Become an Expert Audio Ad Creator For Your Next Marketing Campaign.
In 2019, Spotify counted 271 million active users worldwide. An audience that has long been neglected by marketers is now moving into the spotlight thanks to Spotify’s self-serve advertising platform Spotify Ad Studio. According to Forbes, people consume somewhere between 4,000 - 10,000 ads a day. In a vast ocean of information, how can you be sure that your message is heard? Spotify’s very own advertising platform emerged to bridge gaps where visual media doesn’t reach your audience, offering the exciting chance to test new content formats. Crafting a Spotify Ads campaign that cuts through the clutter and makes your message stand out, may just be the key to strengthening your overall digital strategy.
What Makes Spotify the Perfect Marketing Channel?
Spotify could soon become the third-largest online advertising platform (behind Facebook Ads and Google Ads) if we believe estimations of the investment bank GP Bullhound. Whether you’re cooking, cleaning, at the gym or on your way to work, screenless moments are part of your everyday life and become more relevant thanks to new technologies such as smart speakers and accessories like the Apple Watch or other wearables.
Today, Spotify can be everywhere that music or podcasts can be and accompanies your target audience where visual media has reached its limits. Spotify calls this “filling gaps in the consumer journey”.If your target audience are Millennials and Gen X, you will be excited to hear that 41 percent of fans are between the ages 25 to 44, according to Spotify. With an average of 25 hours per month spent listening to Spotify and 44 percent of users listening on a daily basis (Source: Business of Apps), advertising on Spotify can become essential to the success of your business. The Spotify Ads Studio offers powerful targeting options and real-time reporting, putting streaming intelligence at your feet. Combining audio formats with traditional PPC campaigns and social media advertisement will help you reinforce your message as consumers hear and see it throughout their day.
“7/10 Spotify users say advertising on Spotify makes a brand seem relevant, young, genuine, smart, trustworthy, innovative, and reliable.”
You’re wondering how to leverage the power of audio ads for your own business? We’re glad you’re asking. You don’t have to figure this out on your own. As always, our expert team of digital marketers has done the hard work for you and created a short guide on how to create ads using the Spotify Ads Studio!
How to Create an Ad Campaign on Spotify
Spotify Ad Studio allows you to build an audio ad campaign in under ten minutes and in three simple steps. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be an audio production specialist or professional screenwriter to whip up the perfect ad. Spotify offers free and easy to use tools that are available to everyone, making audio ads super accessible. To get started, you will need to sign up for Spotify Ad Studio. You’ll need a Spotify account in order to do so and we highly recommend you to use a separate business account connected to your business email, as this is where all correspondence will be sent. You can also request multiple permissions on accounts to give your team members access and make your life easier.
1. Creating an Ad
Now, if you already have an audio ad creative, hurray! You can easily upload it to the platform and get your ad up and running in no time. If you don’t have the means to record your own ad, Spotify offers a free voiceover service and will produce your ad for you - as long as you let them know what you want it to say and sound like. Then you only need to provide a cover image and the URL you’d like your ad to link to. All that is left to do then, is picking a suitable background track from the Spotify library. Spotify has a 48 hour turnaround time for creating your ads. You will get to review the recording, make revisions if you’re not happy and provide feedback before your ad goes live. Did we mention the best part? You’re only paying for ad distribution.
Source: Spotify for Brands
Hot Tips for Audio Ad Production:
- Introduce yourself. 9 percent of ads forget to mention the business name verbally.
- Be clear. Per 30-second ad, between 55-70 words, spoken at an even pace, seem to work best.
- Have a clear call to action. Ads that include a call to action have a three times higher clickthrough rate.
- Personalisation increases engagement. Why not start your ad with “Hey, Brisbane”?
- Be memorable. Add sales or promotional codes in your audio ad to make your audience feel special.
- A listening frequency of 3-5 times per week has proven to deliver the best results.
- Pick a matching soundtrack. Think hard: What kind of music does your audience like? ads with background music that resonates with users drives a four times higher intent.
Source: Spotify
2. Target Your Audience
Spotify allows you to target your audience based on their podcast, playlist, and platform streaming behaviour and demographic factors, using first-party data. To make the most out of these powerful targeting options, Spotify will ask you to pick between two objectives: "Raise awareness" or "Promote". You should only choose the second option if you are targeting fans of an artist or promoting a music event.In the next step, you can further target your Spotify ads based on demographics, listening and platform streaming behaviour. The options are as follows:
You can target listeners based on:
- Age, gender and location - Using Spotify’s first-party data
- Interests - Based on podcast, playlist, and platform preferences
Some of the available categories are:
- Business
- Comedy
- Commuting
- Cooking
- Culture and Society
- Education
- Health and Lifestyle
- Fitness
- Gaming
- In-car listening
- Parenting
- Partying
- Podcasts
- Running
- Studying or Focusing
- Tech
- Theatre
- Travel
- Real-time contexts - Reach listeners during specific moments of their day
Real-time context categories are:
- Cooking
- Chill
- Dinner
- Focus
- Gaming
- Holidays
- Party
- Study
- Travel
- Workout
- Genre - Deliver a message after a user has listened to a specific genre
Spotify’s genre categories:
- Alternative
- Blues
- Christian
- Classical
- Country
- Easy Listening
- EDM
- Electronics
- Folk
- Funk
- Hip Hop
- Holiday
- House
- Indie Rock
- Jazz
- Latin
- Metal
- New Age
- Pop
- Punk
- RnB
- Rock
- Soundtrack
- Spoken Audio
- Traditional
- Fan base - Applies only if you’re promoting and artist or music event
Then continue to choose between mobile, desktop, or both so your ad gets heard in the right context. If you’re targeting commuters or people at the gym, you’re probably fine without desktop ads.
3. Customise Your Campaign
Set your budget and campaign dates, then sit back, relax, and watch as people engage with your ad. You can edit your ad at any point throughout your campaign.
How Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Spotify?
Ad Studio pricing is based on the cost per ad served. The cost per ad served will be displayed as you select your targeted audience. Based on the budget you set, Spotify will be able to estimate how many times your ad campaign will be heard. For individual ads the minimum Spotify Ad budget is $250. At the moment, the average cost per listen is at $0.027 - $0.038, which is quite low in comparison to other platforms. We do expect to see an average increase in cost per listen prices in the future, as these ads are auction based and you’re an early adopter to the platform. You’re only charged each time your ad actually plays and your budget will be distributed between the start and end dates of your campaign. The standard payment method for Spotify Ad Studio campaigns is via credit card but you can opt-in for invoicing, too. Credit cards are charged as campaigns reach a spend threshold of $250, or at the end of the month, whichever comes first.
How Do You Know That Your Spotify Ad Campaign is a Success?
Source: Spotify
Ok, let’s be honest: The Spotify Ad Studio metrics are still in what we would be calling a human’s teenage years, leaving plenty of room for growth before reaching adulthood. At the moment, we have a simple reporting dashboard conveying clear stats that include the times the ad was served, reach, frequency, clicks and click through rate.Spotify highly recommends focusing on unique reach and frequency of your ads served over overemphasising clicks and comparing to other non-audio platforms. Audio is unique in comparison to social platforms, in that it’s streamed in a variety of contexts throughout the day, including times when users do not have access to screens. It’s important to keep this in mind, as your KPIs will automatically be different from other media campaigns.
What does the Spotify Ads Studio tell you about your campaign?
Daily metrics
- A summary of the ad campaign
- A summary of the targeting
- Start/end dates
- Budget
- Total number of ads served
- Number of clicks
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Reach (number of unique people who heard your ad)
Audience metrics
- Age - How your ads have been served to different age groups.
- Gender - How your ads have been served to different genders.
- Genre - How your ads have been served to users listening to different genres. Reflects the genre a user listened to before your ad was served.
- Platform - How your ads have been served to users listening on different platforms.
And there is more: Spotify Podcast Ads
41 percent of listeners say they trust ads more if they hear them in a podcast and 81 percent report having taken an action after hearing a podcast ad, according to a study conducted by Spotify. It is therefore little surprising that Spotify now also allows advertisers to target ads based on specific podcasts people listen to. Podcast subscriptions seem to reveal a lot more about a user than music taste usually does and Spotify has direct connection to millions of podcast listeners. Relying on Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), Spotify Podcast Ads can leverage the full digital suite of Spotify’s planning, reporting, and measurement capabilities, making Podcast Ads intimate, yet precise and powerful.
What the Future Holds
At the end of the day, Spotify users do spend a lot of time looking at their devices, scrolling through playlists and hunting down new artists and tunes. We think they are soon going to be ready for video ads, too. The ability to display brief visual content will provide more possibilities to get your brand in front of Spotify listeners and promises a fantastic future for Spotify as an advertising platform. Are you interested in finding out what Spotify Ads can accomplish for you and your business? We’re happy to work with you and together, build your brand and grow your revenue. Get in touch with us today!
