Spotify Inks Major Launch Advertisers As It Expands Into Asia
The music streaming service has confirmed a number of leading advertisers as it made its platform available in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Spotify, a popular music streaming service, has secured major advertisers like McDonald’s, Heineken, and H&M as it expands its service into three Asia markets, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia this week.
Heineken, KFC, Maxis, and Standard Chartered have come on board as launch partners in Malaysia to roll out branding campaigns with Spotify in the coming months.
Its Singapore advertisers include fashion retailer H&M and Subway while McDonald’s and CSL will partner with the music service in Hong Kong.
Daniel Lee, director, digital projects for McDonald’s APMEA, says as their customers’ media consumption patterns evolve towards digital, they are constantly looking for fresh and exciting channels to engage them.
“Music is a huge passion pillar for a large segment of our customers, especially those under 30 years,” he adds.
Partnering with Spotify helps us to create scalable and shareable social experiences, such as the integration of social play listing and streaming into McDonald’s Australia Facebook page to drive fan engagement and growth, he explains.
The streaming service will provide users with on-demand access to more than 20 million tracks of licensed music in two ways – either through the free model that will feature advertisements or premium account by paying a monthly fee.
Jonathan Forster, general manager at Spotify, says his team works closely with media agency networks to let marketers place audio and rich media ads based on basic targeting abilities such as age, gender, or location on its service similar to media publishers.
It can also serve as a platform to facilitate campaigns on a brand’s website or Facebook page.
While the music service is available on multiple devices from computer, mobile to tablets, advertising is only available on the web.
Spotify is said to have 24 million active users and six million paying subscribers in 23 markets worldwide.
Forster declines to share the company’s short-term targets or what other cities it plans to roll out in the region except to say that they tend to look at markets that have good Internet penetration with people that usually buy online.
The company has hired former business consultant Sriram Krishnan to manage new market expansion in Asia Pacific.
According to its website, Spotify has plans to build a regional sales team based out of Singapore as it looks to fill out marketing, planning, and account servicing roles in the country.
The music streaming service is not new to the region. Spotify made its debut in Australia and New Zealand in May 2012 and had some success working with clients in the countries.
Hyundai Australia partnered with Spotify to create a Facebook app as part of an integrated campaign to promote its New Generation i30 in July 2012.
The campaign themed “Free Yourself” encouraged people to dedicate their favorite “Break Free” song to a friend that would appear on their Facebook timelines, with the chance to win premium subscriptions on the music service. The app registered the highest CTR and social engagement for Hyundai Australia for the year.
