Spotify podcast ads can now track impressions, reach and audience data

• Podcast, Spotify
spotify-podcast-ads-can-now-track-impressions,-reach-and-audience-data

Spotify has rolled out a new suite of marketing tools for podcast advertisers, making it possible to view impressions, frequency, reach and audience demographic information for podcast ads, the company announced Wednesday.

The new metrics tools are supported by Spotify’s new podcast ad technology, Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), which utilizes data from the platform’s logged-in audience in tandem with its streaming audio service.

Source: Spotify.

New insights. Spotify is offering podcast publishers and advertisers data on real-time ad impressions, reach (the number of unique listeners who heard an ad), frequency (the number of times a listener heard an ad) and anonymized audience information such as age, gender, device type and listening preferences.

The anonymized demographic data first arrived for podcast publishers in August, 2019.

Why the data is available now. Spotify requires users to log in, providing the company with basic demographic data on the listener. The shift in audience preferences from downloading episodes via RSS feeds to streaming them has enabled companies to extract more information on listening habits.

Why we care. The podcast sector has grown by leaps and bounds, but for all its popularity, the lack of targeting and reporting data has kept many brands from investing in podcast ads. 

Now that advertisers and publishers can get more precise information on whether their ads are getting listened to, who and how many people are listening to them, the medium is more transparent and more likely to attract new advertisers, which may help to continue the sector’s momentum.


About The Author

George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.



Spotify latest platform to halt political ads

• Latest, Spotify
spotify-latest-platform-to-halt-political-ads

Spotify is halting political ad sales in the U.S. early next year, Ad Age reported Friday. Political advertising will not run for the 130 million listeners of its ad-supported plan or its original and exclusive podcasts.

Spotify told Ad Age in a statement that it does “not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”

Why we care

Tech platforms have been grappling with how to handle political advertising on their sites, particularly ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In November, Twitter announced a ban on promoting political content. “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and Bing do not allow political advertising.

Facebook introduced new rules for political campaign and issue ads in 2018, requiring advertisers to be verified. However, Facebook refuses to fact check political ads.

Spotify’s new policy will cover candidates, elected and appointed officials, nonprofits and political parties and Super PACs as well as advocacy content around political entities and legislative or judicial outcomes, Ad Age reported.

More on the news

  • Spotify said it will “reassess this decision” as its capabilities evolve.
  • Political advertising accounts for a small fraction of Spotify’s ad business and halting it likely won’t have a material impact.
  • As of this writing, the company had not yet updated its policy page, which continues to list U.S. political ads as restricted but not banned: “Political advertising (candidates, campaigns, issues) is permitted in the U.S. subject to restrictions. We do not accept political advertising outside the U.S.”


About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.



Spotify’s rumored ‘Create a podcast’ feature could be a valuable resource for marketers

• rumored, Spotify
spotify’s-rumored-‘create-a-podcast’-feature-could-be-a-valuable-resource-for-marketers

Spotify is rumored to be launching a “Create a podcast” button within its app that will allow users to record, edit and publish podcasts using the Anchor podcast creation app, according to Engadget. The feature was first spotted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who shared images of the “Create a podcast” button in the Spotify app via her Twitter account on Tuesday.

Spotify purchased Anchor in February; Wong noted that Anchor’s website included a product page for the Spotify feature.

Why you should care

The ability to produce and publish a podcast via Spotify’s app could open up a brand new marketing channel for SMBs and brands with limited resources and budgets.

Podcasts are booming business. Best-selling author and marketing veteran Seth Godin recently reported that 25% of the U.S. population listens to podcasts, on average, for six-and-a-half hours per week. “There is no other medium I am aware of that has grown at that pace with the exception of browsing the internet,” said Godin during his podcast on the topic (aptly titled “Meta”).

An Adobe Analytics report from earlier this month revealed mobile podcast app usage had increased 60% year-over-year since January, 2018 — and that 25% of podcast listeners had purchased a product discovered through podcast advertising.

By giving creators an easy-to-use podcast creation tool on top of its distribution platform — paired with its recently launched podcast analytics dashboard — Spotify is providing marketers the opportunity to tip their toe in the ever-growing pool of podcasts without the financial burden or risk of a large-scale initiative.

More on the news

  • Spotify’s podcast analytics dashboard allows creators to upload their podcasts to see listener demographic and engagement data.
  • Along with the Anchor podcast creation app, Spotify acquired Gimlet Media, a podcast development company.
  • At the time of the Anchor/Gimlet Media acquisitions, CEO Daniel Elk said he believed the podcast industry was positioned to become, “Significantly larger when you add internet-level monetization to it.”


About The Author

Spotify for Podcasters provides data on demographics, listening habits

• Podcasters, Spotify
spotify-for-podcasters-provides-data-on-demographics,-listening-habits

Spotify for Podcasters, a discovery and analytics dashboard, has come out of beta, the music streaming service announced Tuesday. The platform allows podcast creators to submit their shows and view listener demographic and engagement data, such as where people start and stop playback as well as average listening time.

Spotify-Demographicstarget podcast listeners specifically.

Now, Spotify’s analytics dashboard enables podcast creators — and the advertisers that work with them — to access more data, such as age, gender and location of listeners, the types of music they tune into, how long they listen to particular podcast episodes and where they start and stop playback.

One of podcast advertising’s biggest criticisms — solved? “In my experience, while podcast ads can result in direct conversions, more often than not, it’s a top-of-funnel broad awareness thing,” Rebekah Bek, marketing manager at Ahrefs, told Marketing Land in our quick-start guide to podcast advertising. A lack of data, difficulties in tracking conversions and attribution have prevented podcast ads from being more widely adopted.

Some podcast networks, ad agencies and other third parties, such as Nielsen, offer listener data sourced through surveys, but that information is self-reported and not available in real time. Spotify, on the other hand, requires users to sign up for an account and can provide data on demographics and listening habits for potentially all of its users, which may yield more reliable information.

forecasted to exceed $1 billion in domestic revenue in 2021.


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