Dive Brief:
- Spotify CRO Jeff Levick told Ad Exchanger that the streaming music service is "going to be fully open" this year in programmatic.
- The company launched its programmatic private marketplace last November, giving marketers access to first-party data to target users by music genre, playlist and subscriber data like age and gender.
- Currently Spotify sells display and video ads programmatically, but is expected to include audio ads soon.
Dive Insight:
Last year was "huge for us," Levick told Ad Exchanger, since they started with programmatic advertising, and in 2016 the company is going to fully open with programmatic. "We're going to keep expanding and investing heavily in the programmatic channel," he said.
Given that the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) public comment period on protocol that includes support for digital audio ads ends in a week on Feb. 19, it's expected that audio ads will be added to Spotify's programmatic offering. A standard for audio programmatic is expected to follow.
Jana Jakovljevic, head of programmatic solutions at Spotify, told Ad Exchanger "it's completely nascent right now," but anticipates that when the standard is agreed upon, tech vendors, SSPs and DSPs will quickly adopt it and begin running audio as well.
Last fall Spotify began outsourcing its geotargeted ad sales to focus on pursuing deals with big brands. According to comScore, Spotify gets 44 million unique monthly users. Spotify has also been active in geotargeting its video ads.
Meanwhile, last summer the IAB released a report showing how robust a marketplace programmatic is. Online programmatic display revenue in 2014 was $10.1 billion, 20% of overall ad revenues. Banner ads are the leader in programmatic ad revenue at 80%, but both mobile and video are rising channels. For Spotify to widely open with programmatic will put it in a position to leverage the revenue source that doesn't appear to be slowing down.