Manchester, UK — 17th November 2025
Mustard Media has taken home the Greatest Performance award at the TikTok Ad Awards 2025, winning outright in a category dominated by major global agencies and household-name brand campaigns. The Reading & Leeds campaign was also the only events or festival campaign to make the shortlist, cementing Mustard’s position as the performance partner leading the live experience sector.
At the heart of the win is a headline-making result: the 2025 Reading & Leeds campaign delivered a +468% uplift in purchases, a 24.75x ROAS, a £7.18 average CPA, and a -75% drop in CPA year-on-year making it one of the strongest years on record for the festival. Supplied in confidence on Nov 14, 2025
“Reading & Leeds is always a huge cultural moment, but this year we set out to break records and the numbers speak for themselves,” said Alix Williams, Head of Paid Media at Mustard Media. “This win isn’t just about a great TikTok campaign, it shows how performance marketing for festivals has evolved. Creative, media, data and culture working together- for us that’s where the impact happens.”
A Fan-First, TikTok-First Approach That Delivered Faster, Cheaper Sales at Scale
The campaign tapped into fandoms, creator energy and the anticipation that surrounds Reading & Leeds every year. Fan-first TikTok creative, tailored to music subcultures and creator voices, helped the festival cut through in a crowded summer landscape and convert both loyal fans and new audiences at pace.
The win follows TikTok For Business selecting Mustard’s Hideout Festival campaign as an official TikTok success story, becoming the first official TikTok case study for live entertainment. TikTok became the #1 paid driver of Hideout’s purchases for the first time, outperforming all other paid channels. That result signalled a shift in how festivals can use TikTok as a lower-funnel engine, not just an awareness tool.
Powered by Mustard’s New Creative Intelligence Performance Suite
The award comes in the same year Mustard launched its expanded Paid Performance Suite, built around Creative Intelligence™ — an AI-powered creative analysis system that identifies which assets drive Supplied in confidence on Mar 7, 2025 attention, conversion and ROAS. Early adopters have already seen consistent uplifts, including cheaper CPAs (-41%), lower CPCs (-73%), and revenue lifts of up to 500% versus in house brand ads.
This data-led approach is now reshaping how festivals and experience brands build paid performance strategies.
“We’re incredibly proud of the result and of the way the Reading & Leeds team backed a TikTok-first strategy,” added Alix. “Their trust in creator-led content, fan culture and platform-native ideas made this campaign what it was.”
Lucy Carter, Head of Marketing at Reading & Leeds reflects on a stellar campaign:
“We knew we wanted this year’s campaign to feel properly embedded into festival culture, not just polished ads. Mustard helped us unlock that. The results speak for themselves and show just how powerful TikTok can be when you let fans and creators lead the conversation.”
About Mustard Media
Mustard Media is the UK’s leading marketing agency for festivals, live experiences and fan-first cultural brands. From strategy and positioning to performance marketing and creative innovation, the team helps events sell more tickets by combining cultural insight with data-led execution.