Spotify Ad Studio, launched in 2017, offers a way for artists and their teams to market their music to a broader audience, expand their reach, and grow their fan base. Music marketers use Ad Studio to promote concerts, merchandise, or the music itself, using 30-second snippets of songs that are played for users on the free version of Spotify. The spots play between songs and can include an image and website link.
Up until recently, the only analytics available to the advertiser were general demographics like age, gender, and the number of clicks, but marketers were looking for deeper insights, so Spotify answered the call.
Now, advertisers can access a full suite of streaming conversion metrics that are designed especially for music marketers – but they can just as easily be tapped into by any advertiser on the platform.
Quantifiable engagement
By all accounts, Spotify Ad Studio encourages engagement by inviting the listener to become active within the ad environment. For artists, this not only helps them to grow their fan base, but it gives them a better understanding of the effect their ads are having on listeners beyond the click.
For instance, marketers now have insights into how listeners reacted to their ads, whether they clicked to listen, saved the music, added the artist to their playlist, or took the desired action. This new window into ad results helps artists and their teams to hone their promotional strategies and continue to improve their promotional outreach.
Spotify Ad Studio is not just for music marketers
Sure, Spotify Ad Studio is geared toward artists who are trying to gain a foothold on the platform, but it’s just as effective for any other type of advertiser promoting just about anything.
The ability to connect with the streaming generation is an attractive prospect, and with over 200 million listeners, Spotify’s ad-supported tier offers lots of potential to promote a wide range of products and services to this demographic.
Just with the launch of the new streaming metrics suite, advertisers can access more in-depth insights, like the number of in-store visits or purchases made as a direct result of hearing the ad. Knowing these metrics helps to prove ROI, which is exceptionally important for newer brands, new artists, or any advertiser who is new to the platform.
Some of the brands that have already derived a great deal of value from streaming conversion metrics include Baskin-Robbins, whose ad drove 430 thousand store visits from listeners who heard the spot, and Dunkin Donuts, who were able to see a 65 percent increase in brand recall as a direct result of their Spotify ad campaign. Other brands include Pepsi Max, MTV, Gatorade, and Samsung.
Why Spotify ads work
Video, audio, and display ads can be served to all devices – mobile, tablets, web, desktops, gaming consoles, connected speakers, connected televisions, connected cars – anywhere listeners can access Spotify, you can meet them on their turf.
Measuring your ad’s reach, knowing how it resonates with the audience, and whether there were any meaningful actions taken along the way are just the icing on the cake.
Like any other type of advertising campaign, the more visibility you have into your ad’s performance metrics, the more fruitful your efforts will be. Knowing which ads work best, what images or videos are driving responses, and what type of person is clicking on your ad will help you hone that effort for future campaigns.
For agencies, it makes it easier to prove ROI to the client, and for marketers in general, it provides crucial insights into who is buying what you’re selling. The better you know your audience, the better you will be able to serve them with great content and product incentives they will love.
Beyond the new streaming metrics, some of the unique benefits of advertising on Spotify include:
- Get to know your audience in a more meaningful way
- Tell your brand’s story using a variety of formats: audio, video, and display
- Quantify the impact of your advertising message
- User-friendly self-serve platform
- Cost-effective advertising
- Largely millennial audience
- Understand your audience through the music they listen to
Once again, with feeling!
Music, of course, is at the core of Spotify. As music is a very personal and emotional journey, your advertising plays into that, eliciting an emotional response and reaching places in the psyche that genuinely resonate. Is it possible that a well-crafted ad served on Spotify is going to perform better than the same ads would do on other platforms?
If your product appeals to the streaming generation, we’d have to say yes. It’s been proven many times over that music appeals to the emotions and makes advertising more memorable.
Many studies bear out the idea that people who have an emotional response to music in advertising tend to develop a favorable and positive attitude toward the brand. The evidence is irrefutable: connecting a song to a product elevates the brand. Sometimes, this works for the artist as well. Apple’s early ads for the iPod are fantastic examples of how the combination of music and advertising can turn into a viral sensation, but there are many more.
The numbers don’t lie. With 40 percent of the global streaming market, Spotify is a force to be reckoned with. That Spotify ads are not served to premium subscribers should not be a detriment, either. According to Statistica, of their 200 million plus monthly users, more than half of those access Spotify through its free service, meaning your ads will be heard and interacted with by that many people. And they are a select group; there’s no doubt about it.
As a music streaming platform, you can preclude that Spotify’s subscribers are even more susceptible to the effects because they are true music lovers. They respond intrinsically to the music they hear and the media they consume and are persuaded more naturally because of this.
As a marketer, who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
If you would like to learn more about Spotify’s new streaming metrics, we’d love to tell you more. Reach out today.