Mind, body, stream: How to reach fitness and wellness enthusiasts with audio ads

Your sister's experimenting with keto. Your neighbor's dabbling in Ayurveda. Even your meat-and-potatoes-loving dad is asking for a fitness tracker for his birthday. As for you? You're working on optimizing your nightly Zs with a new sleep-tracking device.

Today's cultural trends all have something in common: They make us feel good.

Welcome to the wellness revolution. People all over the world are working to take better care of themselves while adopting a preventative, purposeful mindset. Today, two-thirds of people say they're more conscious of looking after their physical and mental health.¹ Many are actively nurturing positive habits like getting more sleep (46%) and spending less time on social media (26%).²

All this focus on wellness has led to another trend. These days, music and podcasts are much more than just background noise. For a growing number of Spotify Free listeners, audio content is a big part of their everyday health and wellness routine.

This creates a serious audience targeting opportunity for advertisers. Here's how brands can use digital audio ads to connect with health-conscious and wellness-focused listeners.

Streaming meets self-care

Research shows that people tend to put wellness into six categories—health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness.³ Audio content plays an increasingly big role in many of these categories, helping listeners tap into their energy, relax, or entertain themselves while they practice all kinds of self-care.

Across the board, health and wellness content is gaining traction. Our data shows a year-over-year increase of 123% for streams of health-related podcasts, and more than 44% year-over-year growth in wellness playlist streams.⁴ Listeners have already created more than 97 million workout and fitness playlists on Spotify, and those numbers are on the rise.5 Top fitness and wellness activities include biking, running, weightlifting, and yoga.

But you don't have to be a gym rat to be a health and wellness enthusiast. Sure, listeners are turning on their favorite '90s jams in spin class, but they're also hearing calming bedtime stories on Wake Up/Wind Down, which is a Spotify Studios podcast, and seeking out guided meditation podcasts with hypnotherapists for hosts.

Finding balance with digital audio advertising

Similarly, today's wellness brands encompass more than the usual suspects like workout apparel companies or vegan snack purveyors. With a wide range of listeners hungry for wellness content, even unexpected brands can lean into health and wellness messaging via digital audio advertising.

For instance—regardless of your target audience, everyone needs to sleep. Our 2021 Wrapped for Advertisers campaign found that Deep Sleep and Sleep were in the top five playlists in the U.S., coming in at numbers two and five.⁶ Nearly 70% of millennial and Gen Z Spotify Free listeners believe that audio is healing, while 69% say they use audio to reduce stress levels. What's more, close to half of listeners (47%) say audio is a more "wholesome" type of content than visual content.⁷

All of this means that brands of every stripe can capitalize on this year-round cultural moment. Whether you're a retailer or fitness company, a petcare brand looking to reach active dog owners, or a new productivity platform with a focus on work-life balance, there's space for you in this wellness-oriented world.

Getting your audio ad strategy into shape

Since audio now plays a prime role in health-conscious peoples' lives, digital audio advertising is an ideal way to engage with them. Here are a few tips to create a healthy and robust audio ad strategy.

• Use Spotify's self-serve ad platform to create engaging ads. Reaching health and wellness enthusiasts is easy on Spotify. Use Spotify Ad Studio to create targeted and entertaining audio, video, and podcast advertising campaigns.
• Tailor your audio ad to a fitness or wellness audience. With 65% of listeners reporting they like ads to feel tailor-made to them, it's important to focus on topics your target customers care about—from organic ingredients and materials to the time-saving or stress-busting perks of your products.⁸
• Leverage audio to immerse listeners in your brand. If your brand is all about maintaining a mindful lifestyle, convey that by using soothing, relaxing music in your ads. By the same token, you can appeal to your fitness-forward customers by featuring upbeat music that gets them pumped up.
• Measure your results. Take advantage of Ad Studio's ads manager and real-time reporting tools to assess the performance of your audio, video, display, and podcast ads—and optimize your campaign for even more impressive results.

With access to a huge health and wellness audience and simple-to-use tools for creating memorable ads, your brand can manifest great results. Learn more about getting started with Ad Studio.