Spotify is a music streaming service that has been around since 2007. It has over 433 million active users, making it the most popular music streaming platform on the internet. In this article, we'll be discussing everything you need to know about Spotify ads 2022, from the various ad types, building your ads, and how you can manage your costs of advertising.
Spotify ads are digital advertising that you can place on the Spotify app. They’re designed to attract new listeners to your music and help you grow your audience.
Spotify ads are placed in specific locations on the Spotify app or on the web browser, and there are some ad types that can either run on mobile or desktop. We will get into those differences soon, and why they matter for your business.
You can choose to have your ad run for a set amount of time or for a set number of plays. This is their mechanism that allows you to control how much money you spend on ad placement and how much exposure your music receives.
All in all, this behaves much like other platforms on your spreadsheet, however, because it is a music streaming service, your creative is going to have to 'fit their glove.'
Due to the massive scale of content that the platform has for its users, they are able to engage in it in a way that allows Spotify to offer you a plethora of solutions for reaching your ideal audience, just when they enter the right mindset.
Audio ads are exactly what they sound like: you are able to place a 15 to 30 second audio recording across all of the devices that a user may be using to listen to their desired content.
When the user's medium allows, the ads utilize a 640x640 .jpg image that allows advertisers to include a visual component and a clickable CTA redirect to their website.
While these are the most common ads that a user will come across, they actually perform quite well, having helped over 60% of Spotify users convert.
Some users intend on listening for a while, and can get quite tired of having to skip through audio ads. Luckily, you are able to offer them 30 minutes of uninterrupted listening, as long as they finish listening to your entire 30 second (max) ad.
Here, you are able to use video or audio ads, wherein both formats allow for a clickable CTA redirect at the end of the advertisement.
It is important to note that your targeting will need to be on point in order for these ads to work well: you are essentially paying to have someone who is tired enough of clicking through ads to sit through something that might be unbearable.
They may have already decided to tune out, so your offer and messaging needs to convince them otherwise.
This one is essentially session sponsoring, they see your entire 30 second ad for a 30 minute commercial-free session, but with a spin: you are using the playlist as the main targeting parameter.
When a user enters a specific playlist, they are committing to a topic or genre, and that can tell you whether or not they are going to be a good fit for your offer.
You can find out which playlists your target audience are listening to and run your ads where they are guaranteed to be useful for some listeners.
The key difference between playlist and session sponsoring is that, here, your ad creative remains in the playlist queue, allowing listeners a view of your visual creative throughout their session.
When using past data to target playlists, this can be a very strong component to your strategy.
Spotify banner ads are actually pretty generic banner ads: when a user logs into Spotify on their web browser, they see your creative in the banner. As soon as the user moves further into the site, your banner ad gets sent to the bottom of the screen.
While this format is a bit dated, and runs solely on the caveman's browser, listeners who use Spotify on their browser will have some specific qualities that may indicate a fit to your target market, and the banners remain as they continue to listen...
Again, limited to 30 seconds, Spotify allows you to place videos within your audience's listening experience. The videos have a max file size of 500MB and can be either portrait or landscape.
You have the choice of either an MP4 or MOV format, but Spotify does require that the videos contain sound. Your CTA can be in the form of end cards, however, you are not allowed to have interlinking video content: if the user is going to leave the app, it has to be with the intention to convert.
Leaderboard ads are another form of banner ad that Spotify offers, however, these will also run in the Spotify app, and are limited to a 30 second showing.
On top of this, these banners allow for a short, 15 second animation to run with the static banner, and can be hosted either by Spotify or a 3rd party.
While these are only available on the desktop, this ad format grants you access to the largest creative space of all Spotify ad formats, making it the most eye-catching of them all; right on Spotify's homepage.
These can run in 24 hour increments and require quite a few parameters to be met. Luckily, all of this information is available in Spotify's resources.
Prior to 2017, running ads on Spotify's platform was quite exclusive, as they had not yet opened up their self-serve ad platform and this meant that only the big-budget players were able to gain access to this market.
They have since revised this, which has made it to where pretty much any business can run ads on Spotify.
Of course, if you had a look at the wide range of ad placements that Spotify offers, the cost that you can expect to run is going to vary, and that isn't even taking into consideration your own work on targeting certain demographics.
What you can shoot for is a lower-end CPM of around $15, and an upper-end CPM of $25, assuming a budget of a few hundred dollars. You are paying pennies per impression, with these metrics.
In order to get your ads in front of Spotify users, you are going to need an account, your recording, and some visual creative to go along with it.
Be sure to take careful consideration of your ad placement and format, as these will have quite the effect on your results.
Creating your account and getting it ready to run ads is actually quite simple:
A user can create and own multiple advertising accounts, and from the Ad Studio, they are able to add collaborators and control their permissions, as long as they maintain admin status over the account.
This is where things get pretty interesting with Spotify. You have two routes for making your recordings: either producing them in-house or utilizing Spotify's voice artists.
Whether you are going the outsourcing route or not, you are going to have to create a script and provide some background music for your recording.
If you are planning on creating your own voice recordings you can go to the studio and upload your content by clicking 'create a new ad.' Once the content is uploaded, you simply submit the ad for review.
Here, you will instead select 'Help me create a new ad' and follow the steps from before. However you will be required to provide the language of the advertisement and select the Spotify voice artist that you would like to have make your recording.
The recordings can take up to two days to be completed and returned for submission. Once all is available, submit for review.
While it may have been an apparent trend in the previous sections, the 30 second rule applies across all Spotify Ads. Any ad submissions longer than 30 seconds will be rejected.
As Spotify Ads rely heavily on the use of audio to sell a product or service, it can seem like a daunting task that one would think would lead to some questionable results.
However, this format is especially appealing to younger audiences (Millennials / Gen Z), and the ad placement is generally cheap! With the vast reach around the globe and hundreds of millions of engaged users, this channel is plentiful in opportunities for marketers across all markets; it's just about finding the right fit and delivering the message the way that your audience wants to hear it.
