Spotify Audio Ads vs. Video Ads: Which Format Drives Streams More Efficiently?
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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
When you advertise on Spotify, you can see whether your ads are driving Streams, Listeners, New Listeners, and the Intent Rate of ad listeners—metrics that aren’t available from any other ad platform.
This makes it possible for music marketers to calculate the cost to acquire new listeners and build a fanbase, essential information needed to plan and measure campaigns.
Spotify’s ad platform offers both video and audio formats, so in support of client business objectives, we set out to test which one drives music streams more efficiently.
The Results
We found that Spotify audio ads drove 13.71% more streams per dollar when compared to Spotify video ads. Why? This increase was driven primarily by CPMs, or the cost per 1,000 impressions served. Audio ads served 47% more impressions per dollar compared to video ads. In addition:
People served an audio ad had a 22% higher number of Average Streams, indicating this group was more likely to re-listen to advertised music.
People served audio ads also had an 8.3% higher Intent Rate than video ads. Intent rate reflects the percentage of people who take deeper actions from an ad, for example, liking a song or adding it to a playlist.
The Takeaway
We recommend that music marketers looking to maximize streams on Spotify use an audio ad format instead of video. Learn more about Spotify Audio ads in our free report “Spotify Audio Ads: A Guide for Music Marketers.”
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