Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.

Marketing Brew

Alyssa Meyers

marketingbrew.com

Navigating the ‘slippery slope’ of personal endorsements in podcast ads

The FTC has never handled a case specific to podcast advertising, but has recently proposed an update to its guidelines for endorsements that includes a podcast example. 

a car dashboard with a speech bubble coming out of it saying "Thanks for your order! Your pickup will be ready in 15 minutes."

Brands are finding new ways to advertise in your car

New advertising opportunities could be opening up for brands in cars thanks to voice assistants.

a phone playing a "record" featuring the TikTok logo

They can use TikTok’s precleared list of songs, license music, or create custom tracks.

On TikTok, where audio is integral, brands can be limited by licensing. Here’s how they operate on the platform without risking potential trouble

Audio

Wave Sports & Entertainment is reaching new heights in podcasting, and not just with Jason and Travis Kelce’s hit show.

The digital content company behind shows like the Kelce brothers’ 

 (which was acquired by Wondery for $100 million, but which Wave still produces) and Carmelo Anthony’s 

. But, like a handful of other companies in the past year or so, the Wave team realized there was some white space to be filled: podcasts by and for 

That’s not just because of the growing interest in women’s sports among fans—women were already tuning in to Wave’s existing talk shows in a noticeable way.

“What does this slate look like in [terms of] success as we continue to scale?” Tunde St. Matthew-Daniel, Wave’s EVP of original content, told Marketing Brew. “We knew for talk shows, the woman audience is there. We’d seen that on our existing shows as well, even the ones that were male-led.”

Since last fall, Wave, which was recently named one of Time’s 

 with Kylie Kelce, WNBA star Cameron Brink’s 

 featuring Olympic rugby star Ilona Maher and her sisters. All three saw near-immediate advertiser interest: Each show had seven figures in brand deals before any of the content went live, Ryan Jann, head of strategy and revenue, told Marketing Brew.

When the Wave team decided to get more women behind the mic, they started by keeping it in the family and reached out to Kylie Kelce, a field-hockey coach and wife to Jason Kelce. One of Kylie’s guest appearances on 

 resulted in a particularly high-performing episode, according to Jann, so giving her a show of her own was “a no-brainer,” St. Matthew-Daniel said.

, and the show, which has landed high-profile guests including Michelle Obama and Kate Hudson, has continued on to average over 26 million social views a week, according to Wave.

The show has also attracted brands like Dunkin’, which saw over 132 million social impressions for a campaign that ran in episodes and on social, per Wave, and Hasbro, which partnered with 

 character Mummy Pig was pregnant via a mock-interview segment.

Kristin McKay, SVP and GM of global brands, fashion and preschool, at Hasbro, told us that the timing and brand fit of that campaign “could not have been more perfect.” Kylie was pregnant with her fourth child at the time, and her family are fans of 

, McKay said—plus, the crossover between sports and parenting content allowed the Peppa Pig brand to stretch a bit beyond its usual audience reach, she added.

The campaign earned attention from lifestyle and entertainment outlets that “don’t typically cover preschool brands,” and it ultimately generated over 13 billion impressions with over 700 earned media placements, McKay said, making it one of the most “widely talked-about announcements we’ve ever made.”

, the show hosted by Brink, who plays for the Los Angeles Sparks, and Sydel Curry-Lee, a former college volleyball player and Stephen Curry’s sister. Like Kylie, Brink had also previously engaged with Wave as a guest on one of its shows (in her case, Paul George’s 

), and St. Matthew-Daniel said his team started proactively discussing a show with her after that. They also had a sense that a WNBA-related show might perform well, since Wave had partnered with the league a few years ago to create content under Wave’s 

“We knew women’s sports worked with the audience that we were reaching on social,” he said. “That, along with different marketers and advertisers looking to spend around women’s sports and female-led hosts that touch the sports audience…was a big business reason that we wanted to pursue some more female hosts.”

 saw about 10 million views during the week of its debut alone, with sponsors including Anthropologie and AI search engine Perplexity signing on. Brink shares WNBA and basketball insights on the show, but her stories stretch beyond the W, St. Matthew-Daniel said, and Wave’s social strategies help amplify those stories beyond the podcast.

“We have a great muscle for building new audience pipelines via these social channels,” Jann said. “

 is on YouTube for an hour a week, but our team is so good at clipping that out…to drive consistent consumption across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, wherever it might be.”

Some hosts are social experts themselves, like Maher and her sisters, who host Wave’s most recently released women’s sports show, 

. That’s part of the reason Wave wanted to work with them, despite having no previous relationship, St. Matthew-Daniel said.

Maher, who has an Olympic bronze medal in rugby sevens, is “one of the most marketable young athletes” in the country, he said, and she has 5 million followers on Instagram and another 3.6 million on TikTok.

“What really stood out to us was less of the athlete stuff, as remarkable as that is, and more of the human side of her and how much she connects with people of all different backgrounds,” St. Matthew-Daniel said. “Her social content at the time showed that.”

There’s plenty of rugby talk on the show, he added, but it largely centers around the Maher sisters’ dynamic, making it as much of a “yap session” as it is a sports podcast. Within two weeks of its release, 

saw over 11 million views across social platforms, and the show landed Samsung as a launch partner with a $1.6 million deal, Jann told us.

The primarily women audiences for the three shows mark a shift from the company’s previous work, but it’s one that the Wave team plans to continue leaning into, St. Matthew-Daniel said. In other words, expect to see more content in the women’s sports space, as well as non-sports content like pop culture and comedy shows, to come.

“It’s got to be shows that we believe in, that are going to have a community and an audience that love them, as well as the business upside,” he said.

Why one podcast network is doubling down on women’s sports shows

After finding major success with Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights, Wave Sports & Entertainment went all in on women-led sports pods.

Jennimai Nguyen

In the year 2025, podcasts feel inescapable. Everyone’s a podcaster, and everything is a podcast.

The birth of the podcast is largely tied to the creation of the RSS audio feed in 2001, though the term “podcast” wasn’t coined until 2004. The following year, Steve Jobs 

 that “Apple is taking podcasting mainstream” when the company made podcasts accessible in iTunes (it’s now celebrating the 20-year milestone with a curated 

 of 20 of the most impactful shows from the past two decades). But the true mainstreaming of the medium didn’t really happen until nearly a decade later, when Apple released a standalone podcast app in 2012, followed by the debut of megahit 

After that, podcasting was officially supercharged. Podcasts became all but essential advertising channels for major tech and media companies, with podcast ad revenue 

 the $1 billion mark in 2021, and seemingly everyone with a platform—from 

It hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine in the podcast industry, though. In recent years, 

 have plagued the space, indicating a potential thirst for change.

Enter video podcasts, which have given consumers a different way to engage with the format—and have unlocked a plethora of video advertising opportunities for creators and hosting platforms.

“What the consumer wants is that foreground-background flexibility,” Emma Vaughn, global head of advertising and content business development at Spotify, told Marketing Brew. “If you’re listening, and all of a sudden you want to see the expression on the face of the interviewee, you can just turn your phone around, then put it back in your pocket. Even if you did that for two minutes, the fact that the video is available there increases overall consumption. [Video] really is like a tide that lifts all boats.”

If video killed the radio star, could it do the opposite for the podcast host?

Video content has become so ubiquitous in podcasting that today, the most commonly accepted definition of a podcast is a “recording of people discussing any topic on YouTube that is also available as [an] audio-only show elsewhere,” according to a recent 

 of more than 4,000 Americans ages 12 and up conducted by Edison Research and podcast ad agency Oxford Road. About half (52%) of respondents went even further, saying that they considered “content that is only available on YouTube in video form” to be podcasts.

The lack of agreement on a definition “has the ability to be a problem,” Oxford Road founder and CEO Dan Granger said, “but I choose to see it as an opportunity.” For one, he said, video helps with the discovery of new content, which has long been an issue for the audio-based medium.

“If I press play on a 90-second podcast trailer, put the phone in the center of the table, and stare into your eyes for 90 seconds, we wouldn’t hang out anymore,” Bryan Barletta, founder of the podcast trade association Sounds Profitable, said. “There are some aspects of getting people’s attention that do need visuals.”

That could be one reason why most major audio companies are pushing further into the video game. At the end of last year, Acast, a global podcasting platform and tech company, acquired Wonder Media Network, a creative podcast studio, in an effort to expand branded content and video production capabilities, Greg Glenday, Acast’s CEO, told us.

With more creative support, video has become a central part of Acast shows, and it’s brought different types of creators into the company’s fold. “We’ve got some YouTubers that are mostly YouTubers that also do podcasting, and then we have some podcasters that are learning how to do video on YouTube and other places,” Glenday said.

Even companies like NPR and SiriusXM that started in radio are embracing podcast video. Stephen J. Dubner, host of the podcast 

, which has amassed hundreds of millions of downloads and celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, told Marketing Brew that he, too, has “toyed with adding a small video component,” building on a growing YouTube audience for the show, which is currently only available as audio-only on that platform.

 platform in the world,” Adam Sachs, SVP of podcast content at SiriusXM, said. “It’s where the media audience is more than anywhere else…Putting your podcast up there gives it a chance of being served to so many more people than it would have had you just been in the closed RSS ecosystem.”

As video use gets more widespread in podcastland, Glenday said that the additional ad opportunities are attractive to both creators and advertisers—but he noted that breaking into video isn’t always the right fit. Business podcasts aren’t often significantly enhanced with visual assets, he said, and he noted that some, like podcast pioneer Marc Maron, have said that adding a filmed component can change the feel of a conversation and make it seem more scripted—although, he added, the security of a more contained discussion could also be alluring to brands.

“It depends on the show and the quality of it, and if they know what they’re doing,” Glenday said. “If they’re showing a lot of charts or highlights, if it’s a recap and they need to show something, then great, do video. And we’re happy to sell both, so we’re trying not to push [creators] one way or the other.”

While video can offer another way to monetize podcasts, stretching the medium further across platforms is amplifying another obstacle: measuring ad campaigns, which was already seen as being 

Traditional podcast measurement relies on a 

 attribution system, but video platforms use different measurement tech and metrics, which has led to “some frustrations by buyers,” said Gina Garrubbo, president and CEO of National Public Media, NPR’s exclusive sponsorship arm.

“You have a show distributed to multiple points of distribution, and each of those points of distribution requires its own methodology,” Granger said. “There’s always been ways that advertisers had to figure out assigning credit between channels, but never so much for the same assets…There’s a whole new layer of fragmentation that is making this job harder to do for everybody, and some advertisers are saying, ‘I don’t need more problems in my day. Just give me something that I understand.’”

Agencies like Oxford Road are trying to help marketers by “doing the math to triangulate” the different metrics—whether that’s an RSS download, a stream on Spotify, or a view on YouTube—but with no standard metric across platforms, podcast measurement remains predicated on some assumptions, Granger said, leading to some of that advertiser frustration.

That means some companies are emphasizing some podcast ad formats over others like media and investment company FlightStory, which has identified visual, baked-in ads as its most efficient advertising format. Christiana Brenton, FlightStory’s chief revenue officer, told us that she believes consumers have already signaled their desire for video-first podcasting content, and focusing on video-first ad buying is key to understanding and improving performance. But if podcast companies don’t have the technology to dig into video,she believes that creators and advertisers could be left behind on outdated RSS reliance.

“We have these big companies that don’t have ad stacks that enable video-first distribution,” Brenton told us. “I would really challenge a lot of the creators to really critically assess the incentives at play with some of the existing marketplaces, because if there’s any company that specializes in the creator economy or podcasting that is not advising creators to be video-first and to adopt baked-in read formats, they’re ultimately really limiting their audience growth and also limiting the ad effectiveness.”

Even amid the challenges, there continues to be advertiser demand for podcasts of all kinds, whether that’s audio-only or contains video.

“Anytime you see the growth, both from the user numbers, but also the zeitgeist…advertisers are going to flock to that, too” YouTube VP of Partnerships Tim Katz said. “We’ve seen a lot of asks from advertisers around, ‘How can I get connected with this podcast?’ Or, ‘I want to make sure that I’m targeting podcasts.’”

While execs agreed that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to start and monetize a successful podcast without a video component, there doesn’t seem to be much fear that could translate to the death of pure audio.

Spotify, for instance, encourages creators to add video elements to their podcast on the platform to help with discovery and monetization, but still welcomes audio-only podcasters, Vaughn said. As of late last year, more than 250 million Spotify users had watched a video podcast on the platform, per the company.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” she said. “That said, we see video as additive.”

YouTube’s Katz agreed that the RSS feed isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. The people creating them, though, might just start going by a different title.

“We’re at this magical place between the two, where we’re getting podcasters to become more like YouTubers and YouTubers to become more like podcasters,” he said.

The Podcast application is seen on an Apple iPad on October 24, 2017.

Podcasts created a new media category. Where do they go from here? 

The rise of the format opened new doors for content creators and advertisers, but the once audio-only industry is increasingly video-centric.

Podcasts have long been known for a very personal style of host-read ads that are often sold directly. So when it comes to programmatic ad sales, the sector has sometimes been viewed as a rare holdout.

But, much like the worst person you know starting a podcast, the introduction of more ad tech and automation in podcasting 

In one of the latest signs of the time, Spotify rolled out its 

this spring, marking the first time the audio giant is letting ad buyers participate in true open-marketplace programmatic bidding through demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk and Google DV360.

“Marketers want more flexibility and more agility to make decisions,” Brian Berner, Spotify’s head of global ad sales and partnerships, told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions. “They don’t want to be held to the traditional, long-term upfronts. We’ve been getting that feedback for a while.”

As of now, the exchange includes music and video content, but podcasts are soon to come, Berner said. We spoke with him about the new ad exchange and the current state of the audio ad ecosystem.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was your thinking behind putting all music and video content in the Spotify Ad Exchange first and at the same time?

How we think about inventory in general is we think about the user experience…What we as a company are doing, from a consumer experience perspective, is as we’re making a bigger push to have video content on the platform, it’s because our consumers are looking for music videos or video podcasts. What we think through is, first you look at the user experience, and then it’s like, “All right, based on this moment, am I watching Spotify, or am I listening to Spotify?” Then our tech will, in that environment, whether it’s in-stream or in-feed, decide if it’s best to serve an audio ad right now, a display ad, or a video ad. Regardless of whatever those three ads are, all of it is accessible via programmatic.

Why wait to add podcast inventory to the mix?

You have to build the foundation and then start putting together all the framework. We needed to build the core ecosystem or infrastructure. Now pods are next on the roadmap, and further innovation to come.

Do brands and buyers still have the same 

 about buying podcast ads programmatically as they did when that tech was less common in audio?

I don’t think so. I think the hesitation a couple years back was that the standardization and verification wasn’t there. [There have been] big announcements from us these past years, like our partnership with IAS and incorporating their brand-safety metrics into podcasts in particular. I think as people have gotten more comfortable with industry standardization that is similar to brand-safety metrics in just digital, period, [that] has gotten everyone more comfortable leaning in and knowing that the right controls are in place to make sure your brand is appearing in environments you want it to. I’d say the hesitation isn’t there as much, but brands are always going to keep brand safety top of mind.

Is the podcasting tech and advertising space up to speed with other digital platforms?

Podcasting is still in its infancy. You’re going to see continued consumption, engagement, and innovation in podcasting. You have creators leaning in, and the ones that are truly partnering with us, or just any audio partner for that matter, they’re starting to understand you can’t replicate your social video strategy the same way you do podcasts. You are going to see some phenomenal creators leverage audio differently than social to build bigger followings.

With video and audio content becoming increasingly tied together, how do you advise brands around measuring campaigns that run against the same general content but on different platforms, like a pure RSS podcast and a YouTube video?

Brands are pushing us there…What we’re trying to solve for is that a good portion of podcasts are still downloaded, and everything Spotify is trying to do with SAI (Streaming Ad Insertion) is to get podcasts into streaming. If you can get more streaming consumption, then you have the standardization of measurement. We are working with brands on holistic performance, and then they’re looking at their creative within maybe music versus podcasts and figuring out what messaging performs. But we still have to continue to invest and innovate in measurement.

Brian Berner, Spotify’s head of global ad sales and partnerships

Spotify’s head of global ad sales on the latest in programmatic audio

The platform recently opened up the Spotify Ad Exchange, giving audio buyers access to real-time bidding for its inventory for the first time. 

FC Barcelona sits atop the La Liga rankings. And Spotify sits atop FC Barcelona—or at least on the team’s jerseys and facilities.

For the past three seasons, the audio company has been the Spanish soccer club’s main partner as part of a long-term deal that includes a front-of-kit sponsorship and stadium naming rights, among other assets.

But it’s not always the Spotify brand that appears on the Barça jerseys.

, Alex Norström, the company’s co-president and chief business officer, hinted in a statement at the time that Spotify was considering using the jersey real estate to highlight various artists and their brands. Since then, Spotify has swapped its own branding out on the jerseys for logos associated with major artists, like Drake’s company October’s Very Own and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack brand.

Though Spotify occasionally removes itself from the Barça kits, VP of Marketing and Partnerships Marketing Marc Hazan said the sponsorship has proven invaluable for driving buzz for the brand.

“If I wanted to create cultural noise like we do with some of these things that we do, like Travis Scott, could you even do that without this [jersey asset]? I don’t think you could,” Hazan told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions. “If you were trying to do that yourself, it would be very difficult and probably very expensive…So to us, it’s an unbelievable, unique platform for artists to showcase their work that can’t really be done anywhere else.”

 When the possibility of working with Barça crossed Hazan’s desk, Spotify wasn’t in the market for a sports sponsorship, he said. But the opportunity involved the team’s full suite of rights—including placement on both the men’s and women’s jerseys, as well as the training center and stadium naming rights—so Spotify went all in, according to Hazan.

“Spotify has never undertaken a partnership at this scale before,” Norström said in the announcement post.

While the tie-up was perhaps unexpected, the Spotify team was nevertheless convinced that it would result in worthwhile activations like the artist jersey partnerships, Hazan told us. Spotify kicked off the initiative with Drake in 2022 to celebrate him becoming the first artist to reach 50 billion streams on the platform, and has since partnered with artists including ROSALÍA, The Rolling Stones, Karol G, and Coldplay.

 One of the KPIs Hazan said he considers for the sponsorship is relative media value, and with a rabid, global fandom, Barça delivers in spades on that front, he said. Buzz is also especially important when it comes to the jersey takeovers. When Spotify put a limited number of the Travis Scott Barça jerseys up for sale—1899, to be exact, in honor of the year the team was founded—they sold out quickly, he said. Beyond that, he said, streams of Travis Scott songs increased by 40% following the Barça activation.

“The [number of] impressions that we get for these takeovers has just gone up and up and up and up and over time, and that’s now started to translate to on-platform activity,” Hazan said.

The activations even seem to supersede La Liga team rivalries; when Karol G performed at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, where Real Madrid plays, shortly after her Barça takeover, Hazan said he didn’t 

 anyone was put out (although when it comes to fandom, one can never be too sure there are no hard feelings).

 Hazan didn’t indicate any immediate intentions to stretch into other leagues, but he said he’s eager to work more closely with the athletes on FC Barcelona Femení and to tap into the iconic Spotify Camp Nou stadium, which is expected to reopen in September after renovations are complete.

“Each one of these takeovers has grown and grown and grown in terms of scope and opportunity,” Hazan said. “We will continue to push ourselves…because we believe there’s so much more to go.”

Update 06/24/25: This story has been edited to update Marc Hazan's title.

Side by side photo collage of Spotify's partnership with FC Barcelona featuring Travis Scott.

Behind the scenes of Spotify’s partnership with FC Barcelona

Three years into a wide-ranging sponsorship of the Spanish soccer club, Spotify’s VP of marketing and partnerships reflects on how it’s come to life, from jersey takeovers to naming rights.

The Gabby Petito, Ruby Franke, and Idaho student murders cases all captured national news attention and the public’s dark fascination. But perhaps even more impactful than the mainstream media coverage? The true-crime podcasts.

In a boom so strong that Hulu made a hit parody TV show about it, the true-crime-podcast industry has enjoyed steady success since 

 first made waves in 2014. As the genre has continued to expand, with dramatic and documentary TV and streaming series joining the fray, critics have raised 

 about whether true-crime coverage can be exploitative, while fans have 

 that victims’ stories deserve to be told.

The often gruesome topics themselves, as well as the ongoing ethical considerations, represent a push and pull that could make an advertiser pause. Should brands get in on true crime’s audience, or is the genre too much of a risk to brand safety? 

“Advertising has always been challenging in the true-crime space, particularly for brands that are sensitive to brand safety,” Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify, told us. “There are a lot of brands that don’t want to be associated with graphic subjects.”

Posing an additional wrinkle, brands that are okay with the subject matter may have more podcast advertising options than ever before, Newman said, “which is great, but it also means that attracting those ad dollars becomes more and more competitive.”

made anything clear, it’s that true-crime podcasts have tons of fans. An estimated 6.7 million Americans 

 to the genre in 2019, according to data from Edison Research, but interest skyrocketed to an estimated 19.1 million listeners in 2024, making true crime the 

Newman said that not only is this audience massive, it’s an actively engaged audience that is attractive to advertisers.

“In a world that is increasingly dominated by short-form, addictive content, true crime really allows you to dive deep and to spend hours and hours engaging in these really meaty stories that have so many twists and turns,” he said.

The types of brands most attracted to true-crime podcasts, Newman has found, are direct-response advertisers aiming to reach large audiences, usually companies with clear objectives tied to their ad spend and offer listeners something in return, like discount codes. Brand awareness–focused advertisers, on the other hand, might be a little less willing to place themselves next to true crime’s content, he told us.

Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML, said she understands why some brands might be hesitant, but she finds the genre has more to offer than some brands might think.

“If you’re a pharmaceutical brand, if you’re a car company, if you’re, I would even say, a retail brand, I think you’re looking for the right audience,” she told us. “And if your demographic and your audience is leaning into podcasts, true crime or otherwise, you’re there, and you’ll see if that makes sense for you.”

Some brands, though, are more likely to sit it out. “If you are Disney, the happiest place on earth, you are likely not going to be advertising within a true-crime space, podcast or otherwise,” she said.

The genre’s enduring audience appeal is what podcast creators Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore, hosts of the show 

, believe will ultimately keep advertisers and listeners hooked. Both Absher and Moore hosted podcasts about Reddit tales and scary stories, respectively, but 

which debuted earlier this year as part of Pave Studios’s Crime House, marks both hosts’ first focused forays into true crime. Moore said the genre provides seemingly endless topics to keep listeners tuning in.

“It’s never going to stop being interesting,” she said. “I know there are ethical concerns around it, and Morgan and I do a great job on the research…But this is something that’s just always going to be popular. It’s never not been popular.”

Despite the topic, Absher and Moore said the format offers brands and audiences opportunities to build deeper connections—not just with the stories they’re telling, but with the hosts themselves.

“Brands enjoy personalities that people care about, at least in my experience, more than they are hesitant to advertise on certain types of content,” Moore said. “If Morgan and I are the types of personalities that people want to listen to, they’re still going to listen to our ads, and they’re still going to buy the products. I haven’t really seen it be as much of an issue as people say it is.”

Podcasters Sylas Dean and Mary Stew, who host the true-crime show 

have branched out beyond direct ad monetization. The duo also sells merchandise, goes on tour, and offers premium content that accounts for “a huge bulk” of their show-related revenue, Dean told us, which is hosted through Spotify’s platform for podcasters.

Because of the challenges in monetizing the ultra-popular genre, Newman said that Spotify has worked to find ways to help creators continue to monetize. Most recently, the Spotify Partner Program, which rolled out earlier this year, has offered the creators of video podcasts with high engagement rates an additional revenue stream—the more Spotify Premium users spend time engaging with a show, the more its creators have the potential to make. It’s a method that Newman said is less reliant on advertisers’ preferences and could thus be particularly advantageous to true-crime hosts. Since joining the program, 

 has seen revenue increase by more than 30% and consumption grow by 20%, according to Spotify.

“There are people spending hours and hours immersed in their favorite true-crime podcast, so the revenue opportunity for [creators] is actually quite significant,” Newman said.

Photo collage of a podcast microphone, old tv box, fingerprint scans, and a numbered evidence marker.

In the world of true-crime podcasting, brand safety is scary stuff

The genre is more popular than ever, but some advertisers might be hesitant about appearing next to gory or graphic content, Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify, told us.

Jasmine Sheena

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 

 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.

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.

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 

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.”

Inside Spotify’s evolving ads strategy

Ad exec Ann Piper shared how advertisers are adopting Spotify Ad Exchange and generative AI audio ads.

Fresh off its first full year of profitability, Spotify is aggressively courting advertisers.

At the first Spotify Advance presentation in New York on Wednesday, Spotify’s version of an upfronts presentation, the audio streaming giant announced several new offerings aimed at increasing advertising investment, including a broader rollout of its ad exchange, new AI tools, and new tech capabilities.

Perhaps the largest bit of news to come out of the company’s presentation was the official rollout of its ad exchange, which was piloted late last year. The ad exchange, known as Spotify Ad Exchange, or SAX, enables advertisers to buy audio, video, and display ads programmatically; podcast ads are expected to roll out later this quarter, Chloe Wix, global head of product and commercial growth, said during the presentation.

“Automation is table stakes for any ad platform looking to compete today,” Wix said.

SAX, which is available through DSPs including The Trade Desk and Google’s Display & Video 360, will soon be available through other DSPs like Adform, Magnite, and Yahoo DSP. It’s already live in the US, Canada, and several other major markets, and more than 5,000 advertisers have already used the platform, Wix said.

“There is no other channel poised for growth like audio is today,” Will Doherty, SVP of inventory development at The Trade Desk, said during a panel at the event. “It is the single biggest and most important channel for our marketers to invest in so that they can right-size their omnichannel approach.”

 Advertisers in the US and Canada can now build scripts and voice-overs to create GenAI audio ads within Spotify Ads Manager (SAM). The feature, which is in beta, allows advertisers to input keywords, pick voice styles, and generate audio spots that feature prelicensed music.

Already, there is interest: according to the company, 4 in 10 advertisers producing audio ads in SAM are opting to use the AI tool.

 Beyond AI-generated audio ads, Spotify introduced other capabilities within its ad manager, including advanced targeting offerings and an enhanced version of its ad-tracking tool, Spotify Pixel, Wix said. Pixel and Spotify Brand Lift, the company’s first-party campaign performance measurement tool, will also now be available within SAM, and partners including IAS and Kochava are signed on as third-party measurement providers.

In addition, Spotify rolled out new lower-funnel options, including App Installs Objective, which shows ads to users who the platform has determined are more likely to click and download an advertiser’s app, and Website Traffic Objective, which lets advertisers target campaigns to users who Spotify has determined are more likely to check out brand websites.

Chloe Wix, Global Director of Product Marketing, Spotify, attends Spotify Advance in New York 2025 at Chelsea Factory on April 02, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Spotify)