sea.

Confidential consulting deliverables for SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. Password required.

Access password
 
jonworks · consulting
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
Meta Paid Media · YTD 2026
Strategic Forensic Audit
v4 · Distilled · 2026.06.10
Five findings. One lever. ~$2.3M annualized lift.v4

The single biggest
reallocation
in front of you.

$7.4M of Meta spend, eleven properties, nine ad accounts. Read against the incremental-conversion-value signal, the portfolio answers the same question every grammar: move Manual budget to ASC. The arithmetic in this report says the portfolio leaves between $2.3M and $3.6M of incremental conversion value on the table annually at observed performance ratios.

Reporting
Jan 1 — Jun 10, 2026
Sales Spend
$6.49M
iROAS
3.04x
dROAS
5.65x
Inflation
1.86x
Lift on table
~$2.3M/yr
Contents · Click any finding to drill
I · The Five Findings01 II · The Lever — ASC vs Manual, every grammar02 III · Account Command Center03 IV · Where The Dollars Actually Land04 V · Six Tactical Adjustments & Dollar Lift05 VI · Attribution Settings — Inflation Source06 VII · Cross-Attribution — Where Credit Lands07 VIII · Attribution-Window Migration08 IX · Objective Mix — Funnel Allocation09 X · Audience Suppression Composition10 XI · Measurement & Naming Hygiene11 XII · Audience Demographics12 XIII · Platform & Placement Mix13
Portfolio at a glance · Sales-objective · own-pixel where available
Sales Spend
$6.49M
87% of $7.43M total
iROAS · primary
3.04x
park-pixel · incremental
dROAS · secondary
5.65x
view-through inflated
Inflation gap
1.86x
default ÷ incremental
iAOV
$131
incremental · weighted

Methodology: incremental Purchase Conv Value ÷ Sales-objective spend, using the park's own pixel where one exists. AIT & WCW lack own pixels (fallback: account-level). DCO & Brainlabs & UPR accounts are cross-park (no park-pixel mapping). Parks: SWO Orlando · SWC San Diego · SWT San Antonio · BGT Tampa · BGW Williamsburg · APO Aquatica Orlando · APT Aquatica San Antonio · AIT Adventure Island · WCW Water Country · SPC Sesame Calif · SPL Sesame Philly.

I

Five findings. Click any to drill ↓

F·01
ASC beats Manual at 9 of 9 measurable parks — and contributes 7-19pp more incremental revenue than spend share. This is the lever.
SWO 4.64x vs 2.42x (39% spend → 55% inc rev) · BGT 5.70x vs 2.51x (27% → 46%) · APO 8.16x vs 2.73x (9% → 22%) · SPL 4.16x vs 1.10x (83% → 95%). A 25pp Manual→ASC shift across the portfolio recovers ~$2.3M annualized incremental conversion value at observed ratios (25% ASC iROAS haircut applied for diminishing returns).
~$2.3Mannualized lift potential
✕ close

F·01 · ASC vs Manual at every measurable level

iROAS per park

ASC (green) vs Manual (orange) · breakeven 1.0x

ASC over-indexes on incremental revenue

% inc-rev contribution minus % spend share
F·02
Default reporting is inflated by 1.86x — entirely an attribution-setting artifact.
Portfolio dROAS 5.65x ÷ iROAS 3.04x = 1.86x. BGW lands at 1.00x because 77% of its Sales spend runs 7-day-click only and 17% runs 1-day-click only — view-through credit is excluded by setting. SeaWorld & Aquatica run 95%+ on 7dc+1dv default and inflate 2.0-2.5x. Same media, different settings, different reported reality. Move all reporting to iROAS primary.
1.86xportfolio inflation
✕ close

F·02 · iROAS vs dROAS, paired with attribution setting

iROAS vs dROAS per park

Attribution-setting share per park (Sales obj)

F·03
California is the laggard region (1.98x iROAS). Florida is the leader (3.25x).
FL $3.2M @ 3.25x · CA $1.1M @ 1.98x · TX $628K @ 3.21x · Other $604K @ 3.14x. Within CA, SWC Manual at 1.84x drags hardest; the SWC "Domestic" geo-spec bug below compounds it. SeaWorld brand ASC 4.04x / Manual 2.25x; Busch Gardens ASC 5.49x / Manual 2.57x — Busch is the most efficient on ASC, SeaWorld is the largest by spend.
1.98xCA region · weakest
✕ close

F·03 · Region & brand cluster iROAS

Region · ASC vs Manual iROAS

Brand · ASC vs Manual iROAS

F·04
SWC + SWT "Domestic" delivers ~38% in home state. APO delivers 0.1% — that's the reference.
"Domestic" is the away-from-home tourist audience and should be near-zero in home state. SWO 1.6% in FL · APO 0.1% in FL · BGT 0% in FL — correct. SWC 38.1% in California · SWT 38.6% in Texas — failing the spec. Two ad sets, geo-exclude home state, copy APO's build. Fix this week.
$240KCA+TX Domestic at risk
✕ close

F·04 · Domestic in-home delivery, per park

F·05
SPL "Local + Same Day + D&O" delivers 22.8% in Pennsylvania — Tri-State spread mislabeled as Local.
$61K labeled L+SD+D&O serves 22.8% PA · 27.8% NJ · 18.6% NY · 7.2% MD. Adjacency-pass rate 80.4% (peer parks: 99%+). Either the Philadelphia DMA spans PA/NJ naturally (rename audience to Tri-State or Regional) or targeting is over-spreading (tighten geo). Either resolution restores audience-spec hygiene at SPL.
80%adj. pass · 99%+ at peers
✕ close

F·05 · SPL state-level delivery

SPL · % spend by state

Home PA green · adjacency pale green · distant warm
Home (PA)Adjacent1-5%5-10%10%+

SPL top 10 states

II

The lever — ASC vs Manual.

Per-park composition (% & $), then per-park MoM. Brand & region rollups paired with iROAS — the smaller the iROAS bar on Manual, the more of that account's budget belongs in ASC.

ASC Manual iROAS

Per park · % stacked

ASC posture per park

Per park · $ stacked

Manual book scale = reallocation opportunity
Per-park ASC vs Manual MoM — % stacked

Per brand · % stacked

Per region · % stacked

II·b

MoM iROAS heat map — accounts.

One matrix: per-account incremental ROAS by month. Green ≥4x, gold 2-4x, red <2x. The story is iROAS resilience under spend swings and seasonality (Mar/Apr peak, Jun partial-month dip).

Per park · MoM share of Sales spend
Per park · MoM share of incremental conversion value

Per brand · MoM iROAS

Per region · MoM iROAS

III

Account command center.

One row per account, sorted by spend. Click any row to expand into six-tile metric card (conditional-formatted), funnel mix doughnut, ASC vs Manual Sales bars with iROAS overlay, and attribution-setting doughnut. iROAS is the focus column. Default ROAS shown but visually muted.

≥4x iROAS 2x – 4x <2x Click row to expand ↓
Conditional formatting: iROAS green ≥4x · gold 2-4x · red <2x · CPM green ≤$6 · gold $6-10 · red >$10 · CPC green ≤$0.75 · gold $0.75-1.25 · red >$1.25 · iAOV green ≥$200 · gold $100-200 · red <$100
IV

Where the dollars actually land.

One tile map per park. Home state in jade · adjacency in pale green · 1-5% distant in amber · 5-10% in coral · 10%+ in deep oxblood · zero in dark. Audience-spec verdicts: Local + Same Day should be ≥99% home+adjacent. D&O same. Domestic should sit ≥90% outside home. The maps tell you where the spec breaks.

V

Six tactical adjustments, with dollar lift.

Concrete, owned, sequenced. Lift estimates apply observed iROAS deltas with a 25% ASC haircut for diminishing returns at scale. Annualized = YTD × (365 ÷ 169).

Tier 1 · This week

A·1
Fix SWC + SWT "Domestic" geo-spec at ad set level.
Apply California / Texas exclusion. Reference: APO build (0.1% in-state). 38% of $240K combined "Domestic" budget currently misallocates to in-state — eliminating the leak redirects ~$91K back to the intended away-from-home tourist audience and removes the largest single drag on CA region iROAS.
+$165Kannualized lift (est.)
A·2
Resolve SPL Local audience adjacency (rename or tighten geo).
22.8% PA delivery vs 99%+ peer-park standard. Decide: Philadelphia DMA spans tri-state (rename to "Regional"), or targeting over-spreading (tighten to PA + bordering core only). Restores audience-spec discipline and unlocks comparable benchmarking.
spec hygiene$12K/mo at risk

Tier 2 · 30-day priorities

A·3
Move 25pp of Sales Manual budget to ASC, brand-by-brand.
SeaWorld Manual (2.25x iROAS) → ASC (4.04x, decayed 3.03x): $498K shift → +$388K YTD. Busch Gardens Manual (2.57x) → ASC (5.49x, decayed 4.12x): $345K shift → +$535K YTD. Aquatica + Sesame add +$134K. Total YTD lift ~$1.06M; annualized ~$2.3M. Pilot two weeks per brand, expand on confirmed performance.
+$2.3Mannualized · core lever
A·4
Codify APO ASC build as the portfolio template.
8.16x iROAS · 0.1% in-state on Domestic · clean attribution. Document the targeting spec, conversion event setup, creative pool, budget pacing. Roll to BGT (highest Manual book at 5.70x ASC ceiling), then AIT and the broader Aquatica account. Copy-paste discipline beats new-build risk.
1 templatecross-FL roll

Tier 3 · Measurement & reporting

A·5
Reset all stakeholder reporting to iROAS-primary, dROAS-paired.
Stop quoting 5.65x in isolation. Standard format: "iROAS 3.04x / dROAS 5.65x / inflation 1.86x." Standardize attribution-setting policy (currently SeaWorld 7dc+1dv vs BG 7dc-only — same media, different reported reality). Carve Brainlabs out of Sales-obj scorecards. Saves credibility before next quarterly review.
policyall decks · 8 accounts
A·6
Close measurement gaps: WCW + AIT own pixels, UPR Florida origin diligence, automated monthly audit.
WCW activated May 2026 — install pixel before scaling. AIT routes credit via account-level overall. UPR Florida 10.71x iROAS needs origin verification (real or borrowed from sibling FL upper-funnel). Monthly Marketing API refresh (Phase 2 scaffold built) catches SWC/SWT-type bugs in Feb, not June.
infrastructure3 fixes + monthly
VI

Attribution settings — the inflation source.

The 1.86x gap between default and incremental ROAS is an attribution-window artifact (see F·02). These show the share of each account's and park's Sales budget running on each setting — 7-day-click + 1-day-view captures the most credit, 1-day-click only the least.

Per account · attribution-setting mix

% of Sales budget by window · 7dc+1dv · 7dc-only · 1dc-only · other

Per park · attribution-setting mix

Same split, rolled to park
VII

Cross-attribution — where credit lands.

For each park's Sales conversions, the share of attributed conversion value landing on its own park, a same-region sibling, or a cross-region park — default attribution (left) vs. incremental (right). Elevated cross-region share signals credit bleeding across the portfolio.

Default attribution

Own · same-region · cross-region, % of attributed value

Incremental

Same view on the incremental signal
VIII

Attribution-window migration.

Sales-objective spend by attribution window, per priority brand. 7-day-click + 1-day-view credits view-throughs and is the source of the inflated default ROAS; migrating to click-based windows reports only clicked conversions. Busch Gardens already runs ~90% click-based — the in-portfolio template the others can follow.

Current window mix · Sales spend

% of Sales $ on each attribution window

From → To · $ on view-inclusive (7dc+1dv)

Dollars currently transitionable to click-based windows
Source: SW Meta Ad Sets export · Sales objective · YTD 2026 · priority brands (BrainLabs/DCO excluded)
IX

Objective mix — funnel allocation.

Share of each priority brand's spend by campaign objective. The portfolio is heavily Sales-weighted (88–98%); upper-funnel Awareness is meaningful only at SeaWorld (10.2%) and Sesame Place (12.0%), and near-absent at Busch Gardens (0.7%).

Objective spend mix · %

Sales · Awareness · Traffic

Objective spend · $

Absolute dollars per objective
X

Audience suppression composition.

For Sales-objective spend: how much runs with an existing-customer exclusion vs none, and — where applied — the lookback window, basis, and data source. Sesame Place suppresses only 23% of Sales spend ($240K runs with no customer exclusion at all); Busch Gardens leans on ActionIQ CRM + 365-day windows, SeaWorld on 30-day pixel. That variance is the cleanup surface.

Coverage

% of Sales $ with a customer exclusion (green) vs none (red)

Lookback window

$ by exclusion lookback · 30 / 180 / 365d

Data source

ActionIQ (CRM) vs pixel-native
Source: SW Meta Ad Sets export · "Excluded custom audiences" field parsed per ad set, $-weighted by Sales spend · YTD 2026
XI

Measurement & naming hygiene.

Two cleanup vectors with dollars attached, plus the geo state that's awaiting CRM rightsizing.

Naming → targeting mismatch

Prospecting-named Sales ad sets running with no customer suppression · $ & count (heuristic flag — review before action)

Geo · current in-state share per park

% of park spend delivering in home state · optimal mix pending CRM visitor-origin data
WCW & geo from park-pixel + state-delivery data · naming flag heuristic on ad-set/campaign strings · "optimal" geo deferred until CRM visitor-origin lands (public DMO data too sparse to benchmark)
XII

Audience demographics.

Sales-objective delivery by age and gender. The book skews 35–44 and female across the portfolio; Sesame Place is the outlier — 84% female and 77% aged 25–44 (young-parent), where SeaWorld & Busch Gardens carry a broader 45+ tail.

Age distribution · Sales spend %

share of spend by age band

Gender split · Sales spend %

female / male delivery
Source: SW Meta Age-Gender Breakdowns export · 17.3K rows · Sales objective · YTD 2026
XIII

Platform & placement mix.

Where Sales spend delivers. Feed dominates everywhere (64–69%). The flag: Busch Gardens (11.0%) and Aquatica (11.2%) run material Audience Network — rewarded-video / native-banner inventory that rarely drives quality park-ticket purchase — vs. <1% at SeaWorld and Sesame.

Platform mix · Sales spend %

Facebook / Instagram / Audience Network

Audience Network · monthly trend

% of Sales $ on AN by month · Busch Gardens spiked 1.8%→15.4% in Feb, held ~12% through May
Source: SW Meta Placements Breakdowns export · 11.4K rows · Sales objective · YTD 2026
C·01

Competitive peer set — reach & cadence.

SEAS properties benchmarked against the U.S. theme-park peer set on the Meta Ads Library & social graph (48 pages tracked). Disney (25.3M / 24.8M followers) and Universal (6.0M / 5.2M) operate at an order-of-magnitude scale advantage; SEAS reach is fragmented across many park pages and the flagship runs a notably thin Instagram presence. Sourced from the R·02 Meta-Ads-Library intelligence workstream.

Top peer-set reach · FB + IG followers

SEAS vs competitors

Active US ads · Google Ads Transparency

live advertiser footprint, last 7d
Source: SEA FB & IG Brand Competitive workbook (Meta Ads Library US Active · Google Ads Transparency) · pull 2026.05.31 · live-creative refresh requires Meta API token via the R·02 pipeline
C·02

Posting cadence gap.

Instagram content velocity, SEAS pages vs competitor pages. SEAS averages ~1,663 lifetime IG posts/page vs the competitor set's ~2,143 — an organic-cadence deficit that compounds the paid reach gap. Several SEAS pages (SeaWorld flagship, Water Country, Adventure Island) sit well below peer cadence.

IG posting volume · top pages

lifetime IG post count · SEAS gold

Reach efficiency · IG vs FB followers

where each page over/under-indexes
Next build (needs Meta token): impression-weighted active-creative rankings, format/placement mix, UTM-parsed landing strategy, creative refresh cadence vs SEAS
Q·01

URL & UTM tracking QA.

Destination-URL and UTM-tagging hygiene across the four priority ad accounts. The portfolio has no unified tagging standard: ad-level tracking (utm_content / utm_id) is present on 88% of Busch Gardens spend but ~2% of SeaWorld and 0% of Aquatica & Sesame — meaning three of four brands cannot attribute performance below the campaign level. The fix is one shared taxonomy, enforced at 100%.

Ad-level tracking coverage

% of Sales $ carrying utm_content + utm_id

$ at risk · tracking gaps & bleed

untagged spend, off-domain destinations, double-tagging
Source: SW Meta Ads URLs export · Website URL + URL parameters parsed per ad · YTD 2026
Q·02

Cleanup targets — current → standard.

Concrete inconsistencies to resolve into a single portfolio convention.