How many streams will your Meta ad campaign get you?
Meta ad campaigns for Spotify streams show a wide range of outcomes, from cost per conversion of $0.20 to $2.00 and streams per listener varying between 1.5 and 4. Algorithmic traction and engagement heavily influence results over time.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
Today we’re going to talk about how many Spotify streams you should expect from running a Meta conversion campaign to promote your song.
As you might imagine, there is a huge range. The best case to worst case scenario represents at least a factor of 100x difference in streams - even for the same budget.
Your cost per conversion could be $0.20 or $2.00. You could have 1.5 streams per listener or 4 streams per listener. You could get no algorithmic traction or the algorithm could triple your streams. The song might die off by 80% 3 months after the campaign is over or it might maintain 50% of its daily streams 1 year out.
However I get this question a lot, enough where I even made a free calculator to help you get an idea:
Early results
Before we go over the details of how that works and how you can estimate what results you should expect, I want to quickly walk you through the other calculator on that page:
This one focuses on the early phase of a campaign and assumes 100% of your streaming is coming from your ad campaign. The logic breaks down like this… for 1,000 conversions you should expect:
At least 500 listeners (50% of conversions)
At least 250 saves (25% of conversions)
At least 35 followers (3.5% of conversions)
At least 1,000 streams (100% of conversions)
These numbers are generally worst case scenarios. Most of the time you beat these metrics, and 1,000 conversions might give you 800 listeners, 600 saves, 2,000 streams and 100 followers assuming zero algorithmic traction. It all comes down to the engagement for how actual people are interacting with the song.
Whole campaign
That ‘whole campaign’ calculator is where we start factoring even more engagement and some algorithmic activity during the first 4-6 weeks.
In the image above I have it set for 3,333 conversions ($1,000 and $0.3 per conversion), which gives us 8,333 streams. The reason for this is since the duration is longer the streams per listener is often higher, but also you often will see some algorithmic traction at this window too.
When you run ads like this you also get unmeasurable effects like Shazams, people sharing the song with friends, or people not converting on the ad but manually searching for it on Spotify. So you end up with more than what the first calculator suggests you would have for the number of conversions Meta said you had.
The ‘engagement multiplier’ is a way to approximate those unmeasurable effects and also the size of the algorithmic push. In this case playing with it causes the streams to vary between 5,000 and 16,667 for the exact same budget.
Popularity index
I’ve also had people ask me how much budget it would take to hit a certain popularity index. This definitely isn’t an exact science, but with what we know from our last data study I made a calculator to help you get an idea.
Further Differences
The ‘whole campaign’ calculator is really looking at the 4-6 week campaign window.
If you look a year into the future the differences between a good and bad campaign grow even larger. It’s not unheard of for a song to 4x in streams over a year with no further investment in the song.
At some point the algorithm can take on a life of its own, or algorithmic activity on Spotify can cause algorithmic activity on social media which feeds back into Spotify. In these situations a song or artist might 100x (or more) over a year. This is what many would consider ‘going viral’.
This part is completely unpredictable which is why there isn’t a calculator.
So anyways, if you’re looking to simulate what might happen with a certain budget or compare your results to something, check out those calculators here: https://andrewsouthworth.com/meta-ads-spotify-forecast-tool/
If you want to check out the popularity index calculator head here: https://andrewsouthworth.com/spotify-popularity-index-calculator/
If you encounter any bugs let me know!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency Southworth Media specializes in running Meta conversion ads to promote your music on streaming platforms, email list growth, tour promotion and more.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels and FanFunnels are the best all-in-one platforms for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels, build a mailing list and more!
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.
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