Plastic

Guides

How to promote a song with ads: test every part

Make a short vertical video for each part of your song. Run them side by side on Instagram for about a week at $5–15 a day, then put your money behind the part that gets the cheapest Spotify clicks. It's often not the chorus.

By Plastic · Updated 11 October 2026 · 7 min read

In this guide
  1. Why test the parts
  2. What you need
  3. Step 1: Make one video per part
  4. Step 2: Set up the campaign
  5. Step 3: Let it run, then read the numbers
  6. Step 4: Put the money behind the winner
  7. On TikTok
  8. Make the videos in one go
  9. Questions

Why test the parts

You'd think the chorus sells the song. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't.

“When my album came out, I had about a thousand monthly listeners and thirteen songs I loved. I started with Mirror, the first song, and paid 50 to 60 cents for every click to Spotify or Apple Music. I spent a lot of money that way, because making new videos in CapCut was so painful.”

Kai Williams, who made Clips

His next song, Bad to You, has a long intro, then a verse, a chorus and a bridge. He made a video for each part and expected the chorus to win. After a few days, the intro cost about 20 cents a click, and the chorus about 50. The part he'd have skipped was the cheapest way to find listeners.

He isn't the only one. Brian Hazard of Passive Promotion runs ads for his own music and publishes the results. In one campaign, the winner was "this little snippet of the last verse going into the coda", which outperformed everything else he tried. His advice now is to make videos that "showcase at least three different parts of your song".

The reason is simple. A stranger scrolling Instagram gives your ad about a second. The part of the song playing in that second decides whether they stay. You can't know in advance which part that is, but a week of ads can tell you.

What you need

  • The song, mixed and mastered.
  • Short vertical videos, one per part (step 1).
  • A smart link with a pixel, such as Hypeddit, Feature.fm or ToneDen. Spotify won't let you put a Meta pixel on your artist page, so the smart link sits in between. People land on it and click through to Spotify, and the click gets counted.
  • A Meta ad account, set up in Meta Business Suite and linked to your Instagram.
  • $5 to $15 a day for about a week.

Step 1: Make one video per part

Pick at least three parts: the first verse, the pre-chorus, the chorus, the bridge, the outro. Make one short video for each.

  1. Shape: vertical, 9:16. That's Meta's spec for Reels.
  2. Length: 6 to 15 seconds. Meta says shorter videos in that range work better.
  3. Start where the part hits, not on its first bar. Meta's advice is to get your key message into the first 3 seconds and to use motion in the first frame.
  4. Keep everything else the same. Use the same backdrop, look and text style on every video, so the only difference is the music. Then the test tells you which part won, not which background did.
  5. Keep text out of the edges. For Reels, Meta suggests leaving about 14% at the top, 35% at the bottom and 6% on each side free of text.
  6. Put the lyrics on screen. Meta recommends sound, but many people scroll with it off, and words on screen still tell them what they're hearing.

Step 2: Set up the campaign

  1. Objective: Engagement, with Website as where conversions happen. Choose your smart link's pixel event, such as Hypeddit's "Smart Link Click". This tells Meta to find people who click through to Spotify, not people who just tap.
  2. If you can't track conversions, optimize for landing page views instead. A landing page view counts only when your page actually loaded, so it's closer to real interest than a link click.
  3. One ad set, broad targeting. Pick the countries you care about and leave interests open. As Hazard puts it, "the creative is the targeting": the song itself finds its listeners.
  4. One ad per part, each with its own video, so you can compare them. Meta suggests up to 10 creatives in an ad set.
  5. Placements: Instagram. Hazard runs Instagram only. Adding Facebook made his cost per result look cheaper, but he saw no gain in Spotify for Artists.
  6. Budget: $5 to $15 a day. Hypeddit suggests $5–10 a day; Hazard tests at about $15 a day.

Step 3: Let it run, then read the numbers

Give it at least 4 days, ideally a week, before you judge. Meta suggests at least 4 days for creative tests and 7 for its A/B test tool. Switching ads on and off every day ruins the test.

  • Cost per result (Spotify click)

    What a listener costs you

    The main number. Lower wins

  • Hook rate (3-second plays ÷ impressions)

    Whether the first second stops the scroll

    20–40% is solid, according to Motion's ad benchmarks

  • Hold rate (ThruPlays ÷ 3-second plays)

    Whether the part keeps people listening

    Higher means the part holds

  • Saves and followers in Spotify for Artists

    Whether the clicks turn into fans

    Check it after the test week

A part with a great hook rate but expensive clicks stops people but doesn't make them curious. A part with fewer views but cheap clicks is the one to fund.

Cost per Spotify click, by part

  1. Intro$0.20
  2. Chorus$0.50
Kai Williams’s ads for Bad to You, after a few days. Approximate.

Step 4: Put the money behind the winner

  1. Keep the best one or two parts, and turn the rest off.
  2. Make new videos of the winning part: a different backdrop, a different look, a different first second, and a different hook line (the short text on screen that sets the scene). Meta says ads that are too similar may not be treated as different, so make the new ones clearly new.
  3. Raise the budget slowly, and keep watching saves and followers in Spotify for Artists. They tell you whether the clicks are real fans.
  4. On your next release, test again. The winner on one song tells you little about the next.

On TikTok

TikTok works differently. Post each part as a normal TikTok first, see which one people watch to the end, then boost that post as a Spark Ad. A Spark Ad keeps the likes and comments on your original post. TikTok's minimum budget is $20 a day per ad group, so testing many parts as separate ads costs more there than on Instagram.

Make the videos in one go

The slow part of all this is step 1: cutting the same song five or fifteen ways, on the beat, with the lyrics in time. That's an evening in a video editor, which is why most artists make two videos and hope.

“In CapCut, the automatic lyrics came out wrong, and fixing them was buggy. Final Cut was worse. Every new hook line or backdrop meant opening the editor again. I was losing whole evenings I could have spent making music.”

Kai Williams, who made Clips

Clips does it in a few minutes. Drop in the song and your footage, and it finds the parts: verse, pre, chorus, bridge. It cuts one vertical video for each on the beat and syncs your lyrics word by word. The look and layout are the same on every part, so your test is fair. The files come out named by part, ready to upload as separate ads.

Questions

How much should I spend to test a song?

About $5 to $15 a day for a week, in one ad set with one ad per part. Then move the money to the part that wins.

How long should a music ad test run?

At least 4 days, ideally 7. Meta's own testing tool asks for a minimum of 7 days. Don't judge after a day.

Which part of my song should I use in ads?

Test at least three parts. The chorus is a good guess, but a verse, a pre-chorus or an outro often wins.

Should I run conversion or traffic campaigns for Spotify?

Conversions, through a smart link with a pixel, so Meta finds people who click through to Spotify. Feature.fm notes that Meta wants about 50 conversions a week; with less, start with traffic or landing page views.

Do I need a smart link?

Yes, if you want Meta to optimize for Spotify clicks. Spotify doesn't take a Meta pixel, so the smart link page counts the click for you.

Sources

More guides