How AI Trained on 75M Tickets Optimizes Event Marketing

0:00Markus Hetzenegger:Big promoters, event organizers invest millions in old school marketing activities like out of home, ready TV print. Is it only musical events for musical artists? We started with music. So the normal concerts, the weekend, Coldplay, Madonna, you name it. But for now we're doing a lot of circuses like Circus LA, we're doing a lot of musicals like Mamma Mia, The Blooming Group. What are your plans and goals for this year? The clear focus is to scale, open new markets, onboard new promoters and event organizers, but also to really improve our main infrastructure.

0:34Andres Figueira:Do you find yourself having to change the style of campaigning or is it one size fits all?

0:40Markus Hetzenegger:It's always different, to be honest. The strategy, the budget allocation is different. Even the approach when we go online, the content pieces are different, the strategy is different.

0:54Andres Figueira:Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Andres Figueira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit GlobalTalent.co, click Start Hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we reach out.

1:28Andres Figueira:And with me here today, I am speaking with Marcus Hetzenecker, CEO and founder of NYBA Media, a company that brings precision and clarity to your ticket sales by harnessing their proprietary AI alongside performance-driven digital marketing. They pinpoint the ideal customer only when and where they're most likely to buy. And with that said, Markus, it's a pleasure to have you here, man. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here. No problem at all, man. And just so that we can get the audience a bit more in context here, would you be able to give us a bit more info about your background, how you came to found NYBA and what NYBA actually does in your own words?

2:09Markus Hetzenegger:So, I mean, I grew up in Spain. So I speak Spanish. Yeah, I grew up in a small fisher village there. The first six years, then I moved back to Germany. And at the very beginning, it was really hard for me because I was not even able to write German. So I had a hard time at the German schools, which was really hard. But yeah, then I figured out that I really want to achieve a little bit more than the average. So, I mean, back then I didn't know any entrepreneur or I didn't have any parents that came from money. So I did everything myself. I founded the company when I was 17, turning 18. And back then I had a friend in Frankfurt here promoting small events because I was really into digital marketing.

2:59Markus Hetzenegger:And I love psychology and marketing in general. I read every book about it. And he asked me if I can help him promote his event. and he had a hard time selling tickets, a couple of hundred tickets for his event at the university. And so we stepped in, helped him and sold out the event two months before the event happened. And from there, we saw that there's a big need because big promoters, event organizers, they really invest millions, sometimes hundreds of millions and old school marketing activities like out of home, radio, TV, print. And if you ask them, say, hey, how much did you invest for that artist?

3:44Markus Hetzenegger:And they were like, okay,$3 million a year. It's like, how high is your return on invest? How much tickets did you sell? Most of the time, they just don't know. So that's the niche we then saw.

3:56Andres Figueira:So then the value proposition that NYBA is bringing is that through more of digital marketing and doing things online, you're able to get better measurements and metrics as to how much that advertising is actually working.

4:11Markus Hetzenegger:Yeah, I mean, of course, back then we started with normal digital marketing. So we just ran Facebook ads, Google ads, one of the first ones in Europe running TikTok ads as well. Now we are partners here for TikTok in Europe. but back then we had no AI because we just started with everything but now we gain so much different data not only the data from the artists from the engagement, from our campaigns but also the learning from the campaigns itself like which copy do you need which creative, in which phase, which platform when should we start the formal campaign the on-site campaign and so on so we have a lot of knowledge We sold more than 75 million tickets online by now.

4:55Markus Hetzenegger:And yeah, now starting to push things to the UK, the US and Middle East as well.

5:03Andres Figueira:Amazing. 75 million tickets is a lot, man. And another quick question. Is it only musical events for musical artists? Or do you also work with like, I'm thinking of ticket sales and I'm thinking such as like theater and other types, maybe theme parks or stuff like that? Or is it just music?

5:25Markus Hetzenegger:Good question. I mean, we do everything. We started with music. So the normal concerts, the weekend, Coldplay, Madonna, you name it. Obviously, we started with smaller ones. But for now, we're doing a lot of circuses, like Cirque du Soleil. We're doing a lot of musicals like Mamma Mia, the Blue Man Group. festivals we're doing a lot of festivals like la palooza rolling loud and you name it and now we're also starting to expand more into museums life experiences we did the bbc earth experience in london or elvis evolution in london different stuff um yeah but we are not doing any theme parks

6:06Andres Figueira:till now that maybe okay okay no but like with cirque du soleil and that type of of acting and stage performance and it's like that's what i was what i actually meant but it's so cool you dropped a bunch of names that i believe i know every single one of them so that is amazing bro

6:21Markus Hetzenegger:i mean i'm doing this for over 12 years um we started with really small wins not earning any any buck in the first years so i mean we also went through a lot but now i'm really really happy i'm really grateful that we are where we are right now and i think there's a lot of potential so

6:39Andres Figueira:and now i also want to know marcus is um you mentioned that you like you started in germany and you've been catering to europe in general but you're moving also to the middle east and the

6:52Markus Hetzenegger:states yeah i mean we're doing a lot of stuff here in germany i mean here's our base we are we have office here in frankfurt i mean that's the reason most of the events we are promoting all for Germany, also in Switzerland. So this is one part. Now we also do a lot in Italy. Like Nation Italy as well, for example, and some promoters there. And also, and now we're starting in Spain, but slowly but steady. We're doing some events also in other parts of Europe. But the most important for us is Germany, also in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and then the UK is also, I would say, our third biggest market.

7:37Markus Hetzenegger:And USA is completely new for us. I mean, we have some events which we promote there, but we will start this year also advertising in the US more. I mean, we have a little bit of a problem with the time difference. That's a headache.

7:52Andres Figueira:And then is that, that was another question I had. So is NYBA a company that has a remote-first working style or do you have these different offices where you're asking people to be physically there?

8:05Markus Hetzenegger:Yeah, I mean, we have an office in Germany, in Frankfurt, and we opened a small one in Dubai as well for the Middle East market. Because it's super interesting. I mean, Abu Dhabi, they have this Mission 2030, so they want to get away from the oil and really push entertainment in general. So they're opening the theme parks, they're promoting the events, they're building the ecosystem. And there's a huge potential there. So we're already working on some case studies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I spent a lot of time last year in Dubai as well to set up everything. And yeah, I think there's great potential.

8:44Markus Hetzenegger:But still worldwide, I think US is number one. UK is very important. Europe and probably then the Middle East.

8:51Andres Figueira:Oh my God. You mentioned Dubai's plan and like that plan they have for 2030 and everything like that. And it just reminds me of Venezuela because I'm originally from Venezuela. So I would love for us to also steer away from oil and then just bring tourism, events and theme parks. That's a different topic.

9:06Markus Hetzenegger:We can do another podcast.

9:08Andres Figueira:That would be a whole other story. But oh my goodness, that is the dream. And it's so cool that you are opening a base there in Dubai because it really is crazy. And Marcus, now that I asked you about how NYBA works, if it's remote first and everything, how many people do you have helping you out with this whole endeavor? because I feel it's a pretty big project that you've had going on for a while now. So what is your team looking like?

9:34Markus Hetzenegger:I mean, we don't focus on company size. We focus and we also don't focus on revenue, but rather on profit. So we really like processes, structure, scalability. So we do everything before employing a new person. we would i mean we have a small team just building the infrastructure for everything so if you book a sales call with us everything is fully automated like the email the reminder the sms the whatsapp message you get even if you decide to work with us the onboarding process the follow-up the reporting like everything is fully automated and fully structured um that works amazingly well I mean, you can do a lot nowadays using AI, N8N, Hubbot, all the tools.

10:29Markus Hetzenegger:So there's insanely huge opportunity. I would say back then you would have needed like 200 people in order to do that. But for now, we can do a lot optimizing with processes and the whole AI ecosystem really provides the right infrastructure. which is amazing.

10:52Andres Figueira:I can only imagine because that is something I hear so much with AI it's that it's helping companies get leaner more efficient optimizing the time of the workers they already have which takes away the fact that they need to hire more people to do more stuff but rather the same people can do even more tasks now. And are you guys leveraging AI in any curious or peculiar way that's not the usual customer experience or replying emails because we know that is very, that's what AI is very good for. But just wondering if NYBA is doing something that's a little bit newer or more, or just different from what we've already heard.

11:31Markus Hetzenegger:Yeah, I mean, the thing we do is we combine, as I mentioned at the very beginning, we combine the data and the learnings from our campaigns, from the artist, from the promoter, and the learnings from the campaign and the different platforms and the creatives and the copy, the tracking, everything. We combine everything with our own AI. so the data we have and the targeting gets better every day. So, you know, the learnings from the campaign, like the setup, the strategy, the creative, the copy, the platform, how we divide the budgets in real-time performance-based, stuff like that happens with AI nowadays.

12:08Markus Hetzenegger:And it's getting better and better every day. So the more data, the more learnings we generate, the better everything gets. That's super exciting.

12:16Andres Figueira:That is nice. And Marcus, may I ask if you've seen any weird patterns or metrics that you say like, yeah, we were going to do a concert in Italy for a Spanish singer. That was just crazy. Everybody liked it. Or do you have any weird anecdotes like that of things you've seen?

12:37Markus Hetzenegger:Generally speaking, the funny part is we had a hard or a long discussion to be able to run more campaigns on TikTok with our promoters. Especially, I mean, of course, they agreed to work, for example, we did campaigns for Billie Eilish on TikTok or artists like that, so young artists. But we had a hard time convincing the promoters to run something like Mamma Mia or Cirque du Soleil or other artists, especially family-related content on TikTok because again, it's a super young platform. But then we discovered that the family entertainment, as we call it, is the best performing genre on TikTok.

13:22Markus Hetzenegger:So everything for the mothers worked amazingly well. And even super niche topics like heavy metal or super dark metal is also performing really well on TikTok. And maybe something weird is that we tested, I mean, we love split testing, we test everything and we had an ad because normally, obviously, TikTok is a video-based platform, as you know. And we always run social images on TikTok with music on it. So static images. And they perform amazing well. So because nobody does it, especially in retaracting, images 9 to 16 formats work really, really well with the right sound.

14:07Andres Figueira:So cool. So cool. Okay, Markus, then now I'd love to know, what is your priority as CEO and founder of NYBA? And what is NYBA's priority for the next 12 months? Like now that we're right now ending January of 2026, what are your plans and goals for this year?

14:26Markus Hetzenegger:I mean, this year clearly is to, our main mission for this year is to scale, to open new markets. to, I mean, now we also, I mean, back then we only worked with recommendations from other clients. Now we started advertising for ourselves as well. We're in campaigns in America, in the UK, Middle East, you can see our ads. And that works amazingly well. So the clear focus is to scale, open new markets, onboard new promoters and event organizers, but also to really improve our main infrastructure to build the right ecosystem for every employee so they have less work can focus more on the main skill core skill yeah for me it's i think it's sales marketing the right infrastructure and the scalability i need to provide as a founder and put the right people in the right spot which is a really challenging one i mean you probably have the same same

15:28Andres Figueira:same challenge call it is called it that way no of course of course and more so you as a ceo and founder like i must understand that you have been handling a bit of everything for a long time now and finding the proper person to delegate a certain task to is something that you need to be able to trust them and get that off your mind because if not it's like not doing anything is just keep on reviewing their work and everything like that so i do imagine that expanding the team

15:53Markus Hetzenegger:properly not that it's pretty bad no exactly exactly and now that you mention it marcus do

16:01Andres Figueira:you have any example of how you are marketing your company per se because i understand how you work with the performers the artists the different uh um events that you guys uh help uh what's it called to help a show around but now how are you able to market nyba and what it does What do you use as the hook to get more people to want your service?

16:24Markus Hetzenegger:That's different because it's B2B. And for us, the sales process is quite long. So it's more about education and showing people case studies on things we did on certain campaigns and explain them how we did it, why we did it that way, and how we could probably do something similar for them. so I think this is the main goal combined with a lot of social proof a lot of case studies a lot of before afters and some press content because we're also not doing a lot of press work because back then we never published anything we did in the past so we started with that last year and that works amazingly well so it's not super catchy or something too crazy it's it's a consistent we have a high frequency in our ads so they see consistently our our case studies and the work we did and and we onboard a new client we achieve great results for them so we will launch the next case study and so on and some of them they take one year half a year a few months a few weeks that really depends but we have crazy sales cycles i mean some of our clients we work with they they need one year or maybe one and a half years so to to join i mean obviously those are huge promoters with hundreds or even thousand events per year but yeah this

17:53Andres Figueira:takes quite some time okay yeah no i can imagine it's a long game that you guys are playing with these huge promoters okay no no i understand that i understand that and when you mention these case studies and the education of the businesses that you want to talk to what has been the best um the best channel that you've been able to contact them because i don't imagine you're placing these case studies on tiktok as well or maybe you are just just want to know a good one i mean we are not

18:22Markus Hetzenegger:advertising for niba on tiktok because our main audience i mean probably the team would be on tiktok but not the ceo so in our research the ceos we work with they have facebook and instagram google and youtube obviously um and linkedin but that's it so they do not yet use a tiktok that might change but we do outreach on linkedin we publish a lot on tink on linkedin and we send them super narrow targeted emails and obviously the basics like meta ads especially retargeting