How much does a Spotify Ad Cost?
As we discussed elsewhere, we know that Frequency (number of times a message is heard by an individual) is more important than Reach (number of unique individuals that hear your message). We also discussed how to focus advertising spending with Geo-fencing (limiting coverage area) and Demographics (including gender, age, and lifestyle habits). This pricing example includes Voice Creative providing professional copy writing, voice actors, audio-engineering, zip-code research and planning, the online time purchase at Spotify or Pandora or both, and banners. This does not include the costs for a proper landing page.


Our fictional store is a local coffee chain in Columbus, Ohio. We’ll call it Ripley’s Roast. They are not the only coffee store in town. Ripley’s Roast wants to improve their traffic, so they have decided to invest in advertising. Here is how Ripley’s Roast, and your business, can grow your customer base with Zipvertising (Voice Creative’s service that helps business’s get the most out of audio-streaming advertising).
Option 1: Cover the market, even where there’s no local Ripley’s Roast. This can be done in traditional radio, but broadcast radio doesn’t allow for the targeting like we discussed elsewhere. Broadcast reaches everyone listening to that station, whether they are interested or not. With Zipvertising, we can target just those with a preference for coffee and not spend extra money on those that do not.


With Spotify, there is no option to limit exposure to just coffee drinkers, but you can narrow the focus to those listening in cars, or have a preference for food, or embrace health and lifestyle. With a three month schedule on Spotify, you’ll need a budget of $25,000.00. This estimates that the campaign will reach approximately 120,000 unique individuals 3-4 times, for up to 360,000 total plays. Roughly, your expense is 7 cents per impression to cover the market.
On Pandora, we can target coffee drinkers, but we may also include commuters. Also, Pandora includes re-targetting, allowing the banner ad to display again for each listener when they have returned to using their screens. With Pandora the estimated cost for a three month schedule is $33,000. The estimated reach is 163,900 impressions, with a frequency of 3 to 4 impressions. Total impressions is estimated to be 473,500. Cost per audio impression is about 7 cents. Re-targetting of the banners is included.


Option 2: Cover just the zip codes where there is a Ripley’s Roast. A huge advantage here is that the campaign can target each individual zip code (geo-fencing) and the message can be location focused, perhaps on the address of the local Ripley’s Roast.
With Spotify, narrowing the focus to those listening in cars, or have a preference for food, or embrace health and lifestyle, you’ll need a budget of just $1,000.00 per zip code for the three month schedule. This estimates that the campaign will reach approximately 1000 unique individuals 4-6 times, for up to 5,000 total plays. Roughly, your expense per zip code is roughly 20 cents per impression.


On Pandora, targeting coffee drinkers and commuters (with the banner re-targetting when they are in front of their screens again). The estimated cost for a three month schedule is $1,250 per zip code. The estimated reach is 6,000 total plays, with a frequency of 3 to 4 plays. Total impressions/plays is estimated to be 19,000. Cost per audio impression is about 6.6 cents. Re-targetting of the banners is included.
Adding just 1% of listeners to your customer list at pennies an impression is why we know advertising to be an investment. Our recommendation is Option 2, using Pandora, then adding Option 1 Spotify to run concurrently. Remember, this is not about who has the largest number of listeners, the new way of economically buying audio advertising is repeatedly reaching the people that will buy from you when they know about you. Of course, these are rough estimates and your situation will vary. For a customized plan, contact us.
