What is the role of an Ad Studio Country Lead?As Ad Studio Country Lead, FR & NL, I take care of business development in France and the Netherlands, of Spotify Ad Studio which is our self-service advertising platform allowing advertisers and their agencies, partners music (labels, artists, tourers, festivals, etc.), as well as podcasters or studios, whatever their size, to set up audio and/or video advertising campaigns on Spotify in order to reach the right audiences at the right time and via the right formats.What are the benefits for artists of using Spotify ad formats?To begin with, the advertising experience on Spotify is very premium and non-intrusive for users: only 2-3 minutes of advertising per hour on average. As an artist, you will then be able to target fanbases or even musical genres to showcase your projects and your releases/tours. Note that Spotify has +600M users, of which no less than 379M are free and therefore eligible to receive advertising campaigns (Source: Q4 2023 Spotify earnings), which is far from negligible.Also, Spotify generates 27% higher engagement than on social networks (Source: “Radio, Digital and Social Media from Historical benchmarks” study, Spotify, 2021) thus allowing artists and creators to forge a strong bond with their audiences at the time of campaigns and user exposure. Our advertising formats are in fact non-skippable and clickable, and thus make it possible to achieve significant and measurable performance via reporting. You will be able to know the number of new listeners, the number of listeners, the number of average streams per listener or even the engagement rate generated by your campaigns.Discover our 3 tips to make your audio advertising attractive.How do you imagine the evolution of music marketing, or more generally the music industry, in the coming years?Digital audio (podcast, music or even audiobooks) is experiencing very strong growth: it seems clear that people cannot do without music or even podcasts. It’s a real need, daily and almost vital. We also observe this in our reports, whether on the increasing volume of the number of Spotify users or on the time spent on the platform by the latter, also up sharply (on average +2h30 per day for freemium users), or even on the type of content consumed by our users which is increasingly diversified. On the content side, streaming allows all artists or creators to find their audience(s) and connect to their fans on Spotify and make a living from it. Our Loud&Clear report perfectly illustrates these elements and Spotify’s contribution to music industry revenue. For example, Spotify returned +$9B to the music industry in 2023, including +$4.5B to indies; which is a record. So there is room for any artist/creator. (highly known, in development, independent, emerging...) and therefore easier accessibility to its audience thanks to Spotify.AI, which is an important subject for Spotify and which is part of our culture and at the center of our innovation (e.g. launch of our AI DJ in 2023), will play a crucial role in the years to come and will undoubtedly enable artists and their teams to design even more effective and personalized advertising campaigns.Also, it is interesting to note that it is, paradoxically, harder for an artist to emerge at the moment: the implementation of a marketing/media campaign is therefore essential and necessary to expand your audience, build loyalty and increase your performance (streams, etc.).So, which advertising formats should we prioritize?The ideal is to combine audio and video formats in order to reach audiences in different contexts and via different (complementary) creatives. Indeed, for example, video campaigns are only broadcast to users who are focused on the Spotify App. Once a user no longer has the Spotify App (desktop or mobile) in the foreground, they will only be exposed to audio campaigns. Video campaigns therefore generally have a higher CTR since they make it possible to reach users who are 'able' to view the video creation and therefore generate a click more easily.Our latest Canvas format (launched in January 2024) is also a very good way to complete your Audio campaigns by adding a looping visual in the background on mobile or desktop in order to obtain more impactful and engaging campaigns.We recommend using the clicks objective to boost CTRs and therefore campaign performance, and the impressions or reach objective to work on notoriety by reaching a higher number of unique users.The accelerated pace will be welcome to broadcast your campaign as quickly as possible and facilitate its delivery (when targeting is very restricted).Finally, targeting by fan base + musical genres is the one that ensures the best campaigns for artists, since it allows them to reach audiences based on their musical tastes and the artists of whom they are already fans.Consult our dedicated article to succeed in your targeting.Based on your expertise, do you have any advice to share with our community?Being curious is one of the keys for me, whatever the profession: research, find out about trends, tools, methods or even test processes or ways of working. Going for information, questioning yourself, putting things in parallel and highlighting them is necessary in order to have, when the time comes, the right reflexes or an objective and reasoned judgment/decision. Not limiting yourself to your area of expertise is also useful, at least taking an interest in the different projects of your company, different professions or your cross-functional partners.Discover our detailed analysis of Spotify marketing tools