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 a 2024 Mid-Year report, on-demand audio streaming volume has grown 6.4% in the U.S. with nearly 1.4 trillion streams.
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.
Spotify Advertising
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:
- Audio: standard 15 and 30 second audio segments that are served between songs. If you only have a script ready, Spotify has a team of voice actors that can record a voiceover for you.
- Video: 30-second video content that a user can watch in order to unlock 30 minutes of uninterrupted listening. Any video content can also be paired with a clickable link to drive traffic to your website.
- Display: static image ads that are displayed when a user returns to the Spotify app on desktop or mobile. These are clickable and designed to drive traffic to your website.
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.
Pandora Advertising
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 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:
- Audio: 15 and 30-second audio clips that are served between songs. These are eligible to run on all Pandora supported platforms, including web, mobile, and connected home devices or vehicles.
- Video: 15 and 30-second video segments that are only displayed when a user skips a song or changes a station. These are paired with a banner advertisement to help drive users to your website as well.
- Display: static and responsive image ads that are displayed over a song’s album art to help drive traffic to your website.
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.
Breanna Yashko
