Real-time creative optimization to improve campaign performance

TIFF is a not-for-profit cultural organization with a mission to transform the way people see the world through film. Their most well-known event is the annual film festival in September, but the organization also puts on year-round programming in Toronto. One of these programs is the Next Wave Film Festival, a festival celebrating filmmakers under 25.

In promoting the Next Wave festival in 2022, TIFF faced the following challenges:

• The previous two Next Wave festivals were disrupted by COVID-19, so the most recent in-person festival was in 2019.

• Awareness of TIFF programs outside of the main festival is significantly lower than the festival. This meant that there was an awareness component to the campaign as well as a conversion component.

• The audience for Next Wave is significantly younger than the main TIFF audience, so this campaign relied disproportionately on prospecting over remarketing.

Because the original TikTok creative was driving the highest clickthrough rate of any of the channels within the Next Wave campaign, it was unclear whether or not the additional investment in new creative would be worthwhile.

The new TikTok creative featured footage taken at the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre, cut in quick succession and overlayed with a popular and timely song from TikTok. This proved to be more authentic and relatable to viewers than the previous animated version that was made for both TikTok and Instagram. 

The updated TikTok creative was far more engaging as evidenced by the almost 2x higher clickthrough rate. It also better showcased what the Next Wave film festival had to offer, resulting in a much higher on-site conversion rate and lower cost per conversion.

After implementing the new TikTok-specific creative, TIFF’s cost per conversion from TikTok went down by 95%.