Remember the days when listening to your favorite artist meant buying a record or CD?
While vinyl album sales are on a strong upward trajectory, it’s fair to say we’re living in the digital music age. Streaming overtook physical sales and downloads for the first time in 2018, and it’s hard to see that trend reversing any time soon.
Which is music to the ears of the streaming industry, with 91 percent of US internet users listening via some kind of streaming service in 2023:
Spotify has long dominated the US music streaming market for years, but it’s coming under increasing pressure from Amazon Music and Apple Music — two platforms backed by massive brands with money to burn on ads.
So we decided to dive into Adbeat’s competitive intelligence data to understand how those three streaming giants are using display advertising to woo American consumers.
Let’s dance…
Spotify
Ad spend and networks
We estimate Spotify has shelled out approximately $5.6 million on display advertising in the US over the past six months, with three-quarters of its display ad budget dedicated to video ads. But it’s also spent plenty of money on programmatic ads, which — as we’ll see — seems to be a popular channel for reaching streaming customers.
Publishers
You won’t be shocked to learn that the overwhelming majority of Spotify’s display ads are placed on YouTube — or that its top YouTube channels are all music-themed. However, we were a little surprised to see a couple classic acts mixing it with contemporary names like Selena Gomez and Rihanna. Who knew The Police were still so popular?
Outside of YouTube, it’s a real mixed bag, with Spotify’s five most popular publishers also including:
- Hong Kong-based meme community 9GAG
- Sempre Milan, a news site dedicated to Italian soccer team AC Milan
- Greek sports news site SPORT24
- Athlinks, a platform for amateur athletes to track race results
The last one makes sense — lots of people listen to music while they’re out for a run. As for the others, we can only assume Spotify is trying to target diaspora populations.
Creatives
Standard
You’d probably assume Spotify’s standard ads would be primarily geared toward driving signups from non-streaming subscribers or users of other streaming platforms. But you’d be wrong, because most of its top standard ads by spend are actually targeting podcasters:
But this approach makes total sense when you learn that Spotify made ~$109 million in ad revenue from podcasts in 2021, with that figure set to reach an estimated $414 million in 2024.
Of course, there’s still the occasional ad aimed at luring new Spotify Premium customers:
Native
Spotify does run some native ads, like this example…
…but it barely spends any money on them.
For whatever reason, native ads just don’t play a significant role in Spotify’s display ad strategy.
Video
Video ads, on the other hand, are clearly a major focus for Spotify. But it prefers to split its (sizable) budget between dozens of different creatives rather than putting all its eggs in one musical basket.
Its top video ads by spend include a collaboration with gaming brand StartSelect…
…a teaser for its annual Wrapped marketing campaign…
…and a reminder that you can listen to The Weeknd’s greatest hits on Spotify:
It’s an eclectic bunch. But we guess it makes sense to promote a broad range of artists and brands when your product essentially incorporates every piece of music in the world.
Landing pages
Spotify’s biggest landing page isn’t actually a dedicated landing page at all — it’s just the platform’s standard Premium page.
While we’d generally recommend taking the time to create dedicated, campaign-specific landing pages, Spotify’s Premium page does a pretty good job. It’s clutter-free, with no irrelevant links to distract would-be customers from signing up — just a big CTA prompting readers to take advantage of the 30-day free trial:
As you can see from the above screenshot, the page also effectively showcases the sheer range of content available to subscribers thanks to Spotify’s partnership with Hulu.
Scrolling down the page, Spotify also gives us a bunch of reasons to subscribe…
…before sharing its pricing options (accompanied by separate CTA buttons):
It’s all simple but effective stuff.
Amazon Music
Ad spend and networks
Over the past six months, Amazon spent an estimated $5 million on display ads to promote its music streaming platform. Its spending strategy isn’t too dissimilar to Spotify’s, with most of the money committed to video, but with a healthy chunk set aside for programmatic ads.
Publishers
Amazon’s ad placements are a lot more mainstream than Spotify’s — there are no obscure meme sites or Italian soccer specialists here, just a bunch of big news and pop culture-related publishers:
However, considering Amazon dropped an estimated $4.3 million on YouTube in the last six months, it chose placements on some pretty weird channels:
That’s probably the only chart you’ll ever see where Taylor Swift places a distant third behind Crazy Frog.
Creatives
Standard
When it comes to standard ads, Amazon has a clear goal: showcasing the diverse range of ad-free content available through its music streaming service.
To that end, it promotes the full catalog of podcasts from news, politics, and culture publisher Slate Magazine…
…and does the same for CNN’s podcast portfolio:
Surprisingly, though, there’s not much mention of actually listening to music. Given that most streaming platforms offer pretty much the same music, perhaps Amazon has simply decided that the whole ad-free podcast thing is a bigger differentiator.
Native
Much like Spotify, it’s fair to say that native ads don’t really feature in Amazon Music’s display ad strategy. In fact, this is the only example we could find, and it attracted minimal spend:
So let’s move quickly along…
Video
Amazon Music takes a totally different approach to video than Spotify. Over the last six months, it only ran 17 different video ads, but it supported several of them with six or seven-figure budgets.
Its top video ads by spend were two variants of an ad promoting Amazon Music’s catalog of true crime podcasts, each of which attracted $1+ million in ad spend.
There were also a couple different ads about music — at last! — featuring Latin artists Nicki Nicole and Ryan Castro, but they have way smaller budgets.
By this point, it’s clear that Amazon just doesn’t consider music to be a big selling point. Which is kinda weird when the platform is called “Amazon Music”.
Landing pages
Amazon rarely (if ever) sends ad clickers toward a dedicated Amazon Music landing page. Instead, its campaigns typically point toward the main Amazon Prime page:
This landing page spells out the wide-ranging benefits of a Prime subscription — including ad-free podcasts and music:
Much like Spotify, when you reach the bottom of the page, you’re greeted with a bunch of pricing options and a CTA to sign up:
There’s no attempt to convince potential customers by sharing review scores and testimonials. But everyone’s heard of Amazon, so we guess social proof is a little unnecessary.
Apple Music
Ad spend and networks
Apple shelled out way less than Amazon and Spotify over the last six months to promote its music streaming platform, with an estimated spend of just under $300,000. But, intriguingly, its spending appears to have ramped up significantly in recent weeks:
A small majority of its display ad budget went on video ads, but it also invested a healthy chunk of cash on programmatic ads.
Publishers
Apple Music’s top publishers are a pretty broad mix. There’s the obligatory YouTube, but there’s also pop culture, sports, music news, and even food — with an estimated $432 of spend going toward a recipe for sauteed garlic asparagus.
Obscure but tasty.
There’s a distinctly country-and-western twang to Apple’s choice of YouTube placements, with its top channels including country artists Luke Combs and Shenandoah:
It’s interesting to see Apple steering clear of big-name music acts like Taylor Swift and Rihanna. Maybe they’re targeting a more niche audience than Amazon and Spotify?
Creatives
Standard
Apple Music’s standard creatives fall into three main categories.
There are those promoting Apple Music-specific price discounts:
Secondly, we’ve got ads that speak to the size of Apple’s music catalog (often accompanied by the same price promotion as the previous ad):
And then there’s a third ad format that pushes Apple Music as part of a broader service offering that also includes things like Apple TV+ and iCloud+:
Native
Apple spends even less on native advertising than Amazon or Spotify. In the last six months, it hasn’t run a single native ad.
Seems native just isn’t a big hit with streaming platforms.
Video
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of Apple Music’s display budget went toward promoting the video for its Super Bowl ad, featuring Ludacris, Lil Jon, Taraji P Henson, Usher, and — most excitingly of all — Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Because when you pay for the naming rights to the Super Bowl half-time show, you’ve really got to shout about it.
Beyond that single, big-budget ad, Apple mostly invested in six-second, gif-style ads spelling out the platform’s key selling points:
However, none of those ads attracted much more than $1,000 in spend.
Landing pages
Essentially, during our study period, Apple Music only ran one big campaign — the Super Bowl ad. So you won’t be shocked to learn that it also relied heavily on a single landing page; a variant of its homepage featuring a banner promoting Apple’s half-time show sponsorship:
Apple Music’s other, non-Super Bowl-related, campaigns mostly just sent clickers to the subscribe page within the Apple Music platform:
Conclusion
After diving into the data, our biggest takeaway is that none of the big three music streaming platforms talk much about music.
Sure, Apple ran a whole Super Bowl campaign for its streaming service. But that felt like more of a branding exercise for the whole company, rather than a specific attempt to sign up more streaming customers. Even Spotify — the only dedicated music streaming business of the three — spent as much time talking about podcasts and Hulu as it did about listening to your favorite musical acts.
It feels like music has become commodified; something that consumers expect to be able to access for little or no money. That’s forced the likes of Spotify, Amazon, and Apple to search for alternative points of difference.
Want to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here.