the numbers suggest that that’s exactly what happened with the Aykut Events’ ad campaign, which resulted in a cost-per-click (CPC) of $1.67, click-through rate (CTR) of 3.24%, and a return on ad spend (ROAS) of 488%, showing that the campaign paid dividends. 

Easy-to-use ads, all under one roof

For seasoned event organizers like Akcaoglu, marketing isn’t just about ticket sales—it’s about streamlining those sales. Eventbrite Ads campaigns can be built in just a few clicks. Organizers simply need to set a daily budget, duration, and payment method, and Eventbrite will do the rest. Using ads to promote recurring events will save organizers even more time. 

“I think it’s a great tool, it’s so extremely easy to set up,” says Akcaoglu. “And you can choose your budget and how long you want to run it.”

In particular, says Akcaoglu, things are made even easier for Eventbrite users because the Eventbrite Ads tool keeps everything together on one platform and is simpler than comparable ad options.

“When you go to Facebook, you have this massive platform and the Ad Centre to create the ad, which is not that hard, but you need to know what you’re doing,” he says. “With Eventbrite Ads, you can set it up in seconds…and it’s better to be on the same page.”

And it’s not just ease of use that the tool is head and shoulders above the competition, Eventbrite Ad campaigns get 30% better CTRs than Facebook Ads.

“[Eventbrite Ads] is a great tool. It’s so extremely easy to set up…you can set it up in seconds.”

Aykut Akcaoglu

Cost-effectiveness and the power of analytics

For Akcaoglu, it’s important to be able to look under the hood when it comes to an ad campaign. With Eventbrite Ads, event organizers can track ad performance in real time and view key metrics to make sure that they’re getting the best value. 

“Overall, we want to organize a great event, but we also want to make sure that the money we invest in these ads is worth it,” Akcaoglu says. “The analytics tool is very easy to read and you can tell the outcome and see if you’re getting a good return on your investment.”

Measuring Aykut Events’ return on investment reveals a few key wins, particularly cost-per-click. Google search ads, for example, run at an average CPC of $2.69. For Aykut Events’ Eventbrite Ads campaign, CPC came in at $1.67 which represents real value, according to Akcaoglu.

“It’s very affordable,” Akcaoglu says. “If that rate goes up to $4, $5, $6 per click, I would say that’s too much but, given the clicking rate as well as engagements, I think it’s worth the investment.”

“The analytics tool is very easy to read and you can tell the outcome and see if you’re getting a good return on your investment.”

Getting seen by enthusiastic Eventbrite audiences

With Eventbrite Ads, events receive top placement in the most visited places on Eventbrite, like in search results and on the homepage. For organizers, that means getting an event listing in front of potential attendees. For browsers, it can be a shortcut to finding their favorite new event. And with 93 million consumers using the platform in 2023, the sky really is the limit.

“People love Eventbrite,” Akcaoglu says. “Once they go on the app, if they see the ad, it’s very effective. People are very familiar with [Eventbrite] and even amongst my friends, if they want to find something, they go on the Eventbrite app and see what’s around. It’s just getting more and more popular, so, why don’t you want to be getting that ad and be in front of people? I think it’s a great way to invest your marketing dollars.”