Learn from Success Stories! The “MIC” Planning Method for Spotify Ads

Spotify is the service with the largest user base in Japan’s music distribution and audio streaming sectors. It continues to grow globally, with monthly active users (MAU) reaching 675 million worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024 (a 12% increase year-over-year). Of these, 425 million are ad-supported Free users (*1), and the platform is expanding its reach as an advertising medium.

In this article, we’ll introduce “MIC,” a planning method that leverages Spotify ads to drive user action in a cost-effective manner. If you’re looking to run Spotify ads more cost-effectively, lack expertise in audio ad production, or are unsure how to combine them with other media, we hope you’ll find this article helpful.

<Table of Contents>
▼What Is the “MIC” Planning Method?
▼[Moment] Capturing the Commute Home to Achieve High Brand Lift
▼ [Immersive] Promoting Products to Comedy-Loving Listeners with a Highly Relevant Tone
▼ [Cross-Media] Boosting Awareness Lift Through the Combined Use of Audio and Video

What Is the “MIC” Planning Method?

Spotify users spend an average of two hours per day on the platform (*2), enjoying music and content during all kinds of moments—such as commuting to work or school, exercising, driving, and relaxing at home.

Since usage is particularly high during the day (*3)—when users tend to look away from their smartphone screens—adding Spotify ads to daytime media plans—which are difficult to reach via visual media such as video platforms and social media—enables you to deliver your message throughout the entire day.

Furthermore, by aligning with users’ moments and analyzing their moods and emotions based on the genres and playlists they’re listening to—and leveraging this data for targeting—advertisers can create “personalized” messages that resonate more deeply with each individual user.

Spotify is often used by “fandoms” of K-POP, rock bands, anime, and other genres as a platform for “supporting their favorites.” By connecting with these fans on Spotify, advertisers can harness their positive enthusiasm—their desire to “support their favorites”—for marketing purposes.

A Spotify survey found that 93% of users maintain their engagement with content on Spotify even when transitioning to ads (*4), indicating that users’ positive listening attitudes lead to high ad engagement.

In Spotify’s annual “Culture Next” survey on Gen Z, 74% of Japanese Gen Z respondents stated that “Spotify is the ultimate antidote to doomscrolling” (*5). As many young people crave positive experiences and authentic connections, Spotify has become a remedy for “social media fatigue.”

Against this backdrop, many advertisers are now utilizing Spotify ads, anticipating the high levels of engagement that stem from positive connections and the unique moments that only Spotify ads can capture.

Based on numerous advertising case studies, the joint team from Spotify and Dentsu Inc. identified several common factors among campaigns that delivered particularly strong results. From these insights, they developed “MIC,” a planning methodology designed to drive user action cost-effectively.

“MIC” enables advertisers to significantly boost campaign effectiveness by focusing on “Moment,” “Immersive,” and “Cross-media” when running ad campaigns. Let’s now explain the key points of using real-world examples.

[Moment] Capturing the Commute Home to Achieve High Brand Lift

As mentioned earlier, Spotify is used across a wide range of moments—including times when users aren’t looking at a screen, such as during commutes, workouts, drives, or while relaxing at home. Another key characteristic is that over 80% of users listen via earbuds or headphones. Given these circumstances,

• What kinds of moments or situations do we want to reach people in?
• How should we target them to reach these people?
• What kind of creative content best matches these moments?

By designing ads that take these factors into account, you can maximize effectiveness.

Suntory’s “Kinmugi” designed a campaign targeting the “commute home”—a time when people look forward to their evening drink—to promote it as a beer-style beverage perfect for daily home consumption.

Ad delivery was limited to the hours between 5:00 PM and midnight. The ad creative featured “Kinmugi waiting at home, speaking to the husband who has just returned,” and a total of 15 different audio creatives were prepared and delivered on a rotating daily basis so that listeners could relate them to their own situations. Since audio content is often listened to as part of a daily routine, the campaign aimed to foster a sense of attachment to the entire ad series by depicting a different scenario each day.

This campaign demonstrated consistently high advertising effectiveness across the entire funnel, from brand awareness to purchase intent. In particular, brand awareness achieved exceptionally high results even when compared to typical video ad awareness lifts, and we observed a lift in purchase intent despite the short exposure time. It can be said that the campaign’s design—which effectively captured the “on-the-go” moments where Spotify excels and the listeners’ listening attitudes—led to a high cost per brand lift.

[Immersive] Promoting Products to Comedy-Loving Listeners in a Highly Relevant Tone

Spotify users are often deeply immersed in their favorite songs and content as fans. Therefore, it is crucial that ads played between songs do not disrupt the user’s immersion. By being mindful of the “white space” inherent in audio—and avoiding overloading the message—we aim to fine-tune the content to the level of the audio itself and achieve high advertising effectiveness.

Ajinomoto’s “Cook Do® Kaori Paste®” has been running an ongoing Spotify audio ad campaign primarily to promote brand awareness and product understanding among younger audiences. As part of the campaign and to test the effectiveness of creative optimization, the company delivered audio ads targeted at a specific audience: “comedy fans.”

The ads were aired during “All Night Nippon (ANN),” a popular podcast series distributed exclusively on Spotify. To align with ANN’s heavy focus on comedy content, the campaign featured comedians. The comedians wrote the scripts themselves, and the product’s features were highlighted through a three-part, sketch-style creative that told a story spanning from the identification of a need to the actual purchase of the brand.

You can listen to the ad here

According to a brand lift survey, among those who were exposed to the ad and recognized the brand, scores for brand awareness, favorability, and consideration were all higher than among those who were not exposed to the ad. We believe this success was due to approaching users who enjoy comedy content with creative content that resonated well with them, while effectively highlighting the product’s features in a memorable way without disrupting their listening experience.

Additionally, one effective way to promote a brand without disrupting the music-listening experience is through “brand playlists”—a method unique to Spotify that conveys a brand’s worldview through music.

To allow users to experience the brand’s worldview through music, Suntory’s whiskey brand “SUNTORY WORLD WHISKY Ao” created a brand playlist inspired by “Highball with a Sea Breeze,” one of its recommended ways to enjoy the drink. We drove traffic to this playlist from various platforms and social media. The ability to cultivate a brand image through curated music rather than advertising is unique to audio platforms.

Click here for the“SUNTORY WORLD WHISKY Ao”Spotify playlist

[Cross-Media] Boosting Brand Awareness Through the Integrated Use of Audio and Video

When running TV commercials and video ads, we also utilized Spotify audio ads to create a cross-media campaign. By delivering messages through both visual and auditory channels using creative content that leverages the unique characteristics of each medium, we were able to further enhance the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

KDDI has previously conducted promotions using various media, such as TV and social media, to raise awareness of its high-speed Wi-Fi service “WiMAX +5G” (a service provided by UQ Communications).Noting that Spotify has a large user base of people in their 20s—the service’s primary target audience—and that it allows for engagement with the target audience even during moments when they aren’t looking at a screen, such as while working or commuting, KDDI launched a cross-media campaign that combined Spotify audio ads with the video media it had been using.

The campaign rolled out a unified “WiMAX +5G” message across various video platforms and Spotify. On Spotify, the company produced and distributed a variety of audio ad formats tailored specifically for the platform, including conversational skits, quizzes, and music ads.

You can listen to the ad (dialogue-based ad) here

Click here to listen to the ad (quiz format)

Click here to listen to the ad (music format)

As a result, while Spotify ads alone generated significant brand lift, an even higher level of brand lift was observed when Spotify ads were combined with video ads. When comparing brand lift among those exposed to and those not exposed to ads across multiple media channels, the brand lift for users exposed to both Spotify and video ads was up to 1.4 times higher than for those exposed only to video ads.

In this article, we introduced the “MIC” planning methodology for Spotify ads. “Moment,” “Immersive,” and “Cross Media” are all effective planning approaches that leverage the unique user experience offered by Spotify. We will continue to support our clients’ business growth through this “MIC” methodology.

Source:
*1 Spotify first-party data (Q4 2024)
*2 GWI Global Study (June 2024)
*3 Spotify first-party data (September 2024), Intage integrated audience reach data (August 2024)
*4 Sonic Science Study, 1st Edition: Neuro-Insight and Spotify (June 2021)
*5 Spotify Culture Next Vol. 6 Survey E1: Japan (July 2024)