One change that Spotify made was rebranding its advertising platform. They changed the name of their advertising business from Spotify for Brands to a simpler and more generic name: Spotify Advertising.
Rebranding the platform's name was a move to appeal to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Spotify believes this change of heart will attract more SMEs to advertise on their platform versus the traditional larger brands they normally attract.
What's Spotify's goal?
They want more podcasters and creators in their ad marketplace. Who doesn't agree that the world needs more podcasts, right?! Just kidding, we love podcasts.
And Spotify wants to make that clear in their efforts to attract and lend the mic to more DIY content creators, podcasters, etc., inside the expanded Spotify ad platform. SMEs can now join the big brands and well-known podcast shows within Spotify's network — any Joe Rogan Experience fans out there?
Spotify's All Ears On You ad campaign to win more advertisers will run in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain. You'll definitely be seeing posters about the ad campaign at bus stops. Not only on the streets but also on Spotify's social media, through videos and audio ads on and off the Spotify platform (it's like "adception," an ad for advertisers to launch ads").
Spotify has big plans. They started off as a music streaming platform, and now they want that ad money and have rebranded themselves to be an audio company. In the past, they've landed huge deals with podcast makers like "The Ringer (sports podcast)" and a more than $100 million licensing deal with Joe Rogan.
Since they've opened up to allow more brands and businesses of all sizes, they want to change how they do advertising on podcasts and audio tracks and reevaluate how their ad metrics work.
Instead of metrics that look at how many downloads a podcast had, or if someone skipped an ad or not, they want precise data. They want to look at audio track impressions, audience demographics, introduce ad targeting options for audiences across Spotify's content and other platforms.
Here's how ambitious Spotify aims to be. Dawn Ostroff, Spotify's Chief Content and Advertising Business Officer said in the first linked article above, "Our goal is to start to really compete with Snap and Twitter and deliver on the expectations advertisers have, including small businesses."
Good luck Spotify!
One of the challenges of advertising on ad networks is debating whether the return on ad spend (ROAS) is worth it or not. The physical challenge for Spotify is tracking ad performance.
If you're listening to a podcast, you can't always click on something like an ad while you're listening or know which ad was heard on one medium versus another. So connecting the dots of which metrics contributed to a conversion becomes a challenge.
To overcome this, Spotify is testing tools that let consumers engage directly with ads. Hopefully, this makes it more precise for advertisers to track ad data to know their return on investment and ROAS.
Besides the challenges of tracking ads, Spotify also has another challenge if they want to attract SMEs. It's harder to appeal to mom and pop shops when Facebook is a dominating platform for ads. Everyone's on there, so it'll be one tough nut to crack for Spotify.
