We used a particular behaviour of a niche audience on Spotify to get IKEA’s bedroom message to them when sleep was on their minds. New parents turn to white noise playlists on Spotify to help their babies sleep. But for the 156 million (55%) users who don’t have Spotify premium, the calming playlists get interrupted with loud ads that wake their babies and create havoc. So we bought up all the ad space on these popular Sleep playlists to keep the babies asleep and share some quiet messages about IKEA products with their parents.

The sleep category has become crowded with new, direct-to-consumer mattress-in-a-box brands popping up everywhere and gaining popularity. We needed to position IKEA as a true ‘sleep expert’ - reminding people of our range in sleep products. IKEA uses their expertise in design to create solutions that help people fall asleep and stay asleep (without breaking the bank) through a wide range of mattresses, blackout curtains, and temperature-controlling linens.

The use of Spotify technology to drive this campaign was crucial - the very insight around the use of sleep playlists by new parents relied on the user experience and Spotify’s unique capabilities. We decided to buy all the ad space on popular sleep playlists for babies and create a series of ads that matched the tone of the tracks in the playlist. We created 11 ads, each with unique SFX like whitenoise, raindrops, and ocean waves, and a soothing whispered VO from IKEA’s longtime Swedish spokesperson, Jonas, delivering our sleep message.

We even gave parents the option to tap on a companion banner and shop IKEA’s bedroom solutions during their rare moment of peace.

While ads usually diminish the user experience, the campaign actually enhanced it by helping babies stay asleep by blocking out loud ads with our soft, quiet, shushy ones.

We uncovered a particular audience notoriously known for their erratic sleeping patterns and poor quality of sleep: newborn babies and their exhausted parents. Many new parents use whitenoise and other ambient sounds to help keep their babies asleep, and many turn to Spotify playlists to find the right sounds. A search on Spotify will yield hundreds of playlists for babies including whitenoise, lullabies, sounds of the forest, and soothing flute melodies.

More than half of all Spotify users are using the free version of the service, and their peaceful playlists are interrupted by ads, and with many new parents not being able to afford luxuries like paid subscriptions, they took to Twitter to air their frustrations about the interruption of their baby’s precious sleep.

What if we could help parents prevent their babies from waking up to show that IKEA really understands how important sleep is?

The use of Spotify technology to drive this campaign was crucial - the very insight around the use of sleep playlists by new parents relied on the user experience and Spotify’s unique capabilities. We decided to buy all the ad space on popular sleep playlists for babies for three months and run our series of ads that matched the unique, sleepy SFX of the tracks in the playlist. This execution was a lead-up to the IKEA bedroom sale.

During the course of our Spotify takeover, online sales of bedroom furniture increased by 7.1% from the previous period. Our audio ads drove a click through rate that was 25% higher than the Spotify average, directing thankful parents to IKEA.ca to shop for sleep products. Both Native and In-Playlist Desktop Overlays outperformed Spotify average benchmarks by 59%. Finally, our Mobile Overlay companion banner delivered a CTR 164% above the Spotify benchmark. Most importantly, we didn’t wake any babies.

Nearly half of all parents with children six months or younger get just 1-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night. ‘Sleep’ is one of the five most searched-for categories on Spotify, and 39 million minutes of sleep music are streamed every month globally. In fact, there are over 2.3 million songs on Spotify that are dedicated sleep tracks to help people go to sleep and stay asleep.This behaviour is true amongst new parents who use whitenoise and other ambient sounds to help keep their babies asleep, and turn to Spotify playlists to find the right sounds.

More than half of all Spotify users use the free version of the service, which means peaceful sleep playlists are eventually and consistently interrupted by loud ads, and parents took to Twitter to air their frustrations.