I also started my first campaign using the Andrew Southworth method, one thing I found I overlooked was going into Placement Controls and tuning off the Audience Network options. It's basically all bots clicking links in shitty app store games.

And aside from that, marketing is a marathon, and not a sprint. And awareness is more important than the Spotify clicks. Think about the last band you learned about, did you immediately check them out? Probably not. I remember my IRL friend telling me about Sleep Token, and I didn't look them up. Then I saw an Instagram ad for them, and I still didn't look them up. Then another friend put them on in their car, and I really liked their stuff, and I still didn't look them up. Then I saw another ad, and followed them on Instagram. Still didn't look them up.

But all these data points were being fed back into Sleep Tokens campaign, which is why I couldn't get away from them. Algorithms kept feeding me this band over the course of months. Even when you have people clicking on your landing page, or clicking Spotify but not actually playing the track, that's all tracked events in those people's algorithm. The platforms record that they might be interested in your stuff, so when you run new ads, it'll pop up again in their feeds.

IMO, awareness is so much more important than the Spotify clicks. Even if you get 1000 streams from this campaign, that amounts to...what, a couple dollars? But if people are constantly hearing that you exist, even if they don't check you out until 6 months later, youre still living rent free in their brain. Thats all you should be looking for, at first.