Spotify has found a way to better generate more revenue from the ads it delivers to users of its free music streaming service. Although today’s announcement is aimed at advertisers that will now be able to target ads based on the category of podcasts people listen to, users of Spotify’s free service are the ones affected by the decision.
Up until now, Spotify’s free-tier users would be targeted by ads based on the music they listen to, such as genre or playlist, but starting today, advertisers will be able to target them more specifically based on the category of podcasts they like.
Spotify said that this is just the first step towards building a solid advertising strategy around podcasts, which was started not long ago by the partnership with Samsung and 3M.
We aspire to develop a more robust advertising solution for podcasts that will allow us to layer in the kind of targeting, measurement, and reporting capabilities we have for ads that run alongside other content experiences like music and video.
The new ads will play between songs for those who don’t pay for Spotify Premium, so that doesn’t change. However, free-tier listeners will notice that there are now more specific, depending on the podcasts they listen. The new capability is now rolling out to 10 market: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, UK, and the US.