How We Drove a 121% Revenue Increase for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix

Meta — Facebook and Instagram combined — was the primary revenue driver for the entire campaign, generating the majority of all ticket sales through Conversion campaigns. TNT Growth began by completely restructuring the campaign architecture, separating Grandstand and VIP Suite buyers into distinct conversion flows — each with its own creative strategy, copy framework, and audience targeting logic. This segmentation was foundational: it prevented audience overlap and allowed each buyer type to receive messaging precisely calibrated to their price point and intent signals.

For Grandstand campaigns, the focus was accessibility and excitement. Creative led with the energy of the F1 experience — the speed, the spectacle, the affordability of general admission. Targeting audiences with affinity for Formula 1, motor racing, and adjacent sports interests, TNT Growth cast a wide but intentional net. Retargeting layers were built on top: email subscribers, site visitors, Instagram engagers, and Facebook custom audiences were all activated as warm pools to convert into first-time buyers.

For VIP Suites, the creative strategy leaned hard into exclusivity and experience. Video ads showcased the suites themselves — the view from above the track, the luxury of the hospitality setup, the atmosphere of watching Formula 1 from a private box. Targeting was tighter, CPMs were higher, but the conversion value of a single suite sale justified the premium spend. This campaign ran with a longer window to accommodate the extended consideration cycle that high-ticket hospitality buyers naturally require.

Google campaigns played a complementary but essential role — capturing users already in purchase-mode who were actively searching for F1 Miami tickets, hospitality packages, and event information. TNT Growth structured the Google account across three campaign types: Brand campaigns to protect owned search territory, Nonbrand campaigns to capture broader event-interest and high-intent queries, and Performance Max (PMax) to serve as a catch-all conversion layer across Google's full network of Search, Display, YouTube, and Discovery placements.

While Meta drove the majority of ticket volume by creating demand at the top of the funnel, Google ensured that no high-intent search traffic leaked to competitors or went unconverted. Every user who saw an F1 Miami ad on Instagram and then searched Google for tickets would find TNT Growth's campaigns waiting for them — creating a reinforcing loop between the two channels that dramatically increased the efficiency of the combined spend.

One of the most operationally effective tactics in the entire campaign was a Meta lead generation program that collected thousands of qualified leads at an average cost-per-lead of less than one dollar. Targeting fans with demonstrated affinity for Formula 1 and live events, TNT Growth deployed Meta's native lead form ads to build a growing first-party audience database — creating an owned asset that could be activated across email marketing and retargeting campaigns throughout the entire campaign window.

The lead pipeline became a compounding asset over time. Leads collected in the early weeks of the campaign were nurtured through email sequences and layered into Meta retargeting audiences, where they were served conversion-optimized ads as the event approached. This meant the downstream spend — the ads that actually drove ticket purchases — was operating on warm, pre-qualified audiences rather than cold traffic. The result: dramatically lower CPCs on conversion campaigns, and a measurably higher conversion rate across the full funnel.

TNT Growth built a five-partner influencer program designed to cover the full spectrum of F1 Miami's audience. The critical strategic distinction: rather than treating influencer content purely as a brand awareness play kept in organic channels, the team used creator content directly as Meta conversion ads — putting authentic, high-performing creative into paid distribution to amplify reach and drive measurable ticket revenue.

The results validated the entire premise: influencer-driven conversion ads delivered nearly 5X ROAS — outperforming standard brand creative across the board. Authentic creator content performed better not because of audience size, but because it matched the native feel of the platform. A video from CheatDayEats showing the festival food scene at the Grand Prix feels organic in a user's Instagram feed in a way that a polished brand ad never can. That authenticity translated directly into lower CPMs, higher click-through rates, and better downstream conversion.

Across all creative formats tested throughout the campaign, image-based ads consistently yielded the highest ROAS. This ran counter to the prevailing assumption in performance marketing that video always wins on Meta — and it's a finding worth sitting with. For an event with an inherently powerful visual identity — F1 cars at speed, the Miami skyline, the opulence of a luxury suite with a track view — static imagery communicated the aspiration instantly and completely. There was no need for 15 seconds of video to build the context that a single strong image conveyed in a fraction of a second.

For the Hospitality campaign specifically, purpose-built image ads targeting VIP buyers achieved 27% higher ROI and 57% lower CAC compared to average campaign performance across the board. The creative direction emphasized the exclusivity of the experience — making prospective VIP buyers feel like insiders before they ever completed a purchase. When the visual communicates "this is a world that not everyone accesses," the conversion copy doesn't have to work as hard. The image does the selling; the copy closes the deal.