One thing i'll say though, i'd try to migrate away from Link Click objectives towards Conversion objectives. Link clicks sometimes work great, but other times they completely flop - i've had it happen, and I know people who have seen like 1000 clicks but only gotten like 10 listeners from it, with conversion campaigns you shield yourself from that.
Man thank you! Good looking out on the conversion vs. link click objective. I will definitely plan to try that. I've had previous link click campaigns go completely south as well, so I'm happy to hear adjusting the objective might protect against that. Thank you for the recommendation!
@@tomdupreeiii Tom, I'm not sure what landing page you are using, but do try out Toneden. You can add an FB pixel for free and you'll also get a "View Content" event that happens when you click on the Spotify/Apple music link. That means that you will be paying and focusing on Stream clicks, not ad clicks. Their automatic Spotify follower option is also awesome if you can afford it.
Man I’m really glad to hear I was able to tap into that level of useful information in this video. Thank you for watching and thank you for the comment!
Great video bro. I never subscribe like or comment unless I think the creator really tries his best to make something viewers can actually use rather than just trying to get people to interact with their content to grow their account. 10/10
Man, what a compliment. Thank you! I genuinely just like testing things and want to share my experience to help people. Glad it translated. Thank you for watching!
Fuck!!! How could I neglect Facebook ads for my Spotify engagement😣 Thank you so much for this honest video Tom! Still, you might want to set up some Google Ads campaigns to drive more traffic to your RU-vid channel🤓 It deserves to be discovered by a larger audience.
Thank you so much for this comment! I have tested some Google Ads in the past with a fair amount of success as well. I'm planning to get back on them in the not-too-distant future. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
I have recently been using FB ads to promote my band and our music. I was doing two weeks on and then two weeks off. I didn’t think about the snowball melting effect. I’m very glad that I’ve come across this video. Please keep them coming. Thanks. And by the way, I truly dig your music too. Peace.
Man I just wasted my money with PlaylistPush as well, I found kinda the same video by Andrew S. and just set up my Facebook ads campaign. A wallet savior video, thumbs up and subscribed.
I’m still in the process of scoping out my playlist push results. After watching Tom’s videos I ended up running 2 campaigns. It’s even more expensive when paying in AUD, it cost approx. $1100 for 2 minimum reach campaigns. My first song only got added to 3 playlists, despite getting quite good feedback on production, singing and lyrical content. But there was a lot of “this doesn’t suit my playlist” and “not quite hooky enough”. So I tried a song that is a little more “accessible” and got 40% uptake (10/25), still waiting for the algorithm to kick in hard, but getting about 200 spins a day on it for about the last 3 weeks. My monthly listeners is up from 6 to 1900. It’s not bad, but bang for buck, I’m definitely going to give this strategy a go next. Thanks for the really in-depth videos, Tom
Holy shit I just realized Iv been running my ads this whole time with interests to similar artists as me OR Spotify. Not "And". Your video just saved my ass lol. Iv been wasting hundreds of dollars marketing to people who have the Spotify app and probably don't even listen to my genre of music.
I just powered through most of your videos these past couple days and all I can say is wow and thank you so much. You’ve answered so many common and uncommon questions that I had in regard to Facebook ads and music marketing in general you have no idea. Just thank you lol
Congrats on the results for the ada and breaking it down like this. The only I didn't see you set up was the link you set up. I subbed because I'd like to ask you some questions and also catch up with how things are for you since july
Thanks so much for the sub! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I'd love to answer some questions for you. If you want to see how things have been going since July, you can watch some of the more recent videos on my channel. Most notably, I've switched from Link Clicks to Conversions in my campaigns since this video.
Enjoyed your last videos. Subscribed based on this one. I hate ads, I've played with them a bit, I love that you walked us through the entire thing. Thank you!
Thank you so much for the sub! I was on the "absolutely refuse to run ads because I despise them" train for a long time myself. Haha! In fact, I've only recently decided to delve into them because I finally allowed myself to recognize just how valuable they can be if done correctly. I hope to continue to showcase ways to squeeze the most of this process in the most honest way possible. My goal is real listeners and real relationships based around music. Thank you for watching!
@@tomdupreeiii thanks! Likewise, I KNOW they're valuable, I just loathe making my way through the back end. I tried YT ads which are great. If you ever make a video about then (so much cheaper than FB) make sure to make the point to everyone to double-check you have entered an end date. I ran three tests (late at night) missed entering an end date and got a nasty bill of $300 after only a month or something. 40k impressions for an ad about a music video premiere and not much traffic...obvs more tweaking needed, but sticker price was a nasty shock!
@0Stella daaaaaang!! That stinks! I will definitely make a video on RU-vid ads once I dive into that a little bit more. I've had a bit of success with them in the past, but I need to brush back up on them!
Great video, got some great info from your playlist push videos as well. I’m a muso and a motion graphic designer. Facebook advertisers are not allowed to cover their ads' images with more than 20% text. This rule applies to both single image and carousel ads run on Facebook and Instagram. Ads with more than 20% text covering any images might be rejected by Facebook's review team or might be shown less frequently. That’s why the textless one was pushed more :)
To elaborate, if you do use text, Facebook favours videos that start with clean vision on the initial frame, with the text transitioning on later, so you could experiment with having a second or so of just your video, then animate on your artist name, and then at the end show a call to action, like Follow Me On Spotify. 0% text on the first frame and less than 20% at other times. This is apparently the sort of content they want. Been doing lots of Facebook ads for an accounting software company I work for 😂
THank you so much for this info....im a hip hop artist and i started doing this yesterday and already got 1.9k streams, 50 more followers, and 13 new listners....i tried 3 methods so far and the stories method converts the best for spotify from what im seeing lets give it a week and see what happens....my budget is $10 a day for each add so it turns out to roughly $30 a day but im gonna stick to the stories from here on out after the first week.
Nice! I would definitely stick with the stories placement only. That is, by far, the best one for converting to Spotify. Give it a full week and then pick the best performing conversion method at the end of it and stick with that one. Best of luck!
Very informative video Tom, even the little details of allowing me to jump to the juicy bits, had me going back to the other parts as your openness was very engaging. You really earned my sub. Well done, Kudos to you!!
Wow, this is so awesome to see right? When the targeting worx and you really really connect with them vibing people. Best thing that can happen. Very interesting approach and I wonder, though these new connections are priceless, could you keep doubling your numbers while keeping the invest relatively the same? Very curious what you are currently trying out, I'm assuming you gonna share that once its ran its course? I am so digging all these tools, the power they give to us creators to really find people who like our stuff! And on top, your music can (almost) be as niche as you want. Maybe with a higher CPC but you still gonna find them ;) Thanks to your videos I learned that playlist inclusion is certainly a pillar and needs to be targeted as well, but the refined and direct target approach FB/IG offers just kicks so much more ass. Gonna go primarily with that! Congrats on your results and keep it up mate
Thanks so much for this comment! I'm really glad this one resonated with you. Yes, I am definitely going to keep reporting back with my results from this. I'm really hoping I will be able to keep optimizing it for growth while still keeping my budget relatively low. I think it's possible!
Man, you explain things so well and make it so simple to follow along. Thanks for that. I’m wondering - did you run these as conversion campaigns? Or did you select traffic or engagement? Thank you brother! All the best
Thanks for walking through all your stuff. Advertising def has a huge learning curve that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around. Have you tried doing main feed Instagram ads before? I never really thought the story ones did well until now. If the story ones do better than main feed that would be kinda cool.
I'm so glad you found the video helpful! I agree, it's a big learning curve, and I am still very much a student. I have tried the main Instagram feed ads before, and they just didn't perform nearly as well as these story ads did. I thought the exact same thing before this about the story ads, so I have been pleasantly surprised to find myself proven wrong. I definitely recommend giving it a shot!
Thank you very much, what an incredible content. I am Brazilian and I have not found a similar video in Portuguese. Congratulations on your work, I already subscribed to the channel. Although I don't speak English, I use simultaneous translation. Congratulations again. And thank you very much.
Don't suppose you could recommend a landing page for those campaigns? I've been trying to use tonedens free one, but I can't figure out how to get the click on the page rather than the click to the page to count as a conversion. Please help!
@@nylophone5730 You use the 'ViewContent' conversion event in the ad set. I mainly use Hypeddit, but recently i've been playing more with ToneDen since its MUCH easier to setup than Hypeddit for people who are less familiar with setting up custom conversions - people in my course struggle with Hypeddit setup, even with a 15 minute video explaining every step of the process (I struggle setting it up when i'm helping people 1-on-1 haha, luckily its a one-time thing).
I’m so glad you liked it! I created the ads custom myself. I used my existing music video and cropped it to fit the format using Final Cut. And I also added the text overlays in Final Cut as well. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for the great content! Quick question. What kind of link do you use in the Facebook ads to generate followers in Spotify? Is it a link to the song or is there a way to get a link to follow automatically?
Chuck Mercer I just send traffic directly to my profile. The follow option is readily avail label right when they land instead of sending them to the song where they would have to click through to the profile and then follow. I try to keep it simple!
I am using pixel tracking but decided not to include that in this video. It felt like too much at once. I’m glad to hear you’re curious about that though. That motivates me to make a video on it. Thank you!
It's been awhile since I ran this one, but I think it was a link redirect using PixelMe. I now use either ToneDen or Short.io for that sort of thing, though your Spotify artist link will work just fine as well if you don't want to set up a redirect.
Tom, thanks for the detailed explanation. I'm now setting up a campaign and am curious which priority you used in Facebook's campaign setup: traffic, engagement, video views, lead generation?
Fantastic video, for real. I watch a lot of your stuff anyway, but I'm so glad YOU are the one that did a video on Facebook Ads for Spotify engagement because you're just so thorough. I do have a question though: what link did you send them to? Was it directly to the song, or to your artist page? EDIT: You've answered this question deeper into the comments, so never mind. Thank you for the video!
Thanks so much for watching! I actually just dropped a video last week about how I structure my ads to accommodate new releases. Check it out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ol_5yALgBak.html.
Brilliant - thanks! Will changing the creative (image) on the second week (while maintaining the spend/locations/timeframe etc) have a negative effect on the algorithm? Thanks Tom.
Not necessarily but it will likely send your ad set back into the learning phase. If you have a campaign that's performing well this won't be too big of a deal.
Nice video and very informative, but you dont walk us through how to setup the ad campaign and ad sets, as well as what ad set you selected. where or not you selected automatic or manual placements, is the budget set up for link clicks, landing page views, daily Unique reach or impressions in the optimization for Ad Delivery? Things like that because that can be confusing to some who never ran a promotion
Yeah I definitely breezed over a lot of that in this video. This was my first really successful Facebook ad campaign, so I was mostly excited to simply share the results. If you pick through some of my more recent videos on my channel, I get into a lot more of the details of setting up a campaign. Thanks for the comment!
The division seems to make a lot of sense to me. "Tier 3" countries with a limit of $1 and the rest for the "Tier 1 & Tier 2" countries. The link also goes directly to Spotify (so no landing page or Facebook pixel is used)?
Man, thank you so much for sharing this with your audience. That's super cool of you! And yeah dude, I would love to be on your podcast. That sounds like a lot of fun. DM me on IG and let's work out the details! instagram.com/tomdupreeiii
Would you recommend sending potential listeners to the song or the profile, and does that change after a few days? Would that be different for a release vs a growth campaign? Really interesting to dig into this, thank you!
How's it going, Tom! This is probably one of the best campaign methods I've ever seen. Would you still recommend using a link click campaign or do you think doing a conversion campaign would be better to ensure there aren't any bots and still be able to achieve the same results!!! Also, I saw some comments that speak on Mexico and Brazil eating up most of the budget on the High Priority. Have u since changed those countries to Mid priority?
Hey thanks for the comment! I have switched to conversion campaigns since making this video and definitely recommend that method. Now that I’ve switched to conversions, I no longer separate the countries out by priority. I just include them all in one ad set. I find that conversion optimization eliminates the need for splitting them out.
Hey man, really appreciate that video, thanks for putting that out :) Just got one question - why did you put Mexico and Brazil in the Top Priority Markets? Just because ToneDen also does it that way? Right now Brazil and Mexico are eating up 95% of the budget of my Top Priority Markets Adset, while streams from those countries earn you quite a lot less than from other Top Priority Markets.
Great question. A combination of reasons: yes, I've seen / hear of multiple others putting them into that category with good results and it also seemed to make sense to me from a geographic / market cap perspective. Now that I've seen the results thought (which are very similar to what you experienced) I'll likely make adjustments by either relocating them to the mid-priority market ad set or perhaps by splitting up the top-priority ad set into two separate ad sets. I'm going to experiment with it and see which works better. Thank you for the question!
Nice video man, I'm currently viewing all of them. I have question for you. For this campaign did you do a traffic campaign or conversion campaign? Which one is ideal to start with? Keep up the good work!
In this one I used a traffic campaign but I would recommend a conversion campaign now that I’ve learned more. But a traffic campaign is better than playlisting.
Dear Tom. Do you know how helpful this video is? Seriously.. Super, super helpful! Maybe worth thousands of dollars 💰 I've seen a lot videos and read a lot of articles but your video is the most helpful one yet. Great job buddy! Now all I have to do is save some money and wait for the right time :) Cheers.
Yooo this is so amazing man! I've tried facebook ads a couple of times and have failed quite miserably. Is there any good resource for an in-depth tutorial on how to go about this? I'd love to hear it from yourself too.
To keep the snowball rolling while releasing new songs, would you suggest just adding new ads on top of the ones that are already released? essentially, having to multiply that budget?
Great question. Yes, I often like to add the new ad set into the existing campaign. Give it a few days to start learning a little bit and then eventually turn the old ad set off, leaving the new one to be the primary driver until the next release. Thanks for watching!
Hey Tom! Great video, I was wondering how important the campaign length is. I say this because I release music very frequently, almost weekly, and wonder if it's better to run lots of longer campaigns at a very low budget or shorter campaigns with a higher budget. - For example: 8 diff songs at $2.5/day each for 2 months OR 4 diff songs at $10/day each for 1 month. - Thanks!
Great question! In my experience, campaign length is not as important as campaign volume. The more volume you run through a campaign, the more data the optimization algorithm has to work with and the more quickly it will give you the most bang for your buck. In the case of the two options you presented, I would go with the 4 songs at $10 per day for one month because you'll be driving more traffic more quickly and your campaigns will optimize faster as a result. But what I would really recommend is to run a split test with your best four songs all within the same campaign. Run it for a week at $40 per day (assuming your budget still stands) and then turn off the three that perform the worst and only run the one that does the best. When it's time to add new songs, dump them into the existing campaign for a week and see if they outperform the existing best ad. Again, whichever does the best, keep that one going and turn the others off. Rinse and repeat and just keep it going. That's what I would do. Thanks for the comment!
I appreciate your site greatly, and really like the song you posted, the video is great I can only speak for myself, but usually the easiest song to access, the one on the top of the list gets the most attention. I have talked to distributors about changing song order, it should be easy on my end but rarely is. If I were designing an interface for uploading etc... that feature is easy to impliment. I dont get it
I definitely know what you mean. Fortunately, your most recent release does live at the top of your profile for a while, and you can promote the release of your choice in the top corner of your profile via Spotify for Artists as well. So at least those tools are available to us until they decide to try something different with the profile on Spotify. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for your efforts to help us. I’m pretty confused as to why I’m showing clicks on my ads manager, but these don’t seem to translate over to my artist stats. I’m running only tier 1 countries. Clicks Shld equal a steam at least surely? I have two ads running, both linked to listen now for 2 songs. ( I think) Maybe I set one up to direct to my profile.
Hi Tom! This is one of the first campaigns that I've seen where markets are divided by accessibility and income use which is quite helpful! This has been one of the best videos I've seen regarding case studies and examples of Facebook Ad Campaign management. Have you tried these same strategies on other platforms like Apple Music or Google Play? Keep up the great work and you have awesome music bro! I look forward to hearing from you.
Awesome! I’m so glad it was helpful. I am just now starting to test using a landing page with access to multiple streaming platform instead of just Spotify and that is working to grow my listener base elsewhere as well. I will report on it once I have enough data to share!
JC Flores dude yes! My email address is available in the about section of my RU-vid channel or you can DM me on Instagram: instagram.com/tomdupreeiii. Either one works!
@@tomdupreeiii cool I look forward to that! For this video's campaign did you link people directly to Spotify or did you use a landing page with only Spotify?
Thanks dude! For this one I used a traffic campaign with link clicks as the metric. I've since switched to using conversion campaigns, which I've found to be much more productive in terms of generating honest traffic that turns into followers.
@@freerevivalmusic no I’m afraid I don’t. I do a weekly livestream every Friday at 1 PM CST though. That’s a great place to come hang and ask me questions!
So you said, " You have to sup $3600 a year - do this save up and keep it going" but you brought up release 10 tracks a year, how do I take this valuable data from this campaign and use it for the next campaign without ruining momentum? Is that just using look alike ads? Or do I just keep the ad running forever, while lowering the cost and using the remaining budget for the subsequent releases? I just dont know how to do this and its the final piece I need before starting ads. Thank you so much for your help!
Thanks so much for watching! Basically I just recorded the number of streams, listeners, and saves. To get the stream ratio I divided the number of streams by the number of listeners. And to get the save ratio I divided the number of saves by the number of streams. Hope that helps. Thanks for the question!
Hey Tom, thanks for sharing your data, nice video. I also found similar results about Facebook ads, but I have to say that Playlist Push is really not the best playlist promo service. I usually split my budget between Facebook ads and playlist promos with two promoters that grant me a save to stream ratio of at least 3%. The first will boost the engagment, the other will boost the reach. Playlist Push is totally not worthy imho, they hide behind the excuse that you did a wrong pitch or your music was not good enough. Also SubmitHub is quite scammy: apart for few good curators, many of them are there for dollar. They refuse you and then they blog the same song you sent them if they get it through a promoter. Usually I do: 10% budget on Submithub (only few good and honest promoters) 30% playlist promos with my trusted 2 promoters 30% Facebook ads 30% blog pitching (they say Spotify check how much blogs talk about you). Do you also invest in other promos apart for Facebook ads and playlists? Cheers!
This is great to know. Thank you for sharing this information! I agree, Playlist Push definitely has its deficiencies. They all do in some way though. I've just gotten the highest amount of streams via any single platform through them. I'd love to find additional options outside of them and SubmitHub though. I'm always game to test any- and everything just to see how it works. This year, aside from the first song I dropped, I've exclusively used Facebook ads and nothing else. I really wanted to see what kind of impact that would have without any additional help coming from anywhere else.
@@tomdupreeiii The promoters I used are Omari MC and Club Restricted Promo. To be honest they are the only two honest services that do not deliver bots. Anyway I was wondering if there is a point where the Facebook ads will deliver enough followers to give similar amounts of streams. I spent 200$ on Facebook to gain 200 link clicks and 7000 streams from algorithmical playlists... so far we are still miles aways from streams that promoters can give with the same amount of money. After 5 months of Facebook ads promo, would be nice to see if results are scaling up or are still similar. Do you have any video about the following up of this experiment?
@@tomdupreeiii I use them as well, not sure if you use their advertising platform but I’ve been getting a lot of issues with my campaigns lately so I’m trying to figure out a work around. Their growth campaigns no longer work with Facebook ads as conversions on link clicks. The song landing pages can still use the view content conversion tho. I assume that’s what you use now with those types of ads correct ?
Yeah I still use their landing pages with conversion campaigns but I do everything directly through Facebook and not through their platform. Sounds like that may be a big factor too.
Hi, thanks for the information. Very informative. One question, did you run it as a link click campaign or a conversion campaign? Were the clicks directed to a landing page, or straight through to your Spotify profile or song?
Great question. I ran it as a link click campaign that was directed straight to my Spotify profile. Thank you for asking this. And thank you for watching!
Hey mate do I select conversion as my motto before starting this kinda campaign? And also what do I set up in pixels if I dont have website. Your information is awesome thank u so much
Yes, I would recommend a conversion campaign over a link click campaign now. There are several additional steps you'll need to take to setup your pixel now that Facebook as updated for iOS 14. I have a video dropping this Thursday that covers all of it. Check my channel and set a reminder so you don't miss it!
You have to have feed placements enabled to utilize that feature, so I don’t use it for Spotify campaign since I’m only using stories placements. However, I do sometimes use it for other types of campaigns that use feeds placements. Thanks for the question!
hey Tom! it looks like your videos are playing regularly -- with the audio -- in the ad preview section when you show us your ads. both of the vids i uploaded have no sound playing in the previews... any idea what's up? thank you!
It could be a simple setting in your browser. I’ve noticed mine don’t play audio in the preview anymore either, but it’s never caused any issues with the actual ad when it’s shown. As long as you’re sure the file is good you should be good to go.
@@tomdupreeiii yesss it is ok after all; i was just freaking out. and if you need reassurance like me, go to *edit* the ad, and then you can play/hear the audio. thx!!!
My objective was traffic and I used link clicks as the metric. I meant to include that in the video and just completely breezed over it. Thank you for asking that!
@ThrowdownSyndicate yeah I linked directly to my Spotify profile from the ad. And to keep your audiences separate, you can just create the audience within the ad set itself instead of pulling from a saved audience. Or just make sure you only use any given saved audience in only one ad set. Hope that helps!
I was able to manage $7 a day total for all the ads. Do you think is enough for any real traction? I'm seeing good reach for my ads after 2 days, but have not seen any new followers yet
I had to comment again brother I just spent 479.00$ and got on listener and my song is hot 🔥 I see now he's a blessed dude and I believe he's on his way
Hello Tom, I have seen many of your videos and appreciate a lot your quality content. I have been since a time running FB ads to promote my musical projects, but I have seen no correlation between my conversions and the stats of Spotify. For example, right now I'm running a conversion campaign that has 111 results, but I have just 1 stream on Spotify's data (the campaign has been running 5 days untill now). What do you think could be happening? I had the same issue other campaigns I run before.
@@tomdupreeiii thanks bud! I went ahead and tried a new campaign going to my profile, setting everything up the way you did and I’m already getting results consistent with yours. Immediately more followers on IG and Spotify compared to having them land on just the song.
This method is necessary when using traffic as your main campaign objective (bots tend to click links a lot in some countries), but conversion ads don't get hit by bots the same way. It makes more sense to put all territories into one ad set when using conversions as your objective because your ads will optimize faster and have much lower risk of getting "botted" compared to traffic ads.
would creating a brand new facebook account and ad account separate from my normal(or original) facebook account hurt the ad campaign? for reasons i gave up on trying to understand i have never been able to use ads without jumping through crazy hoops. my ig ads work fine and im thinking if i add everyone i know and let them know its my artist page i can at least make up some of the lost followers if that is going to be an issue for the ad campaign.. (i hope this makes sense lol)