Did you know that Spotify has a head of dance and electronic development? Her name is Ronny Ho, and her team decides what electronic music makes it to Spotify’s in-house curated playlists.
At Spotify’s second annual Sparks event in New York last week, Ho and other execs talked about how they find topical music to populate Spotify’s biggest playlists. The audio streaming giant also announced editorial Watchfeeds, a new collection of written and video content and user interactions that will appear on top of playlists to explain and personalize the editorial team’s choices—and ideally, help drive engagement on the Spotify platform.
The event was one of several advertising-related events held by the streaming service this year as it continues to look for opportunities for platform monetization, particularly as it pushes further into video. Fresh off its first full year of profitability, Spotify, which last reported 268 million users, is leaning into advertising, with a focus on adtech and generative AI that it detailed last month at its first-ever version of an upfront, Spotify Advance; at Google’s NewFront presentation last week, the platform also got a shout-out.
The goal of all of it, according to Ann Piper, head of North America ad sales for Spotify, is to get advertisers to see audio ads as a crucial part of their marketing mixes.
“Audio from a time spent [perspective] is outpacing the money that goes there in terms of the ad dollars,” she told Marketing Brew.
Double duty: The Sparks event, Piper told us, was meant to complement Spotify Advance, which was designed to showcase what Spotify is doing to advance measurement, buying, and creation across its platform. Sparks, which was held in both the US and the UK, instead showcased region-specific insights.
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At Advance, Spotify debuted several new ad products, including Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), a product that Piper said was centered on interoperability; the ad exchange is compatible with major demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk, Google DV360, Magnite, and LiveRamp. By the time Spotify announced SAX, over 5,000 advertisers had already used the product.
Piper said that auto and QSR industries are two major sectors that have embraced the ad exchange. Auto brands have used SAX ads to promote products in local designated market areas, she said, while QSR companies have used SAX ads to develop calls to action and use it, generally, for lower-funnel advertising purposes.
Advance also saw the debut of generative AI audio ads on Spotify, which allow advertisers to generate voice-overs and scripts using generative AI tools. As of last month, four in 10 advertisers were leveraging the self-serve capability, the company previously disclosed. While it’s still early days, Spotify is aiming to “hone in” on the data to show advertisers how a campaign is performing against others in their category, Piper said.
At Sparks, the streaming service touted marketing research it partnered with information services company Neustar on, which found that Spotify ads drive a 20% lift in foot traffic for retail clients and drive 14% more return per dollar spent than any other channel for CPG clients. Measuring the impact of audio ads may help get advertisers to take audio ads more seriously, Piper told Marketing Brew.
“Digital audio isn’t always showing up in [media mix modeling], right?” she said. “They’ve had to really work, and especially podcast [ads,] because it’s been newer.”
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