Here’s Something You’ve Never Tried Before: Spotify Advertising

I love making playlists; adding new tunes to them until shit hits the fan and I have about one song for every day of the year. Playlists are my main thing. That being said, it’s a known fact that a lot of people use Spotify to stream music—regardless if it’s a free or premium subscription.

With over 2 billion playlists worldwide, it’s easy to lose yourself in the rabbit hole of music that the music streaming platform offers. We get by during our daily commute, while working/studying, running, you name it. Now, if you’re a business seeking to expand your brand awareness in the most unconventional way possible, you might want to look into advertising on Spotify.

Business of Apps reports that as of February 2019, there are about 191 million active Spotify users across the globe. It’s divided into two types of consumers—the 87 million premium users (the ad-less way of listening) and the 104 million free subscribers (this one’s where you can come in with cool ads).

Take a look at the latter number. That’s a lot of users that you can reach out to using Spotify ads. The site also reports that 44% of users listen to Spotify on an average of 25 hours daily. Now that’s one hell of a captive audience right there.

I’m not going to dive into the details of Spotify’s subscription model. What we’re here to talk about are the best ways to take advantage of Spotify advertising for your business. With the right creative mindset and intense research, you’ll be able to spread the word using one of the world’s most powerful streaming platforms.

The streaming service opened its doors to advertisers in April 2018, and it also offers tools for you to create your own ad or have them do it for you. But here are some things that you have to understand as you make your foray into Spotify advertising.

You Can Reach Your Market Anytime

The best advantage of audio advertising is that you don’t need to execute beautiful visuals and baffling campaigns just so your target market can see it and hopefully respond positively with sales. Spotify advertising hits your market right where it ‘s received immediately—ear time. You’re able to reach your target market where visual advertising cant. Those on a drive, running, studying, you name it. The power of audio is very flexible.

Music-centric Targeting

Just like Facebook ads, Spotify offers audience targeting for your ad on the platform. You can learn the consumers’ streaming habits and use that data to help you connect with them in the right context. You can even learn about which devices each user is listening along with their genre preference and playlist interactions.

There is also an option to target users on a broader spectrum—using a genre, a playlist category, or even the entire Spotify music selection. So, if you want to target users to hang out at your newly-opened millennial-themed restaurant, you can target people listening to the “Party Mixes” or the “It’s a Hit” playlist. It’s an awesome and creative way to make sure you literally hit the right notes.

If you’d ask me, this sounds massively similar to radio ads, only it’s more specific and doesn’t show up in every commercial break. It’s for a specific type of audience, and one that you can control in a few strokes and using a few seconds of awesome audio.

You can check out the Spotify For Brands page for details, as well as the Spotify Ad Studio.