The Potential of Spotify Ads as Revealed by “Attention,” the New Metric for Advertising Effectiveness

In an era where it is difficult to build genuine engagement with consumers through advertising, the industry is turning its attention to “attention” (whether an ad has captured the viewer’s attention) as a new advertising metric.

In this article, based on the joint research report by Spotify Japan and Dentsu Japan International Brands Inc. (*1), titled “The Impact of Music Streaming Ads on Brands” (released April 1, 2025), we will introduce the potential of Spotify ads as indicated by “attention,” supported by evidence.

Why is “Attention” Gaining Attention?

In recent years, the way people consume content has changed significantly. On smartphones, short videos play continuously, and users can easily swipe to skip to the next one. It’s also becoming common to watch videos on a TV while scrolling through social media on a smartphone. The digital landscape is diverse, and for clients placing ads within this environment, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to capture consumers’ interest and build genuine engagement through advertising.

Impressions are a standard metric for measuring ad effectiveness. While this metric has long been used in Japan, it does not account for whether users actually saw the ad. Another metric is viewability; although this goes a step further than impressions, it still cannot assess whether users actually paid attention to the ad. For this reason, advertisers are beginning to incorporate “attention-based metrics” in addition to the two metrics mentioned above.

Attention is measured using algorithms developed based on the results of large-scale eye-tracking and behavioral observation studies conducted worldwide. The key difference from the two metrics mentioned earlier is that “attention-based metrics” can capture the level of focus on the ad itself, allowing for an accurate assessment of whether the ad was actually seen by the user and how long it held their attention.

“Attention-based metrics” are designed to measure not only whether an ad was “seen,” but also whether it “truly captured the viewer’s attention.” By incorporating “attention-based metrics” into ad effectiveness measurement, marketers can evaluate campaign performance in a comprehensive and meaningful way, enabling them to develop more effective media strategies.

The key attention metric is “Attention per mille (APM),” which is calculated as follows.

APM allows you to evaluate how much attention was gained per 1,000 impressions. Furthermore, by measuring APM for each advertising medium, you can compare the “quality” of ad impressions across different media.

Until now, media planning has often been based on the assumption that all impressions have the same value, regardless of the media or advertisement. However, this assumption did not take into account the fact that the cost and effectiveness of a single ad can vary significantly depending on the media—such as television, social media in-feed ads, and pre-roll ads.

Since 2019, dentsu—including its overseas group companies—has published the “Attention Economy” research report in collaboration with leading media companies at its offices in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. The Attention Economy study is the industry’s first global survey focused specifically on attention and is one of the world’s largest initiatives in terms of scale and scope.

By utilizing eye-tracking and AI technologies to visualize and quantify user attention toward ads based on their gaze and viewing behavior, this study aims to establish a new standard for evaluating “the actual value of ads delivered,” rather than simply “ads displayed.”

Furthermore, in recent years, we have begun conducting APM-based research in Japan in collaboration with partner companies such as Spotify, Lumen Research (hereinafter “Lumen”) (*2), and Realeyes (*3), and it has become clear that ads that garner high levels of attention also contribute to brand recall (*4).

The graph below shows the brand recall rates for each ad creative, broken down by attention level, based on the Attention Economy Survey.It shows that brand recall rates increase as average viewing time increases. The higher the attention level (i.e., the longer the average viewing time for an ad), the greater the effect on boosting brand recall rates (a metric representing the percentage of consumers who first recall a specific brand or product name within a given category). On the other hand, viewability does not show a strong correlation with improved brand recall rates.

Each data point represents a test ad: sample size (20), excluding outliers and live streaming

Dentsu Japan International Brands Inc. has seen an increase in inquiries regarding attention research, and in Japan as well, there are growing numbers of clients adopting attention as an advertising effectiveness metric. Among the company’s global clients, there was an initiative in 2024 to establish attention as one of the media KPIs and to measure and evaluate it across media channels.Furthermore, in addition to visualizing the impact of attention, optimization efforts—such as increasing ad delivery to media and placements with high attention performance—are accelerating.

Spotify Ads: Sustained Attention Is a Key Strength

In the Attention Economy Study, Lumen’s latest eye-tracking technology was used to examine attention toward digital format ads on various platforms. Spotify video ads were among those studied.

However, audio ads cannot be measured using this technology. Therefore, dentsu—which has been conducting ongoing research with Lumen—leveraged an algorithm capable of estimating APM for audio ads with high accuracy through its exclusive partnership with Lumen. This algorithm

・Ad exposure time
• Brand recall
・Improvement in brand preference
• forced and voluntary attention

—all factors that influence APM—based on analysis of vast amounts of data.

The study found that while attention to many of the ad formats surveyed drops by about half within 2–3 seconds of the ad appearing, attention to Spotify ads tends to remain sustained until the very end.

*The study compared ad formats across various platforms. The graph above shows a selection of these results.
*Letters are randomly assigned to each graph to distinguish between the same ad formats across multiple platforms (e.g., “in-stream ads”). Since letters are assigned on a per-graph basis, the formats analyzed in the graphs within this article may not be identical.
*The study was designed to minimize the influence of creative assets as much as possible, such as by using the same brand’s creative across multiple formats.

When examining the same data using the APM metric, Spotify’s video ads garnered approximately three times more attention than the “In-Stream Ad A” format included in the survey, and approximately five times more than the “Social Media Ad B” format. Audio ads also demonstrated high effectiveness.

Furthermore, for both Spotify video and audio ads, attention remained sustained even with longer-duration creatives, resulting in higher APM values as the duration increased. Based on these results, it appears that Spotify ads are effective even with creatives of up to 30 seconds—the maximum allowed for ad delivery.

Why Do Both Video and Audio Ads on Spotify Generate Such High Levels of Attention?

There are several possible main reasons for the high attention levels in Spotify’s video and audio ads. First, the app’s overall user experience (UX) is smooth and pleasant, designed to engage users. Second, there is a high level of acceptance toward ads. Since the content on Spotify is so compelling, we speculate that users think, “It’s fine to spend a little time on an ad if I can enjoy the music or content I want to listen to afterward.”

Third, the opportunity cost of skipping the ads is high. Spotify’s audio ads are delivered between songs. Ads never interrupt the playback of a song. Video ads generally follow the same pattern as audio ads: they play only between songs and only at moments when the user is interacting with the screen—such as when they’re swiping—indicating they’re looking at the screen.

Since neither type of ad can be skipped, users naturally end up watching or listening to them. As a result, users tend to accept ads as part of the content, creating an environment where brand messages are more likely to resonate.
　
Because the design prioritizes the user experience of enjoying music, another survey by Spotify Japan found that 85% of Japanese users responded that Spotify ads are “not intrusive.”

Furthermore, data from a global Spotify survey indicates that engagement with Spotify’s content translates almost directly into engagement with its ads.

Spotify’s brand-safe ad delivery environment is highly regarded by many brands concerned about where their ads appear. In fact, there are even cases where advertisers who do not have audio ad creatives continue to run campaigns on Spotify using only video ads.

Given these characteristics of Spotify’s advertising, it can be inferred that Spotify users tend to maintain their attention for both video and audio ads.

In fact, according to the results of a meta-analysis that collected and analyzed Brand Lift Surveys (BLS) data from Spotify’s audio ads, it was confirmed that even when frequency (the number of times a single user is exposed to an ad) is increased to 6, 7, or 8 times or more, the ads still effectively boost brand awareness, interest, and purchase or usage intent. This is believed to be because, while maintaining a high level of sustained attention, users perceive the ads as “not pushy.”

Furthermore, in a KDDI advertising campaign, the residual effect of brand awareness from Spotify audio ads was compared with that of video ads on other media platforms, both immediately after the campaign and two weeks later. The results showed that, with brand awareness immediately after the campaign set at 100%, Spotify audio ads maintained brand awareness 1.6 times longer than video ads.

Ensuring that users recognize a brand or campaign efficiently, effectively, and in a brand-safe environment—while sustaining that recognition in a way that is hard to forget—is a key challenge for many marketers. Spotify’s video and audio ads are likely to be effective solutions to this challenge.

As the digital media environment surrounding users becomes increasingly complex, Spotify ads have the potential to make a strong impact in terms of attention through both video and audio formats. The Dentsu Group and Spotify Japan will continue to conduct research on the effectiveness of Spotify ads.

*1 Dentsu Japan International Brands Inc.: A company engaged in integrated online and offline media planning and consulting.

*2 Lumen Research: One of the world’s leading attention technology companies, Lumen Research uses large-scale biometric datasets based on eye-tracking to deepen our understanding of human attention and help brands convert attention into action.To understand consumer ad viewing behavior across all online and offline media, the company pioneered the development of patented eye-tracking technology for creative attention research and continues to evolve, focusing on enabling brands to plan, buy, measure, and optimize attention-based advertising across all media types.

*3 Realeyes: Realeyes is a global leader in computer vision AI that measures and predicts human attention and emotional responses. Trusted by over 200 clients in more than 90 markets, Realeyes’ PreView solution has been extensively validated to drive results from awareness through to sales, combining human and synthetic measurements to enhance the effectiveness of all types of advertising. The company partners with numerous organizations, including Mars, Meta, Google, and dentsu.

*4 For more details, please refer to the report “New Metrics for Advertising Effectiveness: The Attention Economy, ” published by Dentsu Japan International Brands Inc. in October 2024.