While Spotify’s Ad Studio feature (available to artists since 2017) has proven to be effective as a promotional tool, the behind the scenes of why was something of a mystery, at least until now. The streaming platform’s new ad metrics give artists a much more transparent understanding of what happens behind the scenes when their ads are clicked on.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
In 2017 Spotify launched its Ad Studio feature that allowed artists and their labels to share their music via 30-second or less audio ads played to the users on the platform’s free tier. While the short ads proved to be an effective tool, they provided limited data of what actually happened after a listener clicked on the ad. Now the company has rolled out some new streaming conversion metrics that will show more about how listeners react to an ad campaign.
Previously, the Ad Studio’s metrics included data on age, gender or genre preferences of the audience, but artists and labels wanted more. The new data now includes if they listened after the click, saved the music for later, or added it to a playlist, and if the clicks came from new users or ones who were already listening to the artist’s music.
Really the big question has always been what happens after a listener clicks on the ad. Did he or she actually listen to the song or other songs by the artist later? In the end, that’s what really matters since that’s what you want the ad campaign to do. Just seeing who clicked and how many clicks wasn’t enough.
And it seems to be working The music marketing agency Wavo found that their client Rich the Kid was able to see that 38 percent of people who heard his ad went on to listen later, and nearly 20 percent of those listeners streamed his music for the first time.
Spotify has increasingly launched new tools to help artists on the platform, something it has to continue to do because not only of the increasing competition, but its stance against paying an increased fee to songwriters. The backlash from that is pretty severe and may turn out to be an insurmountable problem, regardless of how many new features for artists it launches.