Help Center

Promoting music on Ad Studio

Promoting an artist’s music, a concert, or artist merch is easy, but it’s a little different than promoting a brand or business. You can still follow these steps to get started with Spotify Ad Studio and reference the rest of the information in this help center. The differences for music-related campaigns are promotion type, targeting, and reporting.

If you’re looking to promote an artist’s music on Spotify, and you either represent the artist team or the artist themselves, choose an artist’s music on Spotify.

If you’re looking to promote a concert or artist merch on Spotify, and you either represent artist team, the artist, or a show where the artist is performing, choose a concert or artist merch.

Selecting a music-related promotion type will allow you to use fan targeting and view streaming conversion metrics for the artist you’re promoting. Fan targeting allows you to reach known fans of an artist you're promoting or fans of other artists.

Your ad campaign's performance data can be accessed via your Ad Studio account. Download our guide to understanding your campaign results for more on how to use these stats to help you make decisions about your ads.

Here’s what you’ll see:

Delivery

  • Impressions: The total number of times the ads within the ad set were delivered to Spotify users.
  • Reach: The total number of people who heard the ads within the ad set.

Bidding

  • CPM: Cost per 1000 impressions. Updates hourly based on the budget and impressions delivered so far.
  • Bid cap: The maximum bid for your ad set, as inputted during campaign setup or the most recent edit to your ad set.
  • Bidding goal: The goal for your ad set, as selected during campaign setup or the most recent edit to your ad set.

Artist results

  • Listeners: The number of people who streamed the artist after they heard the ads within the ad set.
  • Streams per listener: The average number of times each listener streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set. Calculated as Streams from Listeners / Listeners.
  • Listener conversion rate: The percentage of people who streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set. Calculated as Listeners / Reach.
  • New listeners: The number of people who streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set, who hadn’t listened to the artist in the pre-exposure window.
  • Streams per new listener: The average number of times each new listener streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set. Calculated as Streams from new listeners / new listeners.
  • New listener conversion rate: The percentage of people who became new listeners, out of all the people who heard the ads within the ad set and hadn’t listened to the artist in the pre-exposure window. Calculated as New listeners / Reach - Existing listeners.
  • Intent rate: The percentage of listeners who took actions showing intent to stream the artist again in the future. Actions include saving the artist’s music or adding it to a playlist. Calculated as Number of listeners who also saved or added to playlist / listeners
  • Pre-exposure window: The 28-days before a person heard the ads within the ad set.
  • Conversion window: The 14-days after a person heard the ads within the ad set, where their actions are considered related to the campaign and are counted as a conversion.
  • Campaign window: The flight dates of the ad set, plus 14-days post-campaign. This is the full amount of time during which user actions are observed to calculate conversions.

Audience Insights Audience Insights

Audience insights

  • Listeners and new listeners*: Compare the makeup of different audiences between people who heard the ads within the ad set (% of impressions) and those who streamed your music (% of listeners/new listeners). Looking at a specific demographic, if the percentage of listeners or new listeners is higher than the percentage of impressions, then you know that audience was particularly likely to stream your music after hearing your ads.

Here's an example: let’s say you run an ad set for €1,000 that got 100 listeners. If 48% of impressions within the ad set were to 18-24 year olds, that means €480 of your budget went to that age group. If you got 60% of your listeners from that demographic, that’s 60 listeners, or €8 per listener in this demographic. If 15% of ads were served to 35-44 year olds and only 8% of listeners came from this demographic (€150 spent and 8 listeners), then that category cost €18.75 per listener. This means 18-24 year olds are your more cost-effective audience.

  • Average streams: See which audiences had the highest number of streams per listener and streams per new listener. For example, if you know male listeners streamed on average 2x more than female listeners, you might adjust your approach to target men at a higher rate.
  • Conversion rate: See which audiences were most likely to become listeners and new listeners. The audiences with the highest conversion rates are most likely to listen to your music after hearing your ad.
  • Intent rate: Understand how audiences of different demographics took actions showing intent to stream the artist again in the future, like saving it or adding it to a playlist. The group with the highest intent rate was most likely to take these actions after hearing the ad and listening to your music.

These insights are available for age, gender, and platform breakdown. For info on reporting for music promotions in Australia, click here.

The conversion window is the 14 days after a person heard the ad. The actions they take during this time are considered related to the campaign and are counted as conversions. The conversion window is fixed and can’t be changed.

At this time, we do not offer the capability to target new listeners. As an alternative, consider reaching your recent fans via fan or genre targeting.

Metrics should start populating 24-hours after the ad set has started. These metrics will then refresh every few hours on a daily basis.

Your ad campaign's performance data can be accessed via your Ad Studio account. These metrics provide insight into who your ads have been served to and which users chose to listen to your ad in full. Check out our guide to understanding your campaign results for more on how to use these stats to help you make decisions about your ads.

Here’s what you’ll see:

Delivery

  • Ad listens: The total number of times your ads within the ad set was played in full. You only pay for completed listens, not total impressions.
  • Reach of ad listens: The total number of users who listened to your ads within the ad set in full.
  • Frequency of ad listens: The average number of times each user listened to your ads within the ad set in full.
  • Impressions: Total number of ads within the ad set served.
  • Reach: The number of people who heard your ads within the ad set.
  • Frequency: The average number of times each person heard your ads within the ad set.
  • Ad listen rate: The percentage of listens out of the total number of impressions within the ad set.
  • Clicks: Number of clicks to your ads within the ad set received.
  • CTR: The clickthrough rate of how many clicks your ads within the ad set received compared to how many people heard your ads within the ad set.

Artist results

  • Listeners: The number of people who streamed the artist after they heard the ads within the ad set in full.
  • Streams per listener: The average number of times each listener streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set in full. Calculated as Streams from listeners / listeners.
  • Listener conversion rate: The percentage of people who streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set in full. Calculated as Listeners / reach.
  • New listeners: The number of people who streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set in full, who hadn’t listened to the artist in the pre-exposure window.
  • Streams per new listener: The average number of times each new listener streamed the artist after hearing the ads within the ad set in full. Calculated as Streams from new listeners / new listeners.
  • New listener conversion rate: The percentage of people who became new listeners, out of all the people who heard the ads within the ad set in full and hadn’t listened to the artist in the pre-exposure window. Calculated as New listeners / Reach - Existing listeners.
  • Intent rate: The percentage of listeners who took actions showing intent to stream the artist again in the future. Actions include saving the artist’s music by tapping the heart icon or adding it to a playlist. Calculated as Number of listeners who also saved or added to playlist / listeners.
  • Pre-exposure window: The 28 days before a person heard the ads within the ad set in full.
  • Conversion window: The 14 days after a person heard the ads within the ad set in full, where their actions are considered related to the campaign and are counted as a conversion.
  • Campaign window: The flight dates of the ad set, plus 14 days post-campaign. This is the full amount of time during which user actions are observed to calculate conversions.

Audience insights

  • Listeners and new listeners*: Compare the makeup of different audiences between people who listened to the ad in full (% of impressions) and those who streamed your music (% of listeners/new listeners). Looking at a specific demographic, if the percentage of listeners or new listeners is higher than the percentage of impressions, then you know that audience was particularly likely to stream your music after hearing your ads.

Here's an example: let’s say you run an ad set for €1,000 that got 100 listeners. If 48% of impressions within the ad set were listened to in full by 18-24 year olds, that means €480 of your budget went to that age group. If you got 60% of your listeners from that demographic, that’s 60 listeners, or €8 per listener in this demographic. If 15% of impressions were listened to in full by 35-44 year olds and only 8% of listeners came from this demographic (€150 spent and 8 listeners), then that category cost €18.75 per listener. This means 18-24 year olds are your more cost-effective audience.

  • Average streams: See which audiences had the highest number of streams per listener and streams per new listener. For example, if you know male listeners streamed on average 50% more than female listeners, you might adjust your approach to target men at a higher rate.
  • Conversion rate: See which audiences were most likely to become listeners and new listeners. The audiences with the highest conversion rates are most likely to listen to your music.
  • Intent rate: Understand how audiences of different demographics took actions showing intent to stream the artist again in the future, like saving it or adding it to a playlist. The group with the highest intent rate was most likely to take these actions after hearing your ad in full and listening to your music.

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