Last week, Spotify launched its newest ad experience “Branded Moments” and we were lucky enough to have the guys from Spotify – Chris and Greg – come over to OMD UK to talk about it!
Branded Moments is a first-to-market ad solution that enables brands to engage with their audience in real-time moments!
Millennials are the streaming generation – 71% of us stream music on a weekly basis and the leading platform is mobile. Here’s where Spotify comes to life, bringing the world’s finest music to our fingertips – curated and personalised playlists for working out, commuting, partying and, of course, my favourite feature: Discover Weekly and Release Radar!
Spotify Moments – what is it all about?
Spotify is bringing its first vertical video ads through Branded Moments, giving users 30 minutes of commercial-free listening music afterwards. It’s all about reaching the audience in a specific context based on the playlists they are listening to.
The Branded Moments are based around six categories: Workout, Chill time, Dinner, Focus, Sleep and Part(ee)y! The ads will be centred on the six moods of the day and will play when a user first opens the playlist. When the user selects a playlist and hits shuffle play, they will get a branded offer announcing that the next 30 minutes of music will not be interrupted by ads and will be served a vertical video, not a classic TV-like ad, but an engaging video allowing the brand to have sequential creatives changing the message throughout the experience.
While a Branded Moment offers users 30 minutes of ad-free listening following the vertical video, display ads are used whenever the app is accessed during that period to continue the brand immersion.
This is a massive new feature for brands – considering that Spotify has over 70m ‘non-subscriber’ users who hear ads on the platform! Spotify doesn’t have the” Sound Off” issues Facebook does in many of its adverts and with new concepts like Branded Moments it clearly demonstrates the desire to focus on advertisers’ needs for video formats in the ever growing mobile world. Spotify announced that they are still try to figure out the pricing model, but it would most likely be a cost-per-moment (when was the last time a KPI sounded so emotional?) rather than the CPM base pricing.
Here’s how it works: