Voice Ads & Creative Best Practices

Voice is the new touch – millions of people use voice assistants to write texts, find their favorite songs, and even purchase products. And now, consumers can interact with their ads on Pandora! However, this new format means new creative optimization strategies for advertisers.

Voice ads put the consumer in the driver’s seat, meaning that it’s up to advertisers to put forth creative that earns engagement. For the past six months, we have been actively testing voice ads in a closed beta with partners to better understand creative best practices for driving verbal engagement.

And we get it, it can be very intimidating to jump into the voice pool, which is why we’ve curated best-in-class examples from some of the top brands in the nation to help get the creative juices flowin’.

Best Practices for Every Objective

Engagement Awareness: When is the optimal time to incorporate instructions?

Giving directions at the beginning and the end of your ad was the most impactful, which is intuitive. This is a new format and consumers need more education on how to use it. Yes, this means you need to quite literally tell people “this is an ad you can talk to.”

Call To Action: There is more than one way to say “yes.” But what is best practice for brands?

Short answer: Keep it simple. Asking users to just say “yes” rather than leaving it open-ended was the clear winner. It leaves no room for interpretation and is concise.

Content vs Promotion: Can voice ads drive engagement for sales and promos?

They can! Teasing a special offer or promo was shown to be more effective at driving verbal engagement than teasing product information, showing that the voice ad format is diverse in its use cases.

Voiceover and Sound Design: Does Sound Design have any impact on engagement?

The creative with a clear voiceover outperformed the one with lots of sound design. Our hypothesis for this is that ads with clear narration make it easier for listeners to register the ad message while also understanding that they are expected to talk back to the ad.

Ad Length: What length invitation audio is most effective at driving engagement?

The invitation audio is the first part of the ad that captures a listener’s attention and asks them to engage. We found that 10-15 seconds long was the sweet spot – less than that and consumers weren’t sure how to respond; more, and attention began to fade.

Key Takeaways:

With new formats come new best practices. We are actively testing what resonates with consumers in this new voice-driven world and results to-date are very promising.

Voice Ads put consumers in the driver’s seat. Advertisers have to put forth creative that earns engagement, so it will be important to optimize your creative to the fullest extent with these best practices.

Contact us or talk to your Pandora rep.