Spotify is currently beta-testing a new “follow” feature that allows marketers to send content in the form of branded playlists to Spotify users. This feature is one of the many brand-based projects Spotify is working on for the next year.
Since expanding to the United States, Spotify has focused on building up its sales and advertising teams in order to establish relationships with advertisers. This new feature will allow brands to work with Spotify in a way that they never have before, giving them the opportunity to build their own presence on the service much like they would with a Facebook or Twitter page.
“The real question from our agency council is how can we help them explain [to their clients] that our platform is more than just radio,” said Jeff Levic to Ad Age. Levic serves as Spotify’s chief sales, marketing and international growth officer. Through the follow feature, brands can create playlists that promote their company message or relate to their product, which Spotify users can then choose to follow. This will not only give brands the opportunity to reach out to users in a personal and interactive way, but it will also mean that users elect to receive ad content. By choosing to follow a brand on Spotify, a user, even one of the 6 million paying for the ad-free subscription service, will be within reach for advertisers.
For example, a car company could easily create a handful of playlists focused around driving, cars or travel with themes like “Road Trip Songs,” “Stuck-in-Traffic Playlist,” or “Beach Tunes.” This new feature is especially handy for car companies because of the nature of Spotify and the times at which people tend use it. Were any car company to make a “Road Trip Songs” playlist filled with music to keep you driving through that last hour before your destination, the road trippers of America would be able to choose that as one of their playlist options for long drives. The same goes for commuters who encounter the traffic of rush hour on their way home or the high school kids spending their first summer with a new car driving to the beach.
In addition to the typical ad targeting by age, gender and geo-location, Spotify is also looking to expand with interest-level information to reach people listening to certain genres or artists. This could boost a company’s ad revenue and allow brands to target users based on things like whether they listen to the band used in that brand’s latest commercial campaign. While all these plans are still in the testing phase, it looks like they will provide an interesting new way to reach users personally, non-invasively, and creatively.
[Source: Ad Age]
