UPFRONT
8
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LOWDOWN
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BLOG OF THE MONTH
Spotify Marketing-speak
By Adam Graham, Saint By Katy Lindemann, Naked
Unless you have been hiding under a rock Audio: standard audio ads with a scroll- It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the holy grail
for the past six months, you may well have ing message across the bottom of the screen, for marketers is engagement – to build
heard mention of a groovy new music and a 250x250 space for some artwork. meaningful relationships between people
service called Spotify. It’s a very handy tool, Display: these are like the banners we and our brands.
which allows you to listen to music of your see on websites and can be in fl ash or gif And yet the way we think about
choosing, indefi nitely, without having to buy format. The formats available are 120x600, marketing is frequently diametrically
the tracks. 160x600, 468x60 and 728x90. Unlike a web- opposed to the desired end result.
Featuring an easy-to-use search box, page, it’s an uncluttered environment and only The vocabulary of marketing
which scours an ever-increasing library one ad is served at a time. is largely one of warfare – with the
of tunes, it is very easy to fi nd your chosen Billboard: when a user hasn’t interacted consumer as enemy combatant, or
song. You can then create playlists with the player for fi ve minutes, Spotify the target, on the receiving end of our
for your own private amuse- serves a full-screen ad, which stays merciless attacks.
ment, or share them with your onscreen until a user rolls The etymology of the word
friends. There is also a ‘Radio’ over it, when it moves into ‘strategy’ is military – literally meaning
section, where you can just a standard skyscraper or ‘the art of a general’. And it’s just as
listen to music based on leader board. applicable to the world of marketing as
your choice of tags. Video: this is trig- it is to the battlefi eld.
Spotify operates on ger ed by audio or display So we launch aggressive campaigns,
the freemium model. You through interaction, so it’s carefully designed for maximum impact
can access an ad-funded non-invasive, but can pro- and to gain captive audiences, thinking
version of the site for free, vide a high impact window about strikeweights and guerilla tactics
or pay £10 a month to get rid for creativity. Spotify says to do battle, gain market dominance and
of the ads. It has anti-ad-avoid- users watch these videos for an kill the competition. Hardly the language
ance measures, such as pausing the average of nine seconds compared of fostering engagement and relationship
ad if you turn your volume down, so people to three seconds on other sites, with an building, is it?
are pretty much guaranteed to hear your average CTR of 2.22%. We all know by now that people
message. Combine this with the extraor- Having an audio ad and a visual click- aren’t receptacles, waiting eagerly for
dinary level of targeting and metrics that through mechanic in sync is a powerful system. our advertising messages, and very often
online apps offer and it’s a compelling You can be passively listening while cruising could quite happily live without whatever
case for brands. the net and, if you hear something that inter- we’re trying to sell – but surely trying
You can target on the basis of age, ests you, you can react instantly and to conquer the enemy and beat them
sex, postcode/region and daypart, and in click through. This means advertising doesn’t into submission isn’t the most effective
the future, according to Spotify, you will need to be focused on making a name solution? Isn’t trying to earn the right
be able to target on socio-demographic data stick – it can be much more informative or for our brands to be a part of people’s
and genre. The biggest age group is 20-29, intriguing, focused on driving that click to a world, rather than trying to force our
with 1.1 million users and a strong male richer brand environment. way in, ultimately going to be more
bias. Low wastage and interaction with Unfortunately, most ads on Spotify are valuable in the longer term?
the audio ads means they typically achieve low-budget, local-radio-style productions. We would probably all agree that
a fairly high click-through rate (CTR) of A better use would be a harmonious message this is what we’re trying to do, and that
between 0.6% and 1.2%. You can advertise in that segués seamlessly between the tracks, a relationship based on permission and
the following ways. augmenting the experience. trust is far more desirable than one of
force and conquest – and yet the
NOTA BENE
language of marketing doesn’t appear to
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have caught up.
The vocabulary we use undoubtedly
affects the way we approach things –
90%
both consciously and subconsciously. So
if we want to actually develop marketing
that’s based on marketing with people,
rather than to them, awareness of the
language we use, and a concerted effort
to move away from thinking about
marketing as warfare, has got to be a
move in the right direction.
Hispanics in the US who ‘totally agree’ with the statement: ‘I appreciate
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it when businesses communicate with Hispanics in Spanish.’
More from Katy
Lindemann at
Yankelovich Monitor Think Tank, Consumer Profi le: Hispanics, 2009 www.warc.com/blogs
ADMAP FEBRUARY 2010
ADM Feb 08-09 Upfront.indd 1 1/22/2010 14:44:47
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