Podcast Streams: A new objective to help podcasters grow their audience

With the number of global podcast listeners projected to reach 500 million in 2024¹, the potential for podcasters to reach new listeners and grow their fanbase has never been greater. But with more opportunity comes more competition to stand out. Over 160,000 new podcasts were published in 2023 alone², further expanding the vast array of shows fans have to choose from. Expecting audiences to find quality content on their own won’t work anymore. Podcasters need a way to cut through the noise in an increasingly crowded space and reach new listeners eager to find new content.

Which is why we’re thrilled to announce Podcast Streams, a brand new advertising objective in Ad Studio, our self-serve ads manager, that lets podcasters of all sizes easily promote their shows to listeners who are more likely to stream podcasts on Spotify.

Who is the Podcast Streams objective for?

If you’ve got a podcast, this objective is for you. Maybe you’re an independent podcaster looking to drive streams of your show on Spotify, or an established podcast publisher with ambitions to reach new audiences on Spotify through audio and video ads. You could also be a business or brand hoping to use your podcast as a form of branded content to build a connection with your customers.

The Podcast Streams objective takes the guesswork out of podcast promotion—now you can launch engaging campaigns for your shows, feel confident about how your campaigns are performing, and connect with potential new fans across Spotify’s 600M+ monthly active user base.³

"I was glad to be one of the first partners to test out Spotify's new Podcast Stream Objective feature as we continuously work to find new ways of growing our podcast audiences," said Devin Emery, Chief Content Officer at Morning Brew.

“Our testing, which focused on optimizing for multiple episode streams per newly acquired listener, showed encouraging signs of this being a useful new tool to drive engaged audiences to our shows."

What benefits does the Podcast Streams objective bring to podcasters?

When creating a campaign in Ad Studio, you can choose from five different objectives, including Podcast Streams. With this objective selected, you can:

1. Promote your podcast to Spotify’s 600M+ monthly active users.
2. Boost streams for your podcast using Spotify’s advanced targeting tools—optimized to serve relevant ads to the relevant audiences.
3. Leverage both audio and video formats, including vertical video, to ensure that your ad is heard and seen.
4. Make informed adjustments mid-campaign based on how listeners respond to your message in order to optimize performance.
5. Automatically re-target listeners with clickable call-to-action (CTA) cards, helping to drive traffic to your show.
6. Measure success using Streaming Conversion Metrics to understand exactly how your campaign is driving streams of your podcast and growing your audience, in real time.

How does it work?

The Podcast Streams objective lets podcasters of all sizes promote a podcast or a specific episode of a podcast on Spotify. It is powered by a model which incorporates signals from anonymized user actions on the Spotify app, in order to serve relevant ad impressions across both music and podcast inventory. These behavioral signals take your campaign beyond what standard targeting can offer, allowing us to reach an engaged audience who are more likely to listen to podcasts.

How are Podcast Streams measured?

When it comes to measuring success, Spotify can track users from the moment they see or hear your ad to the second they stream your content. The Podcast Streams objective highlights lower-funnel engagement across three campaign metrics, devised with creators in mind:

1. Streams = a stream within 14 days of exposure to the ad
2. New Listeners = # of unique users who listened to a podcast for the first time
3. New Listener Streams = # of streams from New Listeners

In addition, you can measure success by the number of times an ad is clicked.

Creative requirements & best practices

You can start leveraging the Podcast Streams objective today—but before you do, be sure to familiarize yourself with the creative requirements, and consider these best practices in order to help maximize performance.

Creative requirements