When you think of Spotify ads, what comes to mind? Ads in between songs? During podcasts?

It’s safe to say that video ads aren’t your first thought. And that has consequences for our ad revenue. Media planners bucket us as an audio-only platform, an incremental element  in the larger media plan.

So, to make Spotify’s video ad offerings unforgettable, we hacked the most analytical  part of the media planning experience: the RFP spreadsheet. We created Spreadbeats, the first-ever music video coded inside an Excel spreadsheet. Millions of data points transformed into a stunning music video, proving that Spotify’s video ads can break through the best.

Imagine you’re a media planner. Your job depends on your ability to show ROI. So it’s no wonder that when it comes to RFPing, you prioritize efficient go-tos like Meta and Google, old reliables like YouTube, and shiny objects like TikTok. Spotify just seems like a digital audio platform, and an expensive one at that. Not exactly a must-buy.

But the thing is, Spotify is so much more than an audio platform. It has video and multiformat ads… it’s interactive, collaborative and highly engaging and its ROI goes way beyond numbers on a spreadsheet. 

To break through, we had to find a way to hack the RFP process and change the conversation… showing media planners and the entire marketing industry why Spotify Advertising goes beyond just plain digital audio.

Objectives:​

• Increase familiarity beyond audio

• Drive relevance, consideration, and brand love

 So, to win over media planners, we brought Spotify’s video ad capabilities and its ROI superiority to the place where they spend the most time considering ad buys: their media plan spreadsheets. Spreadbeats. A never-been-done-before, eye- and ear-opening way to prove the power of combining video and audio in a medium perfectly tailored to its audience. We partnered with Coachella-headlining artist John Summit and coded a four-minute music video into a tab in the actual Excel spreadsheets Spotify’s salesforce sends to its clients, turning rows and columns into a canvas that sprang to life when the file was opened. 

We worked with Spotify’s ad sales teams to create custom RFPs for every brand who’d requested one, so that when they received their actual detailed RFP responses, they’d also receive an adjacent music video surprise.

With no paid media, Spotify sales reps individually emailed media planners their RFP responses, including a coy message of what they were about to see. Then, once they opened it, the RFP sprang to life.

Spotify salespeople could use a Spreadbeats generator. With the generator, they could customize music videos for each recipient by inputting their name, the brand they represent, and other relevant details.

They could seamlessly deliver their real spreadsheet RFP responses along side the music video by uploading them. After clicking “generate,” they would receive a straightforward Excel file containing their RFP response  along with the customized music video.

By breaking the boundaries of video and B2B marketing, we proved that Spotify’s video ads are a game changing must-buy for media agencies and brands everywhere.