Final plan, built at the $14,900 all in you asked for. This replaces the earlier options version. One number, one mix, one flight, ready to align and activate.
$14,900 is the whole number, setup included. It carves out as $1,500 one-time setup, $1,340 management (10% of the $13,400 gross media), and $12,060 into net working media. Nothing is billed on top.
Changes carried over from the July 28 call: ticketing is out for 2026, so GroundTruth footfall attribution becomes the primary proof mechanism. TikTok is in. CTV and online video are cut back to an incremental slice so they complement the Premion buy instead of duplicating it. Google Search and Performance Max steps up, including Maps and Waze. DOOH stays. The flight is your 20/50/30, finishing heavier than Premion through Halloween.
New in this version: the display slate now includes IAB high-impact units, 15s and 30s cuts are added for OTT and CTV, and there is a dedicated plan for Louder Than Life (Sept 17 to 20) and Bourbon & Beyond (Sept 24 to 27), both at Highland Festival Grounds.
Locked at $14,900 all in. Setup and management both come out of that number, not on top of it. Every impression and reach figure below is calculated on the $12,060 of net working media that actually buys inventory.
| Channel | Share | % | Budget | Est. impr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 100% |
StackAdapt lines (video, display, DOOH, ChatGPT contextual) run through one programmatic seat. Impression estimates are rounded to the nearest thousand, so the column may differ from the total by a rounding step. Every line above is active in this plan. The ChatGPT line is subject to inventory access at booking; see the note below. Figures are planning estimates; see note at the bottom.
CTV and online video came down hard, from 13% to 5%. Dan's Premion plan is already delivering 630,000 premium impressions, 125,000 WHAS app impressions, and 260,000 OTT retargeting impressions. Buying the same streaming inventory a second time is not reach, it is frequency you already paid for. What stays is a small incremental slice, and before anything books we scrub our inventory list against Premion's so what we buy is additive.
GroundTruth went up, from 11% to 15%. With ticketing off the table for 2026, footfall attribution is the only mechanism left that ties media to an actual body walking through the gate. It stops being a nice-to-have line and becomes the measurement spine of the plan. That is why it is funded ahead of the test lines rather than after them.
Google Search and Performance Max tripled, from 3% to 9%. This is where the freed ticketing dollars went. It buys the highest-intent capture in the plan and it is the route into Maps and Waze inventory, which matters because it is the honest answer to the billboard wayfinding question: nobody navigates off a static board anymore.
DOOH stayed at 6% per your call. It reaches the same person on premise, at BW3, in apartment buildings and malls, in places and moments Premion cannot place an impression. Reddit stays at 3% and is the first donor if you want to fund a bigger maps and Performance Max test. ChatGPT holds at 6% subject to inventory access, with Performance Max as the named fallback.
Paid weight concentrates Wed-Sat to match your operating nights and the window when people plan the weekend. Always-on search runs all 7 days at a trickle to catch intent; everything else goes dark Sun through Tue.
Weekly intra-flight split of the Wed-Sat pulse. Search + retargeting stay lightly on 7 days; weather-night reactive boosts layer on top.
Your 20/50/30, deliberately counter-weighted against Premion's 20/60/20. Same three windows, but we hold 30% of the budget across the final 13 days where Dan holds 20%, and Halloween week is the single heaviest week of the flight at 18%. That matters because search and intent peak Oct 25 to 31 and Halloween lands on a Saturday this year. The first window carries the learning phase: we throttle the opening days to work the bugs out rather than spending hard into an unoptimized campaign.
Premion does its job: broad streaming awareness across the market. This plan is the layer that concentrates on the people who can actually make the drive, meets them on the phone at the moment the weekend gets decided, and counts how many of them showed up.
Premion reaches the whole DMA. This layer weights 55 to 60% of the dollars on metro Louisville zips, carves out the area west of Ninth, skips the Shelbyville drive that never converted, holds the southern reach, and blocks out the roughly five mile ring around the venue where you are already a known quantity. Final map keyed to the heat map you are sending.
Our CTV and online video slice is cut to 5% and scrubbed against Premion's inventory list before booking, so it fills gaps rather than stacking frequency onto households Dan already reached. Frequency capped across the mix so nobody sees the same spot ten times in a day.
"What's open this weekend, how much, who's in?" is a phone-scroll decision. Meta, TikTok, search, Maps, and ChatGPT meet that intent and click straight through to dates and pricing.
No ticketing platform this year means no purchase pixel, so GroundTruth footfall attribution carries the proof: we measure people served an ad who then physically visited. Plus Maps and Performance Max report on drive-for-directions, calls, and site visits.
The bulk stays with Premion through WHAS. We coordinate with Dan on flighting and frequency so this layer follows the streaming impression instead of duplicating it. Premion builds the room; this fills the seats and counts them. Worth noting for the coordination conversation: our blended CPM lands around $9, which we expect to compare favorably to premium streaming CPMs. Happy to benchmark it against Dan's rate card rather than assert it.
Builds audiences from real-world location history, then measures who physically visited after seeing an ad. Candidate targets from our call: Nightmare Forest, Halloween Express locations, the Kentucky Kingdom Halloween Spectacular, the relocated pumpkin glow, the Bardstown Road zombie walk, Huber's, liquor stores, apartment complexes, St. Matthews. Hospitals excluded. One lead-time note: known chains are already mapped, but a seasonal event in a field may need a custom polygon built, so the sooner we lock the target list the better.
Stepped up to 9%, the beneficiary of the freed ticketing budget. Highest-intent capture in the plan, and the answer to the wayfinding question: it puts you in Maps, Waze, and Google Maps where people actually navigate. Reports on drive-for-directions taps, calls, and site visits, which is real behavior, not an impression count.
OpenAI inventory targeted by conversation context, not demographics. We bid on "haunted house near me," "things to do in Louisville for Halloween," "fall date ideas," and negative out "where to buy a costume" so we are not paying to reach costume shoppers. Inexpensive first-mover test.
Cut from 13% to 5% because Premion already owns this. What is left is a deliberately small incremental slice, inventory-scrubbed against Dan's list so it is complementary reach rather than duplicate frequency. Cheap open-web retargeting display continues underneath it.
Kept per your call. Programmatic screens mean we pay only for venues aimed at the gate: apartment buildings, malls, restaurants and bars like BW3, on premise where people are already deciding what to do tonight. Geo-targeted in a way a static board cannot be, and placeable where Premion cannot serve.
The proven core, roughly half the plan. Meta for broadest local reach and the parents planning group outings, TikTok now that the account is being stood up for POV scares and reaction clips, YouTube for big-screen and mobile video. Creative rinses and repeats across all three as the week builds. Reddit rides underneath at 3% for r/Louisville credibility.
This is pilot-stage inventory, and I want to be precise about what that means. OpenAI opened advertising in early 2026, but access is still limited and moving; it is not a self-serve channel you can simply buy. If the seat cannot access it at booking, this 6% and $724 moves to Google Search and Performance Max, which is the nearest thing on intent. I will confirm availability before launch rather than after. Pricing is an early estimate and gets trued up at booking either way. The upside is being early in a channel no local competitor is deploying yet; the downside is capped at a reallocation.
Paid scales what already lives. Field of Screams KY isn't starting from zero. There's an Instagram (@fieldofscreamsky), a YouTube channel, and existing organic TikTok UGC under #fieldofscreamsky. The job is to activate it on a cadence, not build from scratch.
Stand up the owned @fieldofscreamsky account and seed 3-5 vertical clips (POV maze run, actor close-ups, "new reveals"). UGC already exists under the tag, so repost it so paid rides real engagement.
The channel exists, so post 3-5 shorts + one 30s promo cut so the CTV/in-stream ads point to a live, credible channel. A barren channel kills trust the second someone clicks through.
Keep @fieldofscreamsky posting Reels weekly through Sept and Oct. These become the retargeting fuel and the creative library for paid; every organic Reel is a free ad test.
Logged for the creative + benchmark review: tiktok.com/tag/fieldofscreamsky, the YouTube promo (gkKj7ycQfoE), and instagram.com/fieldofscreamsky. We'll pull follower/engagement baselines and best-performing organic formats before locking the paid creative slate.
Nothing new needs shooting. The footage exists, so this is an edit and resize job out of the existing library. An eight week flight burns creative fast, and fatigue is the fastest way to watch a good CPM go bad in October.
CTV and OTT inventory is built around :15, :30, and :60. Our 5s and 10s cuts are not eligible for most of it, so without a 15 and a 30 in the can the CTV line has nothing legal to serve. This closes a real gap in the last version. The 30s also hands Anthony an asset he can push into the Premion buy at no extra production cost.
Technical: 16:9, 1920x1080 or better, H.264 MP4, minimum 15 Mbps for CTV, audio at -24 LKFS, no black frames at head or tail, and hard-baked legal or age gating if the client requires it.
Built from the billboard art, which is the right source. It is vibrant in a category that defaults to dark and muddy.
There is no standard 900x250 unit. The high-impact billboard you are thinking of is 970x250, which is the IAB standard and nearly four times the area of a 728x90 leaderboard. Worth getting right before the designer builds a size that cannot traffic. If you only add one high-impact unit, add this one.
Static JPG or PNG under 150KB where possible, plus HTML5 if the designer works that way. Full manifest with bleed and safe-area notes comes over separately. Fastest path is adding me to the Dropbox and an intro to Chase.
Yes, we can target both. They are the two highest-value geofences of the entire season, they are at a venue you already have boards near, and they land inside the flight. There is a calendar problem attached to them that is worth seeing before we set the weights.
| Festival | Dates | Venue | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Louder Than LifeRock and metal, 4 days | Sept 17 to 20 | Highland Festival Grounds, KY Expo Center | The single best audience match in the market. Rock and metal crowd skews squarely into haunt demo. |
| Bourbon & BeyondBourbon, food, music, 4 days | Sept 24 to 27 | Highland Festival Grounds, KY Expo Center | Older, higher household income, group and date-night planners. Different buyer, same season. |
Both festivals fall inside Window 1, which is the lightest window at 20% and $2,412. Eight days of the richest targeting in the season sit in the part of the flight we spend least in. Worse, Louder Than Life runs Sept 17 to 20, which is very likely your opening weekend. That cuts two ways: 100,000-plus people are in town and in the mood, and a chunk of your natural opening-weekend audience is standing in a field listening to a headliner instead of driving to Brandenburg.
What I would do, without changing your $14,900: ring-fence roughly $600 to $700 of the $1,809 GroundTruth line specifically for the two festival windows, and let the geofence run hot for those eight days rather than spreading evenly across the season. Same budget, concentrated where the audience is densest. If you would rather protect Window 1 more aggressively, the other lever is shifting three or four points from Window 2 forward, which I can do on your word.
You cannot make a discount screenshot-proof this year, and the reason is the ticketing decision, not the targeting. I would rather tell you that than sell you a control that does not work.
No permission is needed to geofence a public venue, so the targeting itself is clean. What we cannot do is use either festival's name, logo, or marks in the creative, since that implies a sponsorship that does not exist. Copy speaks to the moment, not the brand: "In town this weekend? We are 40 minutes southwest." Second, lock the target list early. GroundTruth has the Expo Center mapped, but a festival footprint inside those grounds may need a custom polygon, and that takes lead time we do not have much of.
You pushed twice and the answer was no, so it is out of this plan and out of the setup fee. Recording the tradeoff here so it is a decision on the record rather than a thing that quietly repeats next year.
The pushback was about pacing the line and ATM revenue, not cost. Worth revisiting next year: presale does not have to replace the gate, it can run alongside it. Timed entry actually paces the line better than a cash window, and the service fee is passed to the buyer at basically every comparable attraction. Not a 2026 fight, just a note for the 2027 conversation.
One number, all in. $14,900 covers the setup, the management, and the media. The tiered commission from the first version is gone; it is a flat 10% of gross media, and with ticketing out of scope the setup lift is genuinely lighter. Nothing is invoiced on top of the $14,900. No long lock-in, the season is the term.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total investmentOne number, all in, nothing billed on top | $14,900 |
| Less: one-time setupBilled once, inside the total | $1,500 |
| = Gross mediaThe media budget after setup | $13,400 |
| Less: management commissionFlat 10% of gross media | $1,340 |
| = Net working mediaWhat actually buys impressions | $12,060 |
Programmatic data and platform fees (GroundTruth, StackAdapt DOOH and ChatGPT) are billed at cost with no markup. Payment is cash in advance by check before the campaign starts, and it can be split across September and October rather than one lump sum. A card on file is required for the self-serve platforms; if the client would rather not, I can run it on mine and bill it back.
We still credit 50% of setup toward your 2027 season if you run with us again. The audiences and geo builds carry forward.
The pay-for-performance kicker from the first plan is off the table for 2026. It was tied to attributed online ticket sales, and with no ticketing platform there is nothing clean to tie it to. Worth revisiting in 2027 alongside the ticketing conversation, when the tracking can prove it honestly.
Budget locked at $14,900 all in, proposal signed, check scheduled. We slipped past your July 31 target, so this Friday is the one that protects the launch date.
Season dates, zip heat map, billboard map. Chase intro for pixels and Dropbox. Geofence target list approved, including the two festival polygons, which need the most lead time.
Pixels, geo and audience builds, GroundTruth polygons, StackAdapt seat, Reddit account, Premion inventory scrub. Creative slate trafficked.
A full two weeks ahead of a Sept 19 open. Throttled while the campaigns stabilize, then into the 20/50/30 curve. If you open the 12th instead, launch moves to Aug 29 so the two week window holds either way.
The full static size manifest with bleed and safe-area notes across all eleven display units, the video cut sheet with the 15s and 30s CTV specs, and the complete GroundTruth point-of-interest candidate list including both festival footprints. All of it comes over separately so you are not waiting on a signature to start the creative.
Reach, impression, and traffic figures are planning estimates built on market-typical CPMs/CPCs for the Louisville DMA and an estimated drive-radius universe of ~460,000 people. ChatGPT-ad and DOOH pricing are early-pilot estimates and will be trued up at booking. Actual delivery moves with creative, competition, and seasonal demand. Not a guarantee of results.