Audio video advertising: the ultimate tonic for campaign success

Choosing the right ad format for your advertising campaign could be the difference between success and failure: Will your audience respond more positively to audio ads, in screenless moments? Or will they engage more with a video ad that leaves a lasting impression? Largely, it depends on which medium best fits your objectives and message—but this isn’t always so easy to predict.

Ad Studio, Spotify’s self-serve advertising platform, lets you combine audio video advertising to maximize the impact of your message, and mitigate the risk of getting the ad format wrong. With both audio and video integrated into your campaign, you can create captivating, personalized ads for your target audience based on how they tend to interact with the Spotify app.

Let’s take a look at the individual benefits of audio and video advertising, and see how some advertisers have leveraged both to create ad campaigns that blew the roof off their target metrics.

The benefits of audio ads

Soundtracking “unreachable” moments

It’s no secret that people are on Spotify to listen—whether it’s for entertainment, motivation, or simply to enhance the moment. In our sound-on environment, audio ads fit seamlessly into listeners’ experience, letting advertisers connect with listeners in moments when visual media can’t.

Flexibility and efficiency

With Ad Studio, all you need is a script for your audio ad. We can help you with the rest—for free. You can also record and upload your own ad, if you prefer. Either way, you don’t need to limit yourself to one creative idea—you can easily create multiple versions of your message to test engagement, or even add video elements to create an immersive audio visual experience for your listeners.

Immersing the listener

With audio media advertising, there’s no limit to storytelling—it can communicate emotions and capture moods in seconds, prompting listeners to paint a picture with their imagination. And you don’t need a huge budget or production crew to make it happen.

A multi-sensory experience

Video ads on other platforms are often played on mute, but not on Spotify. The sound-on environment means you can tell stories with both audio and visual elements — and feel confident they’re being seen and heard. Plus, this sensory combo extends your creative options, giving you the immersiveness of audio with the helpful visual cues of video.

Cross-channel throughlines

If you’re running a big campaign across other visual channels like TV, social, or out-of-home, it can be helpful to tap into Spotify’s visual moments to quickly associate your Spotify ad with your overall campaign.

Product visualization

If you’re introducing a new, tangible product, video can be a salient way to drive immediate product understanding without requiring absolute concentration. The added visual component helps people see what you’re promoting and gives you the opportunity to show the context in which your product is used.

Video storytelling in action

Using Spotify Ad Studio’s Video Takeover, Unilever made humorous, hip-hop-scored video shorts for its AXE Gold body spray in Germany. Check out the spot below to see how visual storytelling captivates with multiple sensory inputs.

The case for audio video advertising

Spotify’s ad technology is fuelled by user context, meaning we optimize when to serve a video ad and when to serve an audio ad based on how a listener is interacting with the app. We serve audio ads when listeners are streaming and not looking at their screens, and video ads when the Spotify app is in focus. To tap into both moments, it’s best to run audio and video together and let Ad Studio determine when the right message is likely to be received.

We’ve seen that running audio visual advertising increases ad recall by 90% and results in a 2.2x increase in brand awareness.¹ So while each format has its own superpowers, running both formats at once tells a holistic, impactful story to listeners.

Advertisers are already seeing successful results from combining audio visual advertising with Spotify Ad Studio. Check out the case studies below to see the huge rewards that audio video advertising can bring—or cut to the chase and get started on your own audio video advertising campaign today.