How Can Brands Use Spotify in Pakistan for their Marketing

The launch of Spotify in Pakistan was a significant step in boosting the music market. Ever since the service has been introduced in the country, its popularity has increased tenfold, bringing opportunities for podcasters, musicians, and brands.

And although Spotify as a music streaming app is a great platform for creators of music, it’s also an additional platform for marketers to promote their ads in the classic FM-esque way. While audio ads on radio channels were all the rage back when it was a leading entertainment platform, social media has taken over marketing channels as a primary platform. But the increase in competition and high usage volume of different channels has led to advertisers trying to diversify their marketing and communication processes, which is why every new platform serves as an opportunity, and Spotify coming to Pakistan is another such opportunity.

How can we advertise on Spotify?

After gaining considerable popularity and becoming a household app across the world, Spotify launched its own advertising platform called the Spotify Ad Studio. Being an all-inclusive tool, the ad studio allows you to target audiences based not only on demographic and geographic features but also based on the different playlists and genres they’re listening to.

How beneficial is advertising on Spotify?

While advertising on Spotify is definitely an option, you need to consider if it is even beneficial to advertise on the platform or not. So to give you context, here are a few benefits:

• Spotify is a new platform with limited brands advertising on it and thus can be a great way of reaching your audience without facing any added clutter.
• It’s an audio platform that can enable you to tap into audio ads that are definitely something different and can add recall in terms of music and tunes.
• Because of the nature of its content and low competition, Spotify in Pakistan can allow you to reach your audience wherever they are, easily.

Currently, Httpool is Spotify’s local advertising sales representative, and the brand partner for the platform is EBM – marketers of Peek Freans, JAZZ, NESCAFÉ Pakistan, XIAOMI Pakistan, etc.

But where there are pros, there are cons too:

• Spotify’s ad platform is only available to limited advertising partners, which means you will have to be in touch with them to start advertising on the platform.
• Because of this reason, Spotify will also be more expensive in the beginning, thus available to bigger market contenders like MNCs and such.

What type of ads can I run on Spotify?

Despite the pros and cons, if you are interested in advertising on the app, you can go for two different kinds of ads:

Audio Ads:

• Ads that play in between songs at intervals.
• Ads that are played approximately every 15 minutes.
• Audio ads can be 15 to 30 seconds long.
• Spotify audio ads are unskippable.
• Available on both mobile and desktop.

Display Ads:

• Display ads can be shown on the web and desktop only.
• Can redirect to your website.
• These ads are usually shown at the bottom of the music player.

The viability of the platform is no doubt important, but what we need to see is how Pakistan’s market adapts to Spotify and makes it its own. We already have a good audience on the platform, including millennials and GenZ. But to target them, we need to have the right knowledge of the platform and target them with the right message. Till then, let’s enjoy the free and premium services and study how industry leaders are using the platform for advertising.