Spotify partners with Pixels to reach Hong Kong advertisers

Pixels is the multi-screen-focused firm formed by the combination of Pixel Media, Adsfactor and Snap Mobile last October.

Since its launch in Hong Kong in 2013, Spotify has been popular with Hong Kong millennials aged 15-34 who are spending more than 100 minutes a day on the service, one of the highest dwell times within Asia.

In total, there are more than 500,000 Spotify users in Hong Kong (as of October 2014 reported here), who as part of a public-transport commuting market with mobile-driven consumption habits, is a strong target audience for Spotify.

Globally, the service has more than 60 million active users (over 15 million paying subscribers) and more than 30 million international and local songs across mobile, tablet and desktop screens.

Wider afield in Asia, Spotify has worked with brands such as Nike and Adidas to harness the power of playlists for further monetisation, said Sunita Kaur, Spotify’s managing director for Asia.

Pairing audio with visual advertising is unique to the Hong Kong advertising market, Kevin Huang, CEO of Pixels, told Campaign Asia-Pacific.

"From a digital marketing perspective, we don't see any in-stream audio ad formats in Hong Kong. They are virtually non-existent, apart from radio, which is by far very traditional and does not allow customised content like advertiser pages, banner displays, audio ads between songs, and even in-app video ads," he added.

Huang foresees advertisers from the gamimg, sports, fashion, automotive, luxury industries in Hong Kong to start tapping their feet to their own branded playlists.