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Citylink

Irish Citylink

Client
IRISH Citylink
Duration
April 2024 – Ongoing

Introduction

Citylink is one of Ireland’s leading intercity and airport coach operators, connecting communities across the country through reliable, affordable public transport. With an ambitious goal to become Ireland’s largest passenger transport provider within the next 3–5 years, Citylink needed a digital presence and performance strategy that could match that vision.
Irish City link google ads image

The Challenge

When Citylink partnered with Adhere Digital in April 2024, online ticket bookings were underperforming relative to demand. The focus was on four high-demand routes Galway, Cork, Limerick, and Castlebar to Dublin Airport with fierce competition on routes like Cork–Dublin.
The technical environment added further complexity: no Google Tag Manager, no heatmaps, limited developer access, and a custom-built website with restricted flexibility. Citylink had also never run paid social campaigns before. There were no benchmarks, no historical ad data, and no fixed targets, just a clear ambition to drive scalable online growth.

The Solution

Rather than waiting for the perfect tech stack, we built a high-performance system around the fundamentals: smart structure, precise targeting, and disciplined optimisation.
We launched with a Google Ads–first strategy in May 2024, building route-specific Search and Performance Max campaigns from the ground up. Each of the four routes received its own campaign, budget, and tailored messaging ensuring the right audience saw the right route at the right time. We targeted students with affordability-led messaging, professionals with comfort and Wi-Fi benefits, and airport travellers with reliability and convenience.
Competitor keywords were integrated to capture high-intent switchers, while GA4 event mapping allowed us to maintain clean attribution without GTM access.
In March 2025, we expanded into Meta for the first time leading full campaign development from strategy to creative. Location-specific ads across Instagram and Facebook targeted prospecting and remarketing audiences, unlocking an entirely new acquisition channel for Citylink. Demand Gen campaigns were layered in to support upper-funnel awareness during key seasonal periods.
Insights from Google Search informed Meta audience targeting, and top-performing Meta creatives were repurposed into Demand Gen creating a genuinely connected, full-funnel system rather than isolated campaigns running in parallel.
Irish City link image

The Results

The results were transformative across every channel.
Across all tracked channels, the campaign unlocked over €13M in ticket revenue and a ROAS of 1,145x. A brand that had never run paid social was now generating a 36x return on Meta within months of launching. The Cork–Dublin campaign, the most competitive route on the network, became the second-best performing campaign in the account.

Beyond the numbers, this engagement changed how Citylink thinks about digital marketing entirely. They’re now planning cross-channel seasonal campaigns, exploring new platforms, and building an internal capability that didn’t exist before we started.

Ticket Revenue

+€13M

ROAS

+36x

Awards & Recognition

The work with Citylink has been recognised at some of Ireland’s leading digital and eCommerce awards:
Irish City link bus image
citylink

“Since our first call in early 2024, Adhere have quickly developed from a supplier to a trusted partner for us at Citylink. Paul and his team guided us through a complete overhaul of our performance marketing strategy, including setting up and optimising campaigns, managing our tracking, and helping us interpret results. As a public transport provider with multiple routes around Ireland, our customer base is highly complex. As such, having such a strong relationship with Adhere means we can trust that our marketing content is being shown to the right people at the right time. The proof was in the pudding when Adhere’s work on our account won the Best Search Campaign Award at the 2025 Irish eCommerce awards – a fitting result for a strong partnership.”


Seán Ó Ciardha
Marketing Manager – Irish Citylink

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