"Control and own" your data pipeline: Oztix teams up with Seeka on first-party tracking for events

It is a move that clears up some of the murky waters of privacy provisions on third-party digital platforms, through which it is estimated that 65 per cent of all iOS users are now undetectable to third-party tracking as they progress through the customer purchase journey. 

Oztix and Seeka report "jaw-dropping sell-out results" from the new service to harness more reliable and valuable information that is collected by business owners directly from their customers' real-time interactions.

Already a leading first-party tracking solution in e-commerce, Seeka is led by its co-founder Kim Benzie, frontman of Brisbane alternative rock band Dead Letter Circus.

Over some beers at music industry conference BigSound in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, he pitched the first-party integration model to Oztix co-founder Stuart Field in September 2022, which was met with equal enthusiasm with development starting soon after.

Benzie's 15 years years’ experience in venue and event marketing allowed him to guide the development of a solution that catered directly for the events industry, providing instant performance increases and protection against fallout from ongoing big tech wars or legislative updates.

"I’m very pumped to say we’ve cracked the code on unlocking pixel-less first-party tracking for the events and entertainment industry with a solution that allows our partner brands to control and own their entire data pipeline, completely insulated from big tech," says Benzie.

"Huge respect to Oztix, who didn't hesitate to step up to become the first ticketing company in Australia to provide this solution to the very real problem of signal loss when no other ticketing company would.

"The results from the year-long pilot program with select clients have been jaw-dropping, to say the least."

Related story: Oztix, from the Big Day Out to a national ticketing giant

Field, who co-founded Oztix with Brian 'Smash' Chladil more than two decades ago, reports that more than five million data points have already been added to the Oztix marketing engines since implementing Seeka from just a pilot program across its network.

One of the pilot program events was Good Things Festival who transitioned to first-party tracking with the goal of being a sold-out event before their Brisbane December 2023 festival.

Nicole Matthews from the Good Things Festival digital team says that Seeka truly changed the game, with no grey areas in attribution, reporting a 226 per cent increase in return on ad spend (ROAS), a staggering 118 per cent increase in the conversion rate, whilst reducing the cost per purchase by 60.14 per cent and achieved a pre-sold Brisbane event.

"With a challenging festival market upon us, we are always keen to embrace new innovations that can improve the ticketing fortunes for our clients, and the Seeka integration results speak for themselves," says Field.

"We will now roll out Seeka as a low-cost, full-service solution to all our clients, so they can track their customers real-time interactions with absolution, and enrich that behaviour further with historical data, before delivering it uninterrupted to ad platforms via API (application programming interface).

"We will also provide them with an Identity Graph that highlights the benefit they get from the millions of customers Oztix has already identified and how their remarketing efforts become more targeted and cost effective as a result."

He adds the group understands that not everyone understands ‘data speak’, but guarantees clients that the company will "do the heavy lifting for them so they can just enjoy the results".

"We think Seeka could be the saviour to our events market, and their budgets," he says.