Digital technology has impacted nearly every industry, but perhaps no industry more than record labels and music artists. The music business used to be about selling a song on a specific release day. The new goal is to give a hit song a longer life, so digital streams last months, rather than days or weeks. Interscope Records was looking to use the latest digital tools and platforms to extend the streaming life of Imagine Dragons’ new single “Believer.” They came to this creative team to build a digital campaign for “Believer” that would drive Spotify streams and engage fans with striking creative. The team used the cover art and powerful message of the song to create a dynamic, sensory, and emotive experience. This partnership and approach is among the first in the music industry and offers artists the opportunity to connect and communicate with fans for months rather than days.

Each quality site that ran the ad was individually vetted and selected based on contextual relevance and target audience—this included sites like Time Out and UPROXX. Those who were hit with the high impact unit were retargeted with a Facebook Canvas iteration of the creative, which drove users to the microsite version of the ad. The creative was placed on a microsite that lives as a subdomain on the Imagine Dragons official website. This approach extended the permanence of the campaign and song by allowing fans to refer to the page to continue the conversation or share the unique creative with their social networks.

The campaign exceeded industry standards on several key metrics. CTR was 3.66%, more than 16x the Sizmek Rich Media benchmark. The interaction rate was 5%, 2.8x the Google Rich Media norm. The campaign drove over one million engagements across devices, speaking not only to the success of the cross-screen creative but also the trend of consumers streaming music both at their desktops and on-the-go. At $0.01 per engagement, the Facebook Canvas ad had a 0.95% CTR, nearly double the standard benchmark. The microsite offered an added measure of success; the average time spent was 01:56, in which time most users were sampling the song and using the selfie functionality. The creative team successfully delivered on driving sampling and streaming of the song, while also engaging users to join the conversation themselves through the selfie feature.