How to Run a Spotify Advertising Campaign

Are you advertising on the radio? What about Spotify? Spotify has now opened its platform up publicly to everyone. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how to run a Spotify advertising campaign. TL;DR – How much does it cost to advertise on Spotify? You can advertise for as little as $4.17~/day.

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Write a Spotify Ad Script

Step 1 – Sign Up for Access & Create Your Account on Spotify Ad Studio

When we signed up to gain access to the new Spotify Advertising platform, we weren’t sure what to expect. It took them about a week to ‘accept’ our request. After that, we logged in and were shown a brief self-guided 3-4 slide show. Here are the points they mentioned:

Create an audio ad

Listeners on our free, ad-supported platform hear 15 or 30 second audio ads at naturally occurring breaks between songs during their listening session.

 

It only takes a few minutes

With Ad Studio you can create an audio ad in minutes. Upload your own audio, or write a script and we’ll send it to a voiceover actor for you.

 

Reach the people you want to reach

Your audience will hear your message while they’re actively streaming content on Spotify. Ad Studio’s targeting settings help you reach the right target audience and deliver your message when it’s most relevant.

Here’s what you can expect when setting up your first Spotify Ads:

Step 2 – Choose an Objective (required)

1. Raise awareness for a brand, business or organization
2. Promote a concert or music related content

Step 3 – Choose Your Audience (required)

OPTIONAL

Listening Behavior – You can optionally select if you want to reach people with specific listening behaviors. You can choose listening behaviors by genre or by playlist. Spotify recommends that you only choose 1 of these so you don’t risk an audience size that is too narrow.

Select a Platform – By default, your ads will show up on all devices. However, Spotify Ads allows you to choose if you want to take one of the platforms out or only select whichever you want to advertise on. The choices are All, iOS, Android, or Desktop.

Step 4 – Set Your Budget and Schedule (required)

• Timing is important: You must schedule your campaign at least 2 days in advance so they have time to review your ads and make sure they follow their Creative Guidelines.
• The max time you can run a campaign with a $250 budget is 2 months.

Budget – Here are some key takeaways we found about how much it costs to run ads on Spotify.

• Spotify pre-selects suggest amounts for your budget and they also offer a custom price field where you can type in what your budget is.
• The minimum Spotify Advertising budget amount is $250.
• Since the minimum Spotify Ads budget is $250, we decided to test how far you could spread that. We found the max time is 2 months. This equates to the minimum Spotify Ads budget being $4.17/day if it helps you to look at it this way. While Facebook Ads have a $5 minimum, and $1 for boosted posts, this isn’t far off.

Enter your credit card info as expected.

Step 5 – Setting Up Spotify Ads – Creative

Spotify gives you 2 options for creating ads: Upload your own audio, or request a voiceover. As far as we can tell, the voiceover service is free and included in what you pay. Continue reading and we’ll briefly go over both of these options below.

Upload Your Own Audio

Here are some key points we found about uploading your own audio to Spotify Ads:

• Spotify Ad Recording Length: You have two options – 15 seconds or 30 seconds
• Spotify file types supported: .OGG, .MP3, .WAV

Request a Voiceover

Here are some key points we found about requesting a voiceover to Spotify Ads:

• Spotify Ads Recording Length: You only have one option. The voice artist will spread your script out to fit in a 30-second window.
• Steps to Set Up Request Voiceover in Spotify: 
  • Add a Title to your Voiceover
  • Paste your script: They recommend 50-75 words
  • Add instructions for the Voice Actor – such as pronunciations. (DO include info about intended emotion, tone, and speed. Do NOT include info about background music.)
  • Choose a language: English, French, or Spanish
  • Choose between male or female voices at different age groups: Child, Teenager, Adult, or Senior
  • Upload a background track – MP3, OGG, WAV or BROWSE options from free library of audio tracks

Step 6 – Upload Display Creative / Album Art

• Spotify Ad Creative Requirements: Images you upload 640x640px and should be either in JPG or PNG formats.
• Appears where album art normally does.

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Write a Spotify Ad Script

Step 7 – Paste the Link to Your Website

How to Run a Spotify Advertising Campaign