How-To Guide for Advertising on Spotify

how to guide on advertising on spotify

Throughout the years we’ve partnered with Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Stores to help tell their story through new and trendy marketing strategies. One of our recent campaigns allowed us to dip our toes into the world of Spotify ads, and the results were nothing short of success! With over 209 million active users for Spotify’s free subscriptions, we knew there was great potential to reach our younger demographics in a new, unconventional way. Using the self-serve platform, we saw Ad Studio as a way to generate awareness and influence in our market without overtly selling our audience on a product. Here is the low-down on Spotify ads and its marketing capabilities.

Spotify Campaign Types:

Like Facebook, Google or any other platform you’ve used to advertise on, Spotify gives you multiple campaign types to choose from based on your overall goals. Within our industry’s campaign, options for what we could promote included brand awareness, products or services. Outside of that Spotify also has campaign types for an artist’s music, upcoming concerts or merchandise.

The ad set level:

This is the level in which you will build the foundation of your campaign. Within the ad set, you will set your preferences for:

  • Placement: determine whether you want your ads to play when someone streams music or podcasts.
  • Format: choose if your creative will be audio, horizontal or vertical video.
  • Schedule: time period in which your ads will run.
  • Budget: the total budget amount for your ads. Budgets run in lifetime cycles and include a minimum of $250 per ad set.
  • Audience: define your audience based on preferred location, languages, gender and age.

Audiences in-depth:

You can learn a lot about someone by what they listen to. Go beyond demographics by reaching your target audience based on listening behaviors, or define the environment and context where your ads get served. Additional audience targeting includes:

  • Interest-Based Targeting: target based on interests defined by recent podcast and playlist listens, as well as streaming platforms.
  • Real-Time Contexts: target people in the moment based on what podcasts and playlists they’re currently streaming.

  • Genres: allows you to target based on the genre of music played directly before your ads.

Last but definitely not least, the ad:

The ad stage is where your creative comes to life! Upload your video, audio or display files and fill in the details of the ad. Ad copy will feature the Advertiser name (max. 25 characters), CTA button with preferred language and the destination URL. Tracking tags are also available through third-party vendors and can be linked through the Ad Studio. Note that images will be uploaded for all campaign types, including audio and video. Images must be square JPEGs or PNGs with a minimum of 640x640px. Larger images will be resized.

Once you’ve uploaded your media it’s time to launch the campaign. Confirm the details and hit submit. From there sit back, relax and let Spotify do the rest!

Looking for some new playlist recommendations? Check out some of our favorites for any occasion brought to you by Braum’s!

Sweet Summer Mixtape
330 Miles
Wanderlust
Cozy Vibes
Happy Holidays