Mobile Marketing Magazine sits down with Spotify, Head of Global Sales & Partnerships, Brian Berner to discuss executing mobile-first marketing strategies to stay ahead of competitors, enhancing user engagement within its app and its latest partnership with On Running.

Q: How does Spotify formulate and execute mobile-first marketing strategies to stay ahead in the highly competitive music streaming market? 

“As the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, we have a uniquely engaged audience as people use Spotify for more than 2.4 hours every day, making it essential to people’s daily lives. 

“Spotify is the home of premier audio content that drives culture, empowering brands to build authentic connections with audiences. With over 100 million tracks, five million podcast titles, and 350,000 audiobooks, people use Spotify to soundtrack their lives.

“Spotify connects fans with the artists and creators that they love, bringing a cultural influence that makes it a must-buy for advertisers. From programs like music consulting via AUX and interactive ad formats like CTA cards to more visually inspiring video ads, Spotify offers brands a range of creative opportunities to reach key audiences and effectively drive impact for their brand.”

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Q: What strategies does Spotify employ to enhance user engagement within the app and across various mobile platforms? 

“The Spotify experience offers inspiration, discovery and interactivity. We connect fans with the artists and creators they love through personalised and engaging experiences.

“Personalisation is at the heart of what we do. In fact, when we ask our listeners what they like most about us, more than 81% cite our personalisation, which drives strong engagement. 

“Spotify’s existing recommendations come to life through innovative, personalised products like DJ the Spotify Home feed, Discover Weekly, Blend, Made for You Mixes and daylist. 

“Most recently, we launched Song Psychic, a fun and mystical experience that can help listeners answer life’s questions — all through the lens of music. With Song Psychic, listeners have the chance to choose from a selection of pre-populated questions relating to nine topics, ranging from My Future to Life’s Greatest Mysteries. Based on your responses, Spotify’s Song Psychic will select the perfect song to answer your question.”

Q: How does the development of innovative advertising formats cater to Spotify’s mobile users? 

“Since Spotify entered the podcast space just 5 years ago, we’ve transformed the industry. We’ve gone from practically zero market share and a handful of podcasts to being a global leader in the market with more than five million podcasts on the platform in more than 180 markets.
From 2018 to 2023, there has been a 110% increase in daily time spent listening to podcasts across the UK population (source: eMarketer 2023), and brands are taking note. The consumption is already here but the ad revenue is still catching up.

“Just like with digital video, it took a while for ad spend to follow consumption. We’re seeing the same trajectory in audio as more and more consumption and distribution moves from broadcast to streaming, and we’re leading the charge in evolving the audio experience, including monetisation.

“Over the last few years, we’ve been modernising podcast advertising to make it a true digital ad channel – just like video and social. By introducing better targeting with tools like Streaming Ad Insertion, helping advertisers reach podcast listeners at scale with the Spotify Audience Network, proving the impact of podcast advertising with innovative measurement solutions like Spotify Ad Analytics and innovating on the ad experience itself – we’re bringing digital audio to the forefront and making it a must-buy for advertisers.

“This isn’t just good for Spotify, but for advertisers and creators across the industry.”

Q: On the back of Spotify’s recent partnership with On Running, how did the partnership evolve?

“On wanted to focus on highlighting the synergy between music and running in its latest campaign ‘Max Energy. Always.’ Given this, On naturally turned to Spotify to effectively reach their target audience of runners and build a deeper connection with listeners. 

With video, audio and display ads on Spotify, On was able to not only raise awareness around its Spring 2024 collection and tease the launch of its new Cloudmonster shoes collection, but also spotlight the intrinsic connection between music and running with a new track by artist Jayda G that was created specifically for the campaign.”

Q: With the partnership, how does the platform ensure a seamless integration of brand messages within the mobile user experience?

“On leveraged a variety of ad formats to create a holistic experience on Spotify. The audio ads highlight the launch of the Cloudmonster 2 model and tease Jayda G’s new track, ending with a call-to-action for listeners to check out the exclusive song on on.com.

“Meanwhile, the video ads were created to be in the style of a music video, highlighting our collective need for energy – featuring Jayda G along with real runners, and showcasing the new Cloudmonster 2 model.

“On also targeted runners for its Spotify ads, ensuring that the sportswear brand would effectively reach its key audience and build a deeper connection with listeners.”

Q: With Samsung recently announcing its Galaxy Ring, how does Spotify envision its role in wearable technology, and how does it adapt its marketing strategies accordingly? 

“People now have more ways to listen as they integrate devices like smart speakers, phones, tablets and more into their lives. 

“We aim to deliver a seamless listening experience for users across platforms, programs and devices – enabling them to listen wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. No matter where you are or the moment you’re in, we want to create less work to get to the audio you love. That means being everywhere our users are.”

Q: What innovations or trends do you predict shaping the future of mobile marketing for Spotify, and how is the platform preparing to stay at the forefront of these developments? 

“There’s a lot of work happening in the interactivity space in audio. We’ve introduced new experiences like Blend and Collaborative Playlists that make sharing the music you love easier than ever. Our latest feature Jam is a personalised, real-time listening session for your group to tune into together, building on some of our popular interactive features and combining them with our personalisation technology to take real-time listening with friends to the next level. 

“We want to bring this to the ad experience, too. This is why we launched call-to-action cards (CTA cards) in the UK as a new format that makes podcast ads interactive for the first time with an experience that enables listeners to hear, see and click. 

“For advertisers, bringing interactivity to the audio experience provides an unparalleled opportunity to get creative in how they communicate their key messages, and paves the way for better measurement and understanding on if their target audiences took action after hearing the ad. 

“Additionally, as AI continues to be top of mind across mediums, podcasters are racing to keep up with this quickly evolving AI landscape in the digital audio space. At Spotify, we believe that AI has the potential to offer real benefits to the audio industry.

“It’s very early days in an incredibly fast-moving and developing space. We announced that we’re piloting Voice Translation for podcasts, a groundbreaking feature powered by AI that translates podcasts into additional languages—all in the podcaster’s voice.

“While this type of technology definitely brings challenges, our focus is on helping creators connect with audiences, monetise their art, and build careers, and I imagine we’ll see even more innovation of this kind in the future.”