Brief:

• Michelob Ultra this week introduced the "The Michelob Playlist Maker" on Spotify in Canada as the audio streaming platform's first dynamic advertising campaign in the country. The feature lets Canadian runners create a personalized playlist based on distance, intensity and location, according to an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
• Runners will hear customized Michelob ads based on their location, time of day and the weather as they listen to their playlists. The beer brand set up a hub on Spotify that shows the "top running songs" in Canada to help people find music for their workout routines. Parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Dentsu Aegis, Draftline and A Million Ads developed the campaign.
• Runners also can sign up for the virtual Ultra Night Run on Oct. 2-4. The five- and 10-kilometer event will be a virtual event that invites runners to go the distance either on a treadmill or outside while practicing social distancing, per the website.

Insight:

Michelob Ultra, the brand's lower-carb, lower-calorie beer, aims to reach health-conscious Canadians with its campaign on Spotify, whose on-demand audio platform is suited for listening while exercising. The Michelob Playlist Maker lets runners customize their listening experience based on their running routine, while targeting them with ads that Michelob can change in real time. The personalized experience can help to grab the attention of Spotify listeners with a combination of music and ad messaging delivered based on a user's location, weather and time of day.

For Spotify, the campaign marks the expansion of dynamic ad insertion to Canada. The company has gradually expanded its advertising platform to give marketers more flexibility in their targeting within music streams and podcasts. This year, the company rolled out Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) for podcasts, letting marketers see data on ad impressions, ad frequency and reach and anonymized information about listeners' age, gender and device type. Last year, Spotify updated its self-serve advertising platform to help marketers reach target audiences based on their listening habits. While Spotify doesn't disclose its number of listeners in Canada, it has said that 26% of its 299 million monthly active users are in North America. Almost half of those 78 million people listen to its ad-supported version, per a quarterly report.

Michelob Ultra and Spotify's campaign in Canada is an extension of a customized playlist effort that started last year in the U.K. and Mexico before a global rollout. The beer brand's most recent campaign follows other promotions aimed at health-conscious consumers or sports fans. In July, it sponsored a digital experience to let people virtually attend games as the NBA restarted its season without fans because of the coronavirus pandemic. Michelob Ultra in May sponsored a charity golf event featuring Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson playing against NFL greats Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. A month earlier, it began livestreaming video workouts from its social channels to reach health-minded consumers who were stuck at home.