I Spent $2,102 on Facebook Ads. Here's What Happened on Spotify.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 1 мар 2023
- Check out my course on Spotify growth here: twostorymedia.com/12psg
***
Want to grow your fanbase?
Here are four ways we can help:
✅ 5-step plan to get 100k+ streams on your next release: tinyurl.com/8vjs9c7e
🤜 Join our Spotify growth community: tinyurl.com/m979856j
📈 Hire us to run Meta ads for Spotify: tinyurl.com/2s42kbey
📕 Read my book, How to Promote Indie Music: tinyurl.com/2s3uc68n
***
The brief: Starting in August of 2022, I spent roughly $300 / month to drive people from Instagram and Facebook over to my songs on Spotify. I just paused the ads this past month (because even though it's been fun, I can't justify spending the money on my own mediocre music).
This video is a recap of the campaign with a detailed look at the results. If you have any questions or want me to dig into something else, let me know!
Also, I mention @AndrewSouthworth and @tomdupreeiii in the video - both are phenomenal resources on this stuff. Give them each a follow if you haven't already. 
Видеоклипы
Dude, I was hoping these results were with mediocre music, but I’m listening to ‘easier’ right now and the song is fricken great! You’re definitely selling yourself short with how good your stuff is!
Ah, thanks! That's actually really nice of you to say haha.
Yeah, I tend to be very aware of the areas I'm not talented in / pretty self-deprecating, but I also legitimately think the song could be much better than it is. I think it's just hard to be satisfied with your art.
That's what I'm saying. It's not mediocre
I appreciate this video with what ill call no previous ad experience. A lot of the people you mentioned have been running ads forever so fakebook has already figured out what type of person will click their links, so they get a lower cost and greater results. Very nice to see you running one without that crutch so all of us who are new have more realistic expectations. Good luck with you marketing and music!
Appreciate it - thanks for watching!
thank you for sharing the info! i found it very interesting to watch. i run ad campaigns for a few artists myself, so i wanted to give my two cents on your results. in my experience, video ad creative plays a critical role in the success of campaigns. ads that only feature album cover pictures typically perform poorly. although you mentioned that you were running your campaigns in a passive manner, i believe that testing more videos, such as those featuring you performing your music, could have reduced your cost per conversion from $0.35 to $0.08-$0.12, which could have resulted in 3-4 times more streams.
additionally, i don't think it makes much sense to split your campaign into multiple ad sets, given the availability of the CBO option.
overall, i thought your research was awesome. good luck with your music and marketing efforts!
Yeah, I kept the ad sets separate because I didn't want FB to funnel everything toward a single interest target, at least at first. And dang, 0.08 is an awesome CPC - I've tried performance videos before, but seems like it's definitely worth trying again. Thanks for the thoughts / feedback!
Amazing video, thank you so much for sharing this!!
Math:
- Investment: 2k
- ROI: 30k streams x 0,005 (at the best scenario) = $150
- Result: 2k - 150 = (-1.850k, loss of 92,5%)
- Help me: it was a loss of 92,5% of the whole money (it's gone), good investment? I don't get the point, so anyone here bring some good solid data coz it doesn't make sense or I'm missing something or y'all doesn't know how to do math (I'm confused)
Definitely a fair critique, and also I definitely did not make $0.005 per stream, so the numbers are even worse than you've generously estimated ha.
This is a whole conversation, but the short argument for spending on Spotify is that it's best viewed as a long-term investment, not as a short-term investment with direct ROI. So even though you lose money if you look at ads vs. streaming royalties, in an ideal world, you make it up on other channels - a bigger audience on Spotify translates to more merch sales, more ticket sales, more sync opps, more collabs, etc.
But tbh I think all of that stuff is very hard to pull off, and for most artists it probably doesn't happen. Most often, the ad spend ends up being money out the window in exchange for a small uptick in numbers.
TL;DR - Fair point, probs only worth investing in if you have a solid long-term strategy in place.
Best advice I ever heard for creatives. 'Who the fuck are you to decide what people like!?' Blunt I know, but really think on it. Wishing you all the best for the future from someone who also doesn't make music that they think is good. Never quit!
Ha, appreciate that sentiment. Need to remind myself of that, for sure.
hey just an anonymous listener here. you keep saying "my music isn't that good/worth promoting." wrong. just wrong. good music good content. keep it up!
Well shoot, calling me out haha. But thanks anonymous listener / Zach. I legitimately appreciate it.
Love the content 🎉
Hey man video was super helpful. What did you use to make the actual ad itself? I'm trying to throw it together in premiere.
Bro your music sounds really good man stop doubting your talent and great information
Ha, thanks... definitely have a tendency to be a little self-deprecating. Appreciate it!
Good video bro ! I ain’t like you said your music is mediocre tho, believe in yourself 💯
I keep getting called out for that 😂 Appreciate the encouragement!
thanks for sharing
In my experience, ads are good for engaging an existing audience but not good for building one.
Great song, I think if you used south worth he wud have gotten you over 100,000 for that amount. Keep going.
Ha, Andrew is definitely very good. Appreciate the kind words!
I've just started my first ads campaign, and have to say it's off to a really poor start. For $93, I've had 52 conversions. So around $1.78 per conversion. Any idea why this is so poor? (It was around $3 the first few days, so has been slowly coming down).
Few notes - I'm on day 5 of the campaign at the moment. Targeting Tier 1 & 2 Countries, Stories & feed on Insta & FB only - no reels etc. Is this likely to just be poor ad creative? Is it relevant that it's quite early in the campaign, on a new ads account?
Any feedback is welcome!
The three things I'd consider would be...
1) ad creative, and especially the song itself - is it a mainstream-ish genre, or is it pretty niche? Niche stuff always gets higher CPC. Definitely worth experimenting with at least three different ads, trying different imagery / different hooks in the song.
2) What's your interest targeting? Did you specify similar artists or leave it blank? Wider interest targeting often starts off more expensive but improves to a lower CPC over time.
3) And then some of it is just time. I'm guessing you're about 9 days in, if you're spending $10 a day. It should drop over the next two or three weeks.
But all of that said, that honestly is a very high starting point. Ads don't work for every song / genre, so definitely a chance it's just not a fit.
Hope that helps!
Also I was curious what is the purpose of the landing page why not have the link take them directly to the Spotify playlist?
Hey, thanks for watching!
Purpose of the landing page is so that you can have the FB pixel on it to track conversions. You can't put the pixel on your Spotify profile, so you need a middle step to run conversions campaigns, which historically have been a lot more effective than traffic campaigns.
And then I made the ad itself with Premiere Pro. Had a couple of variants, but the winner is usually an artist photo with a Ken Burns effect sitting underneath the cover art. Super basic!
How do you set up targets? I'm looking at my chart (it's been 1 day lol) but it's only going to Facebook not Instagram, and only seeing 65 y.o+ lol. I'm trying to hit more insta and a younger crowd
65+ clicks can eat a ton of budget ha. Switch to the old audience settings and put a cap on the age range - definitely 64, but I often go as low as 50.
And if you haven't already, you can switch to manual placements and focus on Reels / Stories, too.
Yea I changed it thank you! The primary FB thing is annoying but after looking through the options I'll adjust it next time
Hey Jon, quick question , what's the ratio of the placement , your placement was both IG and FB, how's the ratio at the end? Where was the majority of placements?
Great question. In terms of impressions, about 75% went to Instagram. On IG, about 75% went to reels rather than stories. On FB, it was closer to a 50/50 split between reels and stories.
@@twostorymediamusic Thank you, appreciate your speed in answering. Unfortunately, my campaign is very expensive for now. Goes around 1.1$ per conversion. However Im not doing Brasil Spain, Mexico and Porgual. Was your cost per conversion expensive at the beggining then dropped or ?? Thank you mate
@@nicxshaw If you add those countries back in, your costs will definitely go down. Most of my campaigns get funneled to Mexico and Brazil - far lower CPCs there.
But overall, yeah, you should see costs decline over the first month of the campaign. You're starting from pretty high, though.
It's arbitrary, but for me, a $0.50 CPC is the baseline for being worth it. Unless you change something drastic, I think it's unlikely you'd get there. But you never know.
@@twostorymediamusic Thanks Jon!
Just remember to change your data time to last 12 months instead of 28 days 💪
Really good music man. Stop saying it's mediocre :) from a fellow songwriter
Ha... well thanks. I actually really appreciate that. It's tough to be satisfied with your own stuff, I think.
did u get added to any editorials? I'd be pretty pissed after spending that much money. I've been running ads using the same set up, to a playlist, except im using a video. My CPC is around 0.14. Saying that, I've not yet landed ant editorials, this is despite getting my music reviewed on top blogs like Louder Than War. Im very convinced that Spotify doesnt really give a shit about smaller artists on small labels, its all about big labels paying to be those editorials. Has anyone else had any success?
CPC of .14 is phenomenal! Congrats.
We actually did get an editorial placement the week of release - it was a minor singer-songwriter list that drove less than 1k streams over a couple weeks.
No adds during this campaign. But unless you get a ton of momentum that editors almost can't ignore, it's not common to get added after release, and this campaign was like 2 years after the song came out ha.
@@twostorymediamusic we did get a few Discovery weekly, one exploded back in 2018, we were getting 40 k monthly. But the others barley got 100 streams. Weird how that works and sometimes it doesnt
Hi thanks for this video ! I have a question : how can you set up a « result » campaign without having a facebook pixel or so in Spotify ? How does facebook Knows there is a conversion ? (Is that a click on the ad or a click from your landing page to spotify ?). Thanks !
Great question! You use a landing page with the pixel set up there (I used Hypeddit for this campaign). The conversion is when they click from the landing page through to Spotify.
So the flow is: They click the ad -> They click landing Page (this is the conversion) -> They get to Spotify.
@@twostorymediamusic Ok thanks ! Why don't you send the users directly from your ad to spotify ? And what do you mean when you say "I used Hypeddid for this campaign" ? How did it helped you ? Thanks a lot !
@@DixMilleOfficiel No problem! You send them to a landing page because that lets you track the conversion - like you noted in your first comment, you can't set up the FB pixel on Spotify, so you need that middle step to run conversion campaigns. And Hypeddit is basically a landing page generator that makes that easier.
@@twostorymediamusic ok thanks a lot !
Why do a landing page instead of sending straight to Spotify?
Short answer is that it filters out accidental clicks / bot traffic.
It's called a conversion campaign, and it lets Meta optimize for people who click on the landing page. CPCs tend to be higher, but it's almost always worth it, because if you just run straight to Spotify, most of the traffic will be junk.
(Caveat to this is if you can really dial in your targeting. Tom Dupree does this, apparently, but I've never been able to make it work for myself.)
Why did you promote a playlist instead of just a specific single? The reason I ask is because I usually send people to a specific song, but I might try this method out.
One of the main benefits of running ads to a specific playlist is the “overflow effect.” When you run ads to a specific song (and if that’s the goal it’s perfectly legitimate strategy), many first times listeners may not go beyond listening to that single song on the one page because it requires additional clicks. It doesn’t mean 100% of the people will never click on your Artist profile to discover more about you, but it’s less likely . So, if I want to grow followers, I send folks to my Spotify profile page. If I want to promote a specific new release, I send folks to the song page. If I want to grow overall, I adjust my Spotify link to start on the song I specify in my playlist (doesn’t have to be the first one) and I can reap the benefits of streams of my target song, others in my discography, and new followership. Basically, whatever strategy you choose, should fit your goals. There’s not necessarily one right way to do it. Cheers!
Pretty much what Geryah said.
I tend to prefer running ads directly to your profile or to a playlist, because I've had better luck generating long-term engagement in those places... when you send them to your profile you get more profile followers, and when you send them to your playlist you build playlist followers.
In this case, when I release a new song, I can plug it into the top of the playlist and hope that some of the 1500 followers see it. (I've tested this and the effect isn't as much as you'd hope, but it's something at least.)
Sending to a specific single is usually the best way to drive streams to that single, but the overflow effect tends to be less.
@@geryahdinglemusic great take.
@@geryahdinglemusic how do you play a song that you specify yourself from within a link of a playlist?
@@pyralidmusic that's what I was wondering!
Did you run conversion or traffic ads?
He ran a conversion campaign. For this level of fidelity in tracking your stats, that’s the type you will need to select. I think they call it “engagement” campaign now. Facebook Ads manager is always changing stuff around and many times folks are operating on different versions. But, if you see “engagement objective” it’s the same as the former “conversion campaigns”
Exactly what Geryah said ha... when I set this up, I didn't have the new campaign objectives in ads manager, so it was literally "Conversion." Now that they've changed stuff, it'd be "Engagement".
Have you considered taking on artists and running ads for them in exchange for their streaming revenue off those songs? Maybe this is something your company already does
That's a solid idea! Sad reality is that the streaming revenue is next to nothing, though. I think I've made less than $100 from the streams I show in this campaign ha.
I think it's best to look at streams as a supplementary income stream. If you're an indie, the real income will be from merch and touring. Ran a survey last year that showed pretty clear data on this: twostorymelody.com/how-do-musicians-make-money/ ...So IMO, the primary point of getting streams is to get more listeners / fans, which means taking a percentage of revenue as an agency is tough.
My agency has done a lot of flat-rate work in the past, running these campaigns for other artists. But it kind of burned me out, so I'm scaling back to just a handful of clients at the moment.
Can anyone name a current successful music artist who used Facebook ads/ Spotify Playlist promotion to gain that success ?
Depends what you mean by "successful," I guess. But check out Chaitha (Andrew Southworth recently interviewed him). Or The Chillest (instrumental piano). Or Lucidious (rap - teaches Ari Herstand's course). All of those acts were grown with FB ads as a primary tactic.
To your point, most of the biggest acts don't break w/ FB ads. But also, most of the biggest acts do spend on FB ads after they break.
TL;DR - FB ads are definitely one way you can legitimately grow on Spotify, even if they aren't necessarily THE way to break every artist.
@@twostorymediamusic Thanks Jon , love your content.! You make some great points but still think there too few proven examples to show it really works for a wide variety of artists from different genres.
Did you target Mexico?
Edit: just got to that part of the video lol
Can i Edit your RUclips video?
Spent $ 2102 how much revenue generated?
Like $100 from streams ha. Definitely hard to say there's direct, positive ROI from this type of campaign. But if you can build a fanbase, there are plenty of long-term benefits.
Well, I see what you did, however, the cost per stream is not so good. 30k streams is 200$ in royalties for 2000$ spend. So you paid 10 bucks to get one.
Yeah, definitely a loss in terms of direct ROI. I wrote a post on this, fwiw: twostorymelody.com/is-spotify-promotion-worth-it/
10k streams for 2000 dollars WERTH IT? :DDDDD
Well, it's closer to 20k streams at this point, but it's still a fair question ha.
From a streaming royalties standpoint - absolutely not worth it. I definitely lost money (more or less $2k lol).
But from a personal standpoint, even though I don't think the results are very impressive, I'm honestly happy with the spend. Aside from the streaming royalties, there are plenty of other ways to make the audience meaningful. We'll see!
You wonld spent 2000$ with me I would got you a million streams