Spotify’s latest report shows their full-screen pop-up marketing tool proves far more effective than ads on social media.

According to Spotify, Marquee ads on average provide 10 times more listeners per dollar than social ads. The study comes from Spotify for Artists, who worked with eight labels and distributors for months, comparing Spotify’s campaign tool versus other digital advertising. The research covered a broad range of release types, artist sizes and genres.

While the 10x figure is an average, Spotify says even the release with the lowest rate in the study received 5x more listeners per dollar spent on social ads. Across the study, Spotify Marquee also delivered a 100% higher click-to-listen-rate on average. Find full details on the study from Spotify here.

Spotify Marquee are the full-screen pop ups that shows in the mobile app, recommending new music from artists, to listeners that have shown interest. The benefits for advertisers and artists over traditional social media ads, is the level of targeting (being able to target those who have shown interest), as well as promoting on the platform where streaming happens, to listeners looking for music, rather than the additional level of friction provided by social media platforms.

Image Credit: Spotify

We believed in the efficacy of on-platform Marquee campaigns vs paid social, but the results of this study were even more definitive than we expected. It’s clear that Marquee not only drives streams at a higher conversion rate and a lower cost [per listener] — it helps us foster meaningful, long term connections between fans and our artists. That’s our core mission.

Whitaker Elledge, VP of Artist Development, Dualtone Music Group

We have always questioned whether our social ads were truly driving engagement on Spotify. With these results from Steve Aoki’s single, ‘Just Us Two,’ we were able to see the value in marketing directly on a music platform over social ads — our Marquee campaign was over 20x times more cost-efficient than our social ads promoting the single.

SuzAnn Brantner, Head of Marketing, YMU US Music

Learn how to create a Spotify Marquee here.

Learn how to upload your own music to Spotify for free here.