Having been a club and radio DJ in my former life in Spain (and incredibly rarely these days) music has been a big part of my life for a long time, and it’s the same for millions of people the world over. With that in mind, Spotify quite simply is a huge hub of highly engaged potential customers. These people can also trust the messaging that they hear on Spotify more when compared to other digital platforms.
As with any form of advertising, whether it be online or offline, the more effectively you can target, the higher the ad campaign performance will be.
The beauty of Spotify Ads are you get to produce audio ads that target listeners, just like conventional radio, but, you get digital style targeting so that you can ensure that your ad budget is only being used to a relevant or, the most relevant audience.
The ability to reach these audiences when they are in the car, at the gym, studying, gaming etc, means that you can reach your audience with the right message at the right time.
With close to 300 million active monthly users on Spotify, including Spotify Ads as part of your marketing strategy gives your business a huge competitive edge against your competitors.
Targeting Options On Spotify
Target By Platform
Firstly you have the option to target iOS users on iPhones and iPads, Android users or desktop users. You can either target them individually or you can target all platforms if you wish.
Top tip! Promoting an app install campaign? The maybe just target iOS and Android users. If you then created a separate campaign for each, you could assign more budget to your preferred OS or simply see the performance comparisons etc.
Target By Location
Spotify gives you the option to target by whole country, city, town, or postcode. This is great for brands large, medium, or small. Even larger brands may not cover the entire country. Location targeting on Spotify means your ads only need be heard in the areas you choose.
Top tip! Even if you are running a national campaign, by targeting individual cities, you have control over where your ad budget is spent and in turn where your ads are heard. You could also consider running different ads in different areas and have a local accent talking on your ad for more relevance.
Target By Age
The ability to control who hears your ad by age is another great way of ensuring relevancy and efficiency with regards to your ad budget. If you’re advertising a retirement home, having to spend money on an 18 year old hearing the ad would be pretty poor (like commercial radio)
Top tip! If you have a product or service that is suitable for a wide age range, consider having different ad types that feature a more suitable voice, use of language and choice of music.
Target By Gender
Similarly to age targeting, if your product or service is aimed predominantly at women, don’t have your ad budget wasted on half of the audience? With Spotify ads, you can target men, women, or both.
Top tip! Don’t forget that sometimes even with a product that is focussed on one gender, certain times of the year it could pay off advertising men’s products to women or vice-versa. Christmas, Valentines, fathers day, mothers day, etc.
Target By Interest
Interest targeting on Spotify allows you to reach audiences that may be more relevant to your product or service based on their activities and topics based on a listener’s recent behavior on the platform.
You have the ability to select multiple interest categories to expand your audience reach. These interest categories include subjects such as business, cooking, DIY, fitness, gaming, travel, and more.
Top tip! Look for direct and indirect interests that could make your targeting more relevant. Got a mobile game to promote? Target users who listen to Spotify on games consoles. Promote a fitness app to people in the fitness and running interest categories.
Target By Real-Time Context
By using real-time contexts for targeting, your ad can potentially be heard at exactly the right time. Cookery, gaming, focus, party are just a few of the real-time contexts you can target.
Top tip! Promote your new cookery book to people whilst they are listening to cookery based playlists or podcasts.
Target By Fans of Artists (Music-related objective only)
If you run a campaign with the music-related objective, you will have access to fan targeting. Fan base targeting allows you to reach known fans of an artist you’re promoting or fans of other artists.
Top tip! House music producers wanting to get their new track heard could run a campaign and target fans of Defected Radio and Disclosure.
So there you have it! That’s how you can target your ads on Spotify. Along with targeting, make sure your ads and banners are also targeting listeners with the appropriate content if you want to maximise the impact and success of your Spotify Ad campaigns.
