Spotify Marquee vs Audio Ads: Which Format is Better for Music Marketing?

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Wavo Labs: This series shares the results of our music marketing experiments and how they inform artist media strategy.

What We Tested

Spotify Ads Studio makes it possible for music marketers to drive relatively cost effective, fully attributable streams on Spotify. 

In this test, we compared the value of two types of Spotify ads: 

  • Spotify audio ads are 15-30 second audio spots combined with a companion display ad. These ads are unskippable and reach free tier Spotify users as they listen to music.

  • Marquee is a full-screen, sponsored recommendation served to Spotify Free and Premium listeners who have already expressed an interest in the artist being advertised. These ads appear when users first begin to use the app. When a listener clicks on a Marquee, they are brought to the new release being advertised.

Because Marquee ads track streams at the release level, for this case study we collaborated with Spotify to create artist level streaming data for Marquee in an effort to create a more even comparison against audio ads.

The Results

We found Marquee ads reached the most engaged and intentful listeners, and created 2.16x more streams per dollar compared to audio ads. Marquee ads featured higher Intent Rates, higher Average Streams per Listener and higher Conversion Rates.

Spotify audio ads serve impressions more cost effectively.  Audio ads are also able to reach audiences who aren’t yet familiar with an artist, which would be useful for when audience growth is your goal rather than pure streams.

The Takeaway

We recommend clients looking to maximize streams utilize marquee, and clients looking to reach new audiences prioritize audio ads on Spotify. 

Please note: sometimes ad formats have strong initial results due to reduced competition driving down CPM, so we’ll continue evaluating Marquee ads against Spotify audio. 

For a similar value comparison evaluating Spotify Audio and Spotify Video, please see here.

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