CD Baby launches Ad Builder for artists

The tool, which is integrated into the company’s marketing platform show.co, can help users build their artist fanbase online, with each stream or view based on the ad’s link contributing to the artist’s income. The ads can be published on popular music sites and blogs like Pitchfork, Billboard and Rolling Stone, where readers are already engaged with music. It could also make it easier for artists to announce new releases or live streams.

Show.co has found that interactive ads get four times more engagement compared to static ads. To use the tool, artists can head to show.co, choose Interactive Ads, add a link, select their genre and basic audience characteristics, and figure out where they want fans to go.

“Ads can get really complicated, so we worked hard to make it as simple and straightforward as possible to create and launch an ad campaign,” CD Baby senior marketing vice-president Kevin Breuner said. “We wanted to provide just what artists need, putting their music in front of music fans at the very place and time they’re online searching for new artists to check out.

“Most people look at an ad’s performance and see the clicks, and think the one with more clicks wins. But that’s not accurate. For example, some people clicked but never bothered to go to your page, which happens on mobile a lot. You can look instead at the data for a streaming song like the ones used in our interactive ads and the key metrics are the bounce rate and watch time. If someone sees your video in passing in their feed, social platforms will count that as a view, even if it’s only lasting one second.”