- Spotify has rebranded its self-serve ad platform, formerly generally known as Spotify Ad Studio and now named Spotify Ads Manager, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The move introduces a recent look and enhanced promoting capabilities.
- New features include a simplified user experience and improved audience and targeting functionality, including an expanded menu of interest segments. New ad formats will help brands engage consumers with video.
- Several advertisers have already leveraged Ads Manager, including travel brand Contiki, which ran a campaign through the platform and saw a 267% increase in clicks to its website, per release details. The latest move from Spotify arrives following a record second quarter.
Spotify is attempting to shore up advertiser investments with a recent look and enhanced capabilities that would help brands more easily connect with the platform’s 626 million monthly lively users. The move rides on the heels of a robust second quarter for Spotify, which reported record profitability and a 13% year-over-year ads revenue growth.
Among the features of Spotify Ads Manager are enhanced targeting and audience capabilities, including an expanded menu of interest segments that can grow to be available later this month and offer brands more opportunity in regard to the audiences they reach and test. Spotify may even release an Audience Manager tool that can offer a dedicated home for advertisers to administer their saved audiences. Audience Manager shall be released in closed beta before its general release in 2025.
Spotify also recently introduced recent ad formats to Ads Manager with the goal of helping brands engage consumers with each audio and video. A Canvas format serves as an optional companion and visual asset that extends the favored looping visual capability that plays during songs to audio ads. With the Opt-in Video format, a brand might be displayed front and center alongside the music a consumer is streaming.
Brands including World Rugby, Ionos and Monge are already using the brand new Spotify offerings. Contiki recently leveraged Ads Manager within the U.K. for a campaign encouraging Gen Z travelers to get on the road with the corporate’s travel programs. A combination of audio and video ads featuring user-generated content spotlighted real travel stories, and resulted in Spotify outperforming other channels by 32%, per release details.
Spotify reports it has made “significant” investments in its Ads API that can enable it to bring Spotify Ads Manager capabilities to over 50 recent markets down the road. On the measurement front, the corporate recently introduced first-party measurement solutions on Ads Manager with Spotify Ad Analytics and Pixel. The company also expanded its third-party solutions via Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Appsflyer and Kochava.
Spotify within the second quarter reported 21% YoY revenue growth together with a record-high operating income, gross margin and free money flow. The company also saw premium subscribers grow 12% YoY to 246 million. A positive quarter for the corporate follows struggles last 12 months that resulted in it letting go of over 1,500 employees, or 17% of its staff, in December.
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