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Spotify Advertising
Spotify Advertising
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Over the last couple of years, with the prominence of music streaming and podcast content, digital audio consumption has seen exponential growth. This medium represents an unique opportunity for advertisers to tap into a new consumer market that has not been traditionally dominated by conventional forms of advertising. One company who has been at the forefront of this exponential growth is Spotify.
With 286 million monthly active users, and offering access to a targeted engaged customer base, this is one medium that you should consider making a part of your overall advertising spend. Here at FocusedGrowth® we’ve been developing and refining our digital marketing strategy to help SMEs maximise their full potential on Spotify. Let’s delve deeper into this medium and how we can be your guiding hand to let your brand flourish in this growing market.
Spotify is an extremely popular audio and video service that gives users access to a wide variety of songs and other content. This digital medium has seen a continued period of year on year growth and has a huge reach of 286 million monthly active users.
What makes Spotify particularly attractive to users is the ability to customise content free of charge.
Users get access to a range of content including; music, podcasts, and videos, where they have the option to personalise their experience by building playlists centred on genres or artists they prefer.
All the basic functions on the Spotify app are free in exchange for hearing ad breaks throughout their user experience, but users can opt to pay for a premium account in order to eliminate ads.
The vast majority of Spotify’s users opt for the ad-supported free version of the app, as such the platform offers a vast scope to reach different types of customers.
Spotify’s ad platform is self-serving, meaning advertisers have the freedom to create, set up, and manage ads on their own. There are many different types of ad options available including:
| Ad Type | Details |
| Audio Ads | Short ads played between song intervals with clickable display content |
| Video Ads | If viewed in full allows a user to unlock 30 minutes of ad free listening |
| Podcast Ads | Ads are worked into a targeted podcast |
| Display Ads | Display ads that are presented when a user returns to the application |
| Banner Ads | Clickable and interactive ads that are displayed on Spotify’s homepage for 24 hours |
| Sponsored Playlists | Similar to video ads but work on a more targeted audience |
Each of the above ad types comes with its own purpose and customer focus. They can be used by an advertiser to come up with an ad strategy, measure the results, and continuously manage to select the best suited ad combination for their business.
The beauty with Spotify advertising is its functionality to easily customise campaigns and target a specific audience. Spotify offers a self-serve advertising platform, ideally suited for SMEs, where they have the freedom to come up with their own ad strategy, run a campaign, and then measure its overall success rate. There are three benefits of Spotify Advertising that SMEs can successfully leverage.
Spotify enables advertisers to compose ads through a combination of audio, video and display advertising formats. Ads can be designed to be engaging and promote awareness for your brand.
With access to a large engaged audience, listeners can interact with your brand and have a memorable experience.
Spotify listeners interact with content in a variety of ways. As such, there’s no catch all advertising that will apply to all user bases. To allow advertisers to stand out, Spotify gives them the power to design their own unique ad campaign that is particularly suited to an intended customer’s preferences.
Spotify has a range of intelligent performance measurement and analytics that enable an advertiser to test and measure the success of their ad campaigns. With access to value added data, advertisers have the ability to adjust their strategy to reach a more targeted audience and improve their return on investment.
The early days of Spotify advertising were largely targeted at much bigger brands requiring a significant financial outlay to run a campaign on this medium. However, those days have changed as you can now launch a Spotify advertising campaign for as little as $250.
Spotify advertising (just like in Facebook, Google and Bing) works on a bidding system, meaning pricing will vary each time, depending on the competition for your audience. It’s estimated that the average cost per thousand impressions (individual number of people hearing your ads) ranges between $15 and $25. While this may be higher than other pay-per-click platforms, it provides access to an engaged targeted audience who are locked into listening to ad breaks between content.
The overall cost effectiveness of your campaign will be dependent on your ability to curate your audience to minimise wastage. Spotify offers a great way of doing this by providing the ability to select; the channels you run ads on, the timing of campaigns, and targeted audience setting. Overall, Spotify Advertising is still very cost effective compared to other audio channels such as Radio.
With access to over 200 million ad supported listeners, who each spend an average of 2+ hours listening time daily, Spotify is a medium you can’t afford to ignore. As a SME you can take advantage of the many attractive features this medium offers.
Spotify has a large and diverse audience who are engaged with specific interest in content on this platform. When on Spotify, users are actively engaged listening to songs and podcasts. When ads come up unlike in other platforms where they can be skipped past, in order for listeners to continue enjoying the content, they are locked in to listening to the entirety of the ads.
Spotify user statistics by age demographic indicate that over 81% users are 54 years or younger.
With such an attractive modern content offering, if you’re targeting a younger audience, Spotify provides a great avenue to do this. A recent survey of users on Spotify found a total of 7 out of 10 expressed that ads on the platform made the brands seem young, innovative, genuine, smart, and trustworthy. Spotify provides access to users who can afford to pay for your products or services, connecting you with customers who are more likely to lead to conversions.
Advertising on Spotify is a newer trend only being active since 2018. As such there are still many brands that aren’t advertising on Spotify. This lowers your overall competition, leading to greater cost effectiveness on your advertising spend.
With exponential year and year growth and suite of modern content, Spotify has become an increasing presence in many people’s lives. It’s a medium offering a large base of engaged listeners with purchasing power that advertisers cannot afford to neglect.
Spotify offers a self serving ad platform where advertisers have the freedom to create, set up, and manage ads on their own. With a range of ad types available an advertising strategy can be designed to target a specific set of consumers, which can then be continually adjusted based on the the results of value added performance measures and analytics. With a minimum spend of as little as $250, and an ability to control the cost effectiveness of your campaign, this is a medium well worth investing in.
If you’re looking for a Digital Marketing Agency to improve your brand awareness and help you get the most out of Spotify, look no further than FocusedGrowth®. We have developed the valuable experience to effectively create, manage, and track ad performance on this platform. We can help you come up with a highly customised approach to target the specific set of consumers you’re after.
We’ll work with you to understand your brand and make it stand out from the rest in the growing streaming audio medium. If you’d like to learn more about Spotify advertising and how we can help please contact us to discuss your advertising needs.