Spotify Growth Playbook: Ad Creative Best Practices, How To's, and Examples

Learn best practices for the ads used in the Spotify Growth Playbook. We'll show you how to make the best Instagram Story Ads, providing 15+ examples.

Ad Creative Best Practices

To recap, your ad creative is the biggest influencer of your "cost per follower."

The better the ad creative, the cheaper your cost per click, which means more fans make it to your profile.

Good ad creative also introduces you as an artist to new fans. Fans who enjoy your video will not only engage with your music on Spotify, they'll follow you on Instagram, as well.

Best practices for ad creative include:

  • Use video creative instead of image creative

  • Format video creative for Instagram Stories (9:16 aspect ratio / 1080x 1920px)

  • Cap video creative at 15 seconds

  • Include song name in video creative

  • Include video of artist (in-person), if possible. Note: Videos featuring the artist tend to outperform videos that don't, though we have examples of high-performing creative without the artist in-person.

  • Repurpose old content if you can't afford a new video yet. Using older video content with new music has worked well for artists.

A video explanation of this written guide can be found here:

How to Create Ad Creative for the Spotify Growth Playbook

In the below video, our Head of Music Parker Reyes demonstrates one way to make the creative using an app called InVideo:

Examples of Successful Spotify Growth Playbook Creatives

Get inspired by these examples of Spotify Growth Playbook creatives. All creative examples led to new followers at less than a $1 cost per follower.

Pop Music (Lili Kendall)

Pop Music (Chloe Gilligan)

Hip-Hop and Rap Music (Jackson Turner)

R&B Music (Shah Frank)

R&B Music (Ricci North)

Indie Music (Tia Gostelow)

Indie Music (Local Nomad)

Indie Music (Mo Lowda & The Humble)

Rock Music (Smiling Assassin)

Rock Music (The Wrecks)

Punk Rock Music (DRAIN)

Dance Music (Mindchatter)

Dance Music (Gareth Emery)

Dance Music (Frank Walker)

Dance Music (W&W)

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