Traditional album and track sales have seen a major decline in the music industry, but on-demand streaming activity is continuing to reach new all-time highs. Highlighted in Nielsen’s 2018 Mid-Year report, on-demand audio streaming volume has grown 45% in the U.S. compared to data from the first half of 2017.
With the major growth in popularity that music streaming services have seen year over year, platforms like Spotify and Pandora have leveraged their subscribers to generate revenue through accessible, wide-reaching advertising platforms. These paid platforms are great opportunities to build brand awareness and get your message in front of an audience that has moved on from traditional FM radio.
The Spotify platform has the larger reach of the pair, with about 90 million ad supported listeners who stream an average of two hours daily. This comes out to an estimated 180 million hours of opportunity to get in front of your target market each day, with a reported 24% lift in ad recall for audio advertising.
From this large user base, your audience can be narrowed down to target, based on their age, gender, geographic location, listening activity, and device. Once your audience is defined, mediums to target them include:
After a campaign is launched you’re only billed when your ad is served to a user, with reach projections and estimates available throughout the creation process. Since the platform’s minimum budget starts at only $250, Spotify is a fantastic, low-cost entry into the streaming market.
Originally launched in 2000, Pandora was one of the first major players in the music streaming space. Spotify has since surpassed the platform in user engagement, but Pandora still has a large reach of about 89 million active monthly users who stream just under an hour daily on average.
The two platforms are similar when it comes to advertising formats, but Pandora sets itself apart when it comes to audience targeting. Outside of the standard Demographic and Listening Activity options, Pandora has partnered with 3rd party data providers to deliver unique custom audience segments. These audience segments can be selected to deliver your ad to users based on information such as their purchasing habits, travel behavior, education, profession, and much more.
Once your audience is established, available ad formats include:
Ads on Pandora are billed on a Cost-per-Impression basis but come with a significantly higher minimum budget compared to Spotify. Depending on the campaign’s targeting and reach, media spend will generally start in the $4,000 / $5,000 range, making Pandora a good fit for larger campaigns with a specific target market.
For more information on these advertising platforms or how you can leverage their audiences in your current marketing plan, contact Zero Gravity Marketing today.