How to create an advertising plan to meet your goals

What is an advertising plan?

In essence, an advertising plan is a master document that outlines the strategies you intend to use to achieve your pre-determined goals. Messaging, budget, marketing tactics... they're all included in this comprehensive outline.

Having such a plan in place ensures that everyone involved in the campaign is aligned and prepared to execute their portion of the strategy. The more information you can pack in to help guide them—and make sure they stay on the right path—the better.

The same goes for information related to your specific industry. There's a big difference between retail, automotive, financial services, and entertainment advertising—so whether you're engaged with a brand in one of these spaces or launching something else entirely, you'll need a customized approach. Before you dive in, familiarize yourself with industry insights and trends to tailor your marketing strategy to the audiences that are most relevant to your brand.

Planning your 2024 advertising strategy on Spotify

Planning out your advertising strategy for the year is never easy, but can be one of the best ways to stay efficient and effective throughout the ebbs and flows of the calendar year. To help create your advertising plan, we've outlined some tips and insights into how to create an effective 2024 ad strategy on Spotify.

Win the hearts (and ears) of Gen Z

Gen Z now represents $360 billion in buying power—more than double an estimate from just a few years ago.¹ Now more than ever, they are a must-win audience, and luckily, Gen Z loves spending time on Spotify. In the first half of 2023, Gen Z listened to songs more than 560 billion times and podcast episodes more than 3 billion times—a 76% increase over the year prior, making them our fastest-growing cohort in music and podcast listening on Spotify.²

Reach your audience, their way

The most successful brands craft experiences that connect with their audience where they’re most leaned in. On Spotify, over 574 million fans tune in every month—361 million of whom are ad-supported tier, and logged in 100% of the time.³ With its massive and engaged audience, Spotify is the perfect platform for brands to effectively reach listeners with the right message, at the right time, and on their preferred device. It’s not just audio, either—campaigns that leverage multiple ad formats are likely to perform better, according to our research.⁴

Download the Press Play: Your 2024 Spotify Advertising Planning Guide to dig into the data.

Build smart creative that drives results

When it comes to creative strategy, we’ve seen the most success when brands take a true platform-first approach to their creative instead of repurposing existing assets. In our 2023 Sonic Science report, 73% of study participants said they are open to listening to ads on audio streaming services, if the tone fits what they are doing at the time.⁵

Once the creative strategy is set, you’ll want to make sure it drives measurable results. With Spotify, advertisers can monitor how their campaigns perform across the entire customer journey—through first-party solutions for hyper-detailed insights, as well as third-party partnerships to provide standardization and further data.

Align with culture-defining voices

Aligning with podcast creators is a smart strategy for any brand that wants to tap into the deep rapport and trust established between a podcast host and their audience. A study from Magna and Vox Media found that 75% of consumers cite podcast hosts as the most influential figures driving their purchasing decisions, which is even more influential than social media influencers.⁶

At Spotify, we’re constantly creating new ways for listeners to experience podcasts—and for advertisers to reach them effectively. Download our 2024 Planning Guide to find out how you can align with podcasters to make the most of podcast advertising in the year ahead.

Make seasonal moments more memorable

Listeners turn to Spotify to enhance seasonal and cultural moments throughout the year, creating great opportunities for brands to show up with a timely message that enriches the experience. In fact, a recent survey revealed that half of advertisers plan to advertise during seasonal moments in 2024.⁷

From the Holiday Season, to Valentine's Day, to Pride, there are many seasonal moments that brands can use to create engaging, culturally relevant ads that resonate with your brand’s key audiences. Download our 2024 Planning Guide below for Spotify listening data that can help guide you to advertising success throughout the calendar year.

General tips for creating an advertising plan

Whether you’re planning to advertise on Spotify or any other channel,, you'll want your advertising plan to deliver on six main points:

Target audience

Who's your brand targeting? Be as specific as possible here, and be sure to include demographics like age, gender, and geographic region, as well as psychographics like interests, lifestyle preferences, and behavior. This info can help you create a marketing persona—essentially a fictional representation of your target customer for the campaign—which helps your creative team visualize the people they're speaking to.

Schedule/ timing

When will your advertising campaign run? How long will it last? When and how often does your target audience make a purchase? Answering these questions will help you decide which platforms and formats to choose, how you apply your budget, and what kinds of creative to produce. Researching your audience will help you reach them effectively during seasonal marketing campaigns.

Channels/formats

Whether print, email or digital audio, it's vital to outline the channels you intend to use to reach your desired audience, along with the ad formats you hope to use in your campaign. For advertisers leveraging Spotify, you can specify whether the campaign will use digital audio ads, video advertising, or both. If you plan on using Spotify Ad Studio, our self-serve ads manager, you can use automatic placement to leverage machine learning that determines where your ads will appear—across music and podcasts. Or you could advertise via a sponsored playlist if you're interested in a more custom campaign.

Content

This is the part of your advertising plan that allows you to showcase your strategy for the campaign's creative—the fun stuff like slick design, snappy copy, or compelling audio. Any specific designs or messaging you need to include should go into this section.

Cost/budget

What are the projected costs associated with your campaign? How will you allocate your budget? Without due diligence, you could end up overspending. But through careful consideration, you can arrive at a budget value that makes sense for what you want to achieve and guides your ad-buying decisions throughout the campaign.

Measurement/metrics

No advertising plan is complete without a strategy for evaluating results. Determine your primary success metrics, like whether you're seeking to meet a particular sales goal or achieve an optimal click-through rate (CTR). When it comes to digital audio ad campaigns, Spotify Ad Analytics can be a useful resource for tracking progress toward meeting these goals.

Advertising plan example template

Here's what a sample advertising plan might look like in nine slides. Use a presentation format that works best for you—whether that's a slide deck, a shared document, or a spreadsheet—and make sure that whatever you choose is easily accessible to all campaign stakeholders.