I think about Meta ads more often than is healthy.
To be honest, I’m not sure thinking about Meta ads at all is healthy. I’m a grumpy old man; if I could wave a magic wand and make every sort of social media disappear, I’d do it quicker than you could say, “Go to your room, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg.”
But I’m also at least somewhat practical, and the cold fact is that social media in general, and Meta ads in particular, is a super effective platform for getting music heard. Given that my job is to help artists get their music heard, it’s perhaps understandable that I’ve come to find myself thinking about Meta ads while doing the dishes on random Tuesday nights.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling justification of my hypocrisy. My point is only that I think about Meta ads a lot.
And recently, I’ve been trying to map the main principles that influence why certain campaigns perform well and others perform poorly. It’s as much art as science, in my opinion – but there are definitely patterns that are consistent.
Here are the four key factors that make Meta ads work.
1. Your budget.
This is obvious (and in many ways unfortunate), but the number of people who hear your music is hugely impacted by the amount of money you can spend to promote it.
If you had $1m to spend in Meta ads, millions of people would hear your music. Again, this is obvious, so I won’t waste too much time belaboring the point.
But I will say that, if you can’t spend $300 per month, then direct-to-song Meta ads probably aren’t worth your money.
How you can impact this factor:
1) Win the lottery. It really is that easy. The last guy who won the Powerball had the same hours in the day that you do, so don’t make excuses.
2) Have an affair with Elon Musk. Yes, you’re right, I probably shouldn’t have made this joke, but I’m hyped up on caffeine and I don’t have an editor.
2. The cost per result.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with ad jargon: 1) Good for you, and 2) in a typical conversion campaign, the “result” is a click on the landing page over to a streaming service.
In other words, this number is roughly representative of how much it costs to send one person to your song.
Again, the general idea here is simple: The less you need to spend to get one person over to your song, the more people you’ll be able to reach. For instance:
| Budget | $100 | $100 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per result (CPR) | $0.50 | $0.25 |
| Clicks to Spotify | 200 | 400 |
Clearly, cost per result is important. If you have a CPR below $0.50, you’re doing fine. If you have a CPR below $0.30, you’re doing great.
But here’s my hot take: This factor is not nearly as important as many marketers make it out to be. Because unless your clicks to Spotify actually translate to the next factor on our list, the number itself is basically meaningless.
How you can impact this factor:
1) Make engaging ad videos. The more engaging your ad (and this includes your song), the more likely it is that people will click.
2) Expand your audience. The broader your audience, the more likely you’ll have a low CPR.
3. Engagement on Spotify.
I look at two metrics, specifically: Streams per listener and saves per listener (which is usually referred to as the “save rate”).
Good campaigns have a streams per listener above two and a save rate above 10%. Great campaigns have a streams per listener above three and a save rate around 50%.
The math is clear: If each person you send to Spotify only listens to your song once, you’ll have a hard time generating meaningful growth, no matter how much money you send. You’re basically paying to send traffic into a bucket without a bottom, and you’re losing your results as soon as they happen.
But if each person you send to Spotify listens to your song five times, you’ll start stacking streams. Even in these scenarios, you’re filling a leaky bucket (wait long enough, and people will stop listening). But the point is that you can fill a leaky bucket.
Maybe the plainest way to put it is that this factor is an approximate answer to an all-important question:
When people hear your song on Spotify, do they like it?
In my opinion, it’s the most important factor of the four.
How you can impact this factor:
1) Make sure your ads set clear expectations. You could generate a low cost per result (i.e., lots of cheap clicks) by filming videos of yourself throwing water balloons at people. But unless your song is some sort of joke, those ads will reach an audience of people who don’t care about your music.
It’s more important for your ads to be clear than catchy (although, ideally, they should be both).
2) Make great music. Easy.
4. The Spotify algorithm.
This is the factor over which you have the least direct control. But if your ads generate a high volume of engaged listeners, some sort of algorithmic growth will certainly follow.
As a general rule:
- You’ll see Radio streams kick in almost immediately.
- You’ll see Discover Weekly when you generate around 10,000 streams with a 10% save rate in a 28-day period.
The degree of growth you’ll see really varies, though. I’ve seen songs take off with algorithmic traction:
And I’ve seen other songs get great user engagement but only a trickle of algorithmic support.
Don’t obsess over this too much. People matter more than algorithms.
How you can impact this factor:
1) Drive good data. More good streams tend to lead to more good streams.
2) Pester Daniel Ek.
So, those are the four factors that drive killer ad campaigns.
Here they are again, ranked in ascending order of importance:
4. The Spotify algorithm.
3. Your budget.
2. Cost per result.
1. Engagement on Spotify.
If you’re thinking too much about Meta ads, I hope this little breakdown has been helpful. And if you’re not thinking about Meta ads at all, by all means, keep it up.
As always, here’s wishing you good luck.
– Jon
