This week Songtools just announced yet another cutting edge innovation in playlist promotions-- Video Ads! 

“Video Ads” are a new carousel on our Discover page, that allows music creators to present themselves with striking animated visuals, based off of their album and artist artwork – all in one click! This tool allows artists to engage our playister community on a deeper level, by standing out from the thousands of other tracks being promoted on the platform.

Artists who have started using Video Ads are already seeing massive improvements in their campaign outcomes, but let's not get ahead of ourselves– here is some context on why you should care:

With our playlisting ecosystem, Playlister.Club, we have always explored the importance of branding & album artwork, and how it relates back to a song’s performance on DSPs. Over time and any promotions, we’ve learned how this element of a release can have such a dramatic effect on how playlisters and fans interact with a release. 

This is why we developed our own internal metric, called Brand Engagement Index, that can measure how well playlisters on Playlister.Club are attracted to a specific album cover. If you have a playlisting campaign running with us, you can view this in the “Total Engagements” section of your dashboard: 

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The idea behind this metric is simple: compare how many playlisters actually see your album cover in our feed, and compare how many of them click to listen to the song for 30 seconds. This allows you to gauge how attractive the album cover is in terms of garnering clicks, and also compare your performance to our platform as a whole. 

Throughout time, we’ve had many interesting findings with this metric – but recently with the development of our SongFly ad technology, we had a crazy idea: what if we could use this same tech to animate your album covers and allow you to use those animations to garner playlist placements?

Hence this week's announcement of Video Ads!

How does it work? 

The process is simple: Once your normal Playlisting campaign is running, you can upgrade to a Video Ad, from the Start page: 

Once purchased, our ad tech will take your artist images and start stitching together an incredible animated 9:16 video that is instantly displayed on the Discover page in a large carousel near the top - making it easy for playlisters to engage with it. The ad runs for 14 days total. 

How effective is it? 

Now after reading this, you may be wondering: does an animated ad really help that much? How different is the performance to a normal promotion with a static image? 

We looked at a few of the promotions that are already running for preliminary insights: 

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From our analysis, we found that the average increase in daily placements after starting the video ad campaigns was approximately 360%. Specifically, 'Promo 1 - Rap' saw a staggering increase of 900%, 'Promo 2 - R&B' had a more modest but still significant increase of 16.3%, and 'Promo 3 - Dance/Rap' experienced an increase of 163.2%. These numbers provide strong evidence that purchasing a video ad can significantly improve the placement rate of a song. 

Video ads provide a dynamic and engaging experience for viewers, which can significantly increase their interest and engagement compared to static images. In fact, according to a study by Biteable comparing static vs. video ads, found that video ads yielded 270% more leads! This is because people find video content more compelling and it keeps them on a page or platform for a longer period of time - and that same insight is relevant to playlisters. 

What this means for your marketing strategy overall

OK, so it’s pretty clear that these video ads we just released are very effective so far. But how does this finding relate back to an overarching marketing strategy on SongTools and beyond? Here are some actionable tips that we can draw out form this data:

• 1. Over-Invest in Video Content: The data shows a significant increase in placements per day when using video ads. Therefore, allocating time & money to create high-quality, engaging video content should be a priority in your marketing strategy, and you can use this content on socials, ads, and across your web presence as a whole to garner engagements on playlists and beyond.
  
  
• 2. Storytelling is Key: Videos provide an excellent platform for storytelling. They allow you to connect with your audience on a more personal level. Incorporating narrative or emotional elements into your video ads can lead to higher engagement.
  
  
• 3. Maximize Retention: Given that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text, designing your video content to be informative and memorable can help increase the likelihood that viewers will remember your song and interact with it later.

Ready to get started? Creating a video like this couldn't be easier...