2020 has been a year like no other as brands look to continuously adapt their approach to remain relevant and connected to their audiences.
While the pandemic has made advertisers more focused on the short term in an ever-changing landscape, now is the time to look ahead to Christmas as the opportunity to win the hearts and minds of consumers through meaningful connections.
Through audio advertising, brands not only have an opportunity to break away from visual clutter during busy cultural moments, but through real-time insights, can connect with their audiences thoughtfully within their day-to-day personal experiences as consumers stream audio across multiple devices.
At Spotify, our insights reflect the real people behind the devices as we are with our 9.9 million users every day, whether they are running, cooking, partying and showering or trying to focus or simply chill. These real-time, personal insights go beyond demographics and device IDs alone to reveal our audience’s moods, mindsets, tastes and behaviours. Using this unique insight and data, we can see there is an increase in listening on Spotify in the lead up to the festive season as November marks the start of Christmas listening globally.
In 2019, listening session lengths increase by 10% from October through to January, as people gather to co-listen around their connected devices. Our ‘Hear the Cheer’ digital activation shares key Christmas trends and audience data with brands and media planners, through a dedicated hub microsite. While the industry is in planning mode, we want to open up our insights into how Australians listen during the Christmas season, to support advertisers looking to get the most from their Christmas campaigns.
We know that the way we listen changes throughout this period - in 2019 there was a 76% increase in smart speaker streams on the platform from October to December globally. With fewer people streaming from their cars during the daily commute and an increase in working from home, more people have been streaming across devices like computer desktops, TVs, smart speakers, and gaming consoles in 2020.
This is a trend that we predict will continue into the Christmas season and beyond. When it comes to what we’re listening to, Pop and Hip Hop were the most popular genres for Australian listeners from December 1st to 25th in 2019. There was also a rise in nostalgic listening as the ‘Oldies’ share of Australian streams increased 148 percent over the Christmas period - from nine percent of streams in October 2019 to 23 percent of streams in December 2019.
Given the breadth and depth of our data and insights and our unique knowledge of our users, advertising on Spotify offers a level of targeting which is unparalleled in any other audio format. Knowing how, where and what our users are listening to puts us in a unique position to support brands in reaching the right audience during this period. This Christmas season, more than ever, brands should consider how they can best reach their audience and have their message heard in exactly the right context — and audio advertising is how to do that.