It’s safe to say that a majority of businesses won’t be using any networks outside of this and I’m here to tell you – you’re missing out on incredible performance, lower cost per acquisition and huge amounts of users that will simply never see your ads without these networks.
Diversify your ads
Diversifying your ad spend with Paid Media activity can often be difficult as you’ll have the traditional paid networks like Google Search, Shopping & Display and potentially some Paid Social that are churning along and working well. They’re networks you understand and have years of experience managing and they’re networks that are delivering results.
The goal of diversification is not to replace these networks, it’s to boost their performance and your business reach by hitting users on additional platforms and in varied ad styles – adding to the user journey, not just adjusting it.
Sounds like a no-brainer – but why are so many businesses and marketing professionals refraining from venturing out and trial new networks? I think 99% of the time it comes down to two main reasons:
Potential Poor Performance
I think a lot of this comes down to fear of poor performance – the idea of spending money on something you’ve never done before is scary and there’s potential for loss. People are naturally risk-averse and thus, don’t want to allocate budget into something where they’ve not got historical results to base their decision.
Lack of budget
Oftentimes, diversifying into new ad spends is something that simply doesn’t fit the budget sheet. You’ve got an annual marketing budget, your Google Ads is performing well and you’ve not got any additional budget to throw into something new.
If either of the above is a concern for you I’m here to help in the form of some fantastic use cases of some networks that you’ve definitely heard of and used for personal use – but likely not run ad spend through for your marketing as well as examples and data for where we’ve used it to great success.
One network that you should definitely be trialling is…
Spotify
Spotify launched their self serve ad platform in 2017 – with Spotify Ads you’re able to utilise video and audio assets as well as static banner imagery à la Google Display.
Why should you be using Spotify Ads?
Don’t get me wrong, the targeting options are based on music and podcast listening, so won’t suit every business.
If you’re targeting a product or activity in an industry that fits the options available in Spotify’s Ad platform you’re in for a treat.
In Q1 2020 Spotify released their listening figures – and the ad-supported users that you’re able to target came in at a whopping 152 million monthly active users. This pales in comparison to the likes of Facebook (with 2.1 billion monthly active users) but, remember! The name of the game with platform diversification is exactly as the naming suggests. We’re not trying to replace the networks you’re currently running. We’re trying to reach the same, or additional, users on platforms that your competition likely aren’t making use of.
Where does this sit with your existing activity?
With the inherent nature of the platform, Spotify Ads definitely lends itself more towards the top of the funnel and is best used with awareness and consideration type advertising. If you’re trying to launch a new product, raise awareness of your brand overall or a specific service – Spotify is the one for you.
We’ve got quite a few clients actively running campaigns across Spotify Ads now and all-seeing great results – with the average cost per impression floating around the $0.015-$0.025 mark, if you’ve got a killer ad creative to entice users and get a good clickthrough rate, Spotify Ads can be an incredible driver of high volume, engaged traffic that’s perfectly within your target demographic.
Ad Creative
Here’s the kicker with Spotify Ads – if you want to run an audio ad, as long as you’re able to commit to running at least £500 through the campaign over its lifetime, Spotify will source a voice-over artist, provide the backing track and compile your finished product audio ad completely free of charge. This is the killer asset when it comes to new networks. No more do you have to wrangle imagery and hack together audio to get your creative live. Spotify does all the hard work based entirely on the back of a script that you supply in-platform.
Spotify featured prominently in the recent campaign we ran for the University of Nottingham and drove incredible results.
Want better results?
So – if you’re looking to drive more traffic, higher volumes of engaged users or simply branch out your advertising then Spotify is definitely one to look at. We’ve got some great case studies showing Spotify being used to perfection so feel free to reach out – We’d love to help!
