Advertising
Canadian Museum of Nature
Account Manager
Brittney Mason
Key Team Members
Erica Fischer
“I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for being so incredible to work with. I’ve learned a lot from you when it comes to digital marketing, and I am genuinely grateful for it.”
— Denisa Horak
Situation
The Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN), one of Canada’s leading natural history museums, needed to increase ticket sales for its featured exhibitions while boosting general admission growth. Their goals extended beyond purchases—they also wanted to strengthen community awareness and engagement through digital channels. Like many cultural organizations, CMN faced the challenge of maximizing limited advertising budgets while ensuring measurable returns on investment.
$10K in ad spend generated $165K in ticket sales.
Findings
Early audits and campaign testing revealed several key insights:
- Tracking Gaps
Conversion tracking was inconsistent across museum webpages, with more than 10% missing gtag.js or Google Tag Manager tags. This limited the accuracy of performance measurement. - Platform Performance
Google Search Ads consistently drove the strongest ticket sales, delivering conversion values far above expectations for spend. (see Under the Canopy below) - Content Format
Video ads consistently performed best across platforms, especially on social media where they accounted for the majority of conversions. - Budget Patterns
Early campaigns suggested reallocating spend toward Google Ads, but later results (see Bug Adventure below) demonstrated that Meta could also achieve amazing ROAS when tracked properly.
Google Search campaigns hit an 18.5% CTR — 6x higher than industry benchmarks.
Solutions
We implemented the following strategic actions to optimize advertising for the museum’s exhibitions:
- Designing and executing multi-channel campaigns across Google Search, Video, Display, and Meta Ads.
- Conducting A/B testing of ad formats, ultimately prioritizing search ads on Google and video ads on Meta.
- Installing conversion tracking improvements, including the updating missing site tags.
- Adjusting budgets mid-campaign to direct more spend to platforms which demonstrated stronger ROI.
- Advocating for an evergreen Google Search campaign to capture ongoing ticket demand beyond temporary or featured exhibits.
Meta video ads delivered a 521% return on ad spend.
Considerations
- Compliance and conversion tracking limitations created challenges in reporting true ROI, requiring reliance on estimates in some cases.
- Audience awareness goals shaped ad spend decisions, even when conversions weren’t the sole outcome, prioritizing long-term engagement alongside ticket sales.
- Museum benchmarks for ad performance (CTR, CPC, conversion rate) provided useful comparisons, but campaign data often exceeded or challenged these standards–in a good way.
- Collaboration with the museum required balancing short-term exhibit attendance goals with long-term brand-building objectives like community awareness.
Nearly half a million community engagements for a single exhibition. Blended cost per conversion as low as $1.87 — proving every dollar worked harder.
Wins
Bug Adventure Campaign (2024)
- $12,002 spend → $46,705 estimated conversion value.
- 1,296 total conversions.
- Meta Ads delivered a 521% ROAS, with video ads accounting for 82% of conversions.
- Significant community engagement with 447,039 post engagements, 240 comments, and 2,292 reactions.
Under the Canopy Campaign (2023–24)
- $10,227 spend → $165,555 estimated conversion value.
- Google Search Ads drove over $133,000 in ticket sales at just $1.87 per conversion.
- Campaign CTR for search reached 18.56%, far above industry benchmarks.
The overall impact for these campaigns wasn’t only increased featured exhibit attendance and revenue, but a strengthened digital advertising strategy and a sustainable framework for balancing awareness with conversions across future initiatives.