DIY: The benefits of self-serve advertising

Every marketer knows the frustration: You've got budget to spend, but you're tired of throwing money at campaigns that feel like black boxes. You want more control over your ad spending, more transparency into performance, and a way to reach audiences that are actually paying attention.

That's where self-serve advertising comes in—platforms like Spotify Ads Manager allow brands of all sizes to take full control of their campaigns, from targeting and budget to creative testing and real-time optimization.

Read on for a breakdown of the standout benefits of self-serve advertising for your business.

What is self-service advertising?

Essentially, self-service advertising tools use automation to help you—as a business owner—or your sales representatives, sales teams, and ad ops teams buy and manage campaigns. These platforms give brands and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the tools they need to build and customize their own ads with ease.

For small businesses on a budget looking to launch their first ad campaign, self-service advertising platforms are a great way to get started—and there's no need to hire a pricey firm or consultant to get those first ads out the door.

What are the biggest benefits of self-serve advertising?

Let's unpack some of the most notable benefits of self-serve advertising:

1. Set the budget that's right for you

À la carte advertising solutions can be expensive. Self-serve ad platforms, on the other hand, are often easier on your budget. Many also have built-in tools for managing and optimizing the amount you spend.

With Ads Manager, you can launch an advertising campaign starting at just $250. You can also manage your budget by setting bid caps for your goals. If your goal is to drive impressions, you can specify the maximum you want to spend to win those impressions. This way, you'll more easily stay within budget, and you can always adjust as needed.

2. Customize ad creative to your needs

Creating ads is easy with self-service ad platforms. Just like you might customize a meal on a food delivery app, you can pick and choose creative that tells your brand's story.

With Ads Manager, you also have access to free production tools like background tracks, audio mixing, voice actors, and calls-to-action. You can choose from our assets, upload your own, or use a combination of both.

3. Use automation to your advantage

While a self-service advertising platform requires some input, it also does a lot of the legwork for you. Ads Manager's Automatic Placement feature uses machine learning to determine where audio or video ads should appear across music and podcasts, and optimizes delivery accordingly. This not only helps you fine-tune campaigns on an as needed basis, but also lets you set and achieve specific advertising objectives.

By selecting a specific campaign objective and Automatic Placement, you’re more likely to get your message heard by the right audience— whether they’re listening to music or podcasts.

4. Reach your ideal audience with multiple targeting options

Digital audio and video ads aren't one-size-fits-all. They should speak directly to your target audience and reach users where they're already active. This is especially important for small businesses looking to get in front of local or niche customers.

That's why Ads Manager enables advertisers to use customized targeting options. For example, you might want to reach audiences based on their interests, age, location, language, or even context—like when they're cooking, working out, or studying. You may also want to explore multi-format campaigns that pair the power of audio advertising with the engagement associated with more visual tactics—like Canvas for Advertisers, or Opt-In Video ads.

For inspiration, look at gaming company Gravity Interactive: They targeted gamers up to age 44 in Brazil with Spotify's audio ads, ultimately driving impressions and reach.

5. Optimize campaigns for better results

With self-serve ad platforms, you can take learnings from past campaigns and apply them to future campaigns to improve results.

With Ads Manager, you can easily track metrics like impressions, reach, spend, clicks, and conversions for each ad and target audience. From there, you can adjust your strategy and test new ideas. Is one of your CTAs performing better than the other? Implement it across more ads. Ready to experiment with a new format? Set aside a small budget to try it out and measure results.

As an example of this type of trial and error, consider web-hosting company IONOS' multi-format campaign: The brand tested two audio and video campaigns and optimized each according to different objectives (ad impressions and driving traffic). To prevent fatigue, they also implemented frequency caps to keep content fresh. Both campaigns achieved their goals and saw impressive click-through rates (CTRs).

Long story short: Self-service ad platforms let you have full control over your advertising campaigns—and with Spotify Ads Manager, you can align your business goals with optimized ad objectives and keep growing your business reach.