Spotify

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

This week on The Big Story, we talk about measurement. Wait, don’t go. We’re going to dive into the topic of measurement by focusing on two exciting new areas: podcasting and addressable TV. On Tuesday, Spotify bought podcast ad tech company Megaphone (once known as Panoply) for a reported $235 million. The ability to measure […]

GroupM recently promoted veterans Kieley Taylor and Amanda Grant to global head of partnerships and global head of social, respectively, as part a strategic move aimed at strengthening the company’s relationships with Google as well as Amazon, Spotify, Twitter and others. Taylor, previously global head of social, will focus heavily on Google as she designs […]

Spotify is acquiring podcast monetization and publishing platform Megaphone from its parent company, Graham Holdings, in a deal reportedly worth $235 million. The acquisition, announced Tuesday, underscores the streaming audio platform’s ongoing big bet on programmatic and is only the latest in a series of moves Spotify has made to support its growing podcast platform. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Apple Tea Party Publishers are joining Epic’s epic fight against Apple’s app store fees. Digital Content Next (DCN), a publisher trade group, wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook last week asking what it would take for its members to get better […]

  Lack of measurement has long deterred brands from investing heavily in podcasts. Apple, which has dominated podcast listening in the United States for years, has a history of obscuring how many people actually heard an ad after downloading a podcast episode through its player. That left brand advertisers to negotiate for CPMs without knowing […]

After experiencing a slowdown in Q1, ad spend began to rebound at Spotify in June as some markets exited pandemic lockdowns, the company said Wednesday on its Q2 earnings call. Ad spend in April and May were down 25% before inching up to a 10% decline in June. For the quarter, ad-supported revenue increased 11% […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Anti-Antitrust What happens when companies being investigated by the FTC or the DOJ poach staffers for their own defense? Unfortunately, it’s not a hypothetical, writes antitrust economist Hal Singer at The American Prospect. Amazon and Facebook both recently hired staffers from the Senate Judiciary […]

Consolidation has opened up better measurement solutions in podcasting – and big brands are jumping in. On Wednesday, Omnicom said it will invest $20 million upfront into podcasts on Spotify in the second half of 2020, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The deal also gives Omnicom access to exclusive and original content globally and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Aprés-Zagorski Mark Zagorski is leaving Rubicon Project at the end of June, the company announced on Thursday. It’s hardly surprising. Zagorski was CEO of Telaria before its absorption by Rubicon, and he has been COO and president since then. “Thanks to Mark’s leadership, we […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Digital Election  The 2020 campaign is happening online. Trump has recreated the appeal of his rallies on the “Trump 2020” app, which highlights programming from right-leaning news organizations. His team also hosts nightly webcasts on Facebook and Twitter. Trump’s outlandishness and media dominance […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Primed For TV  Amazon beefed up its ad-supported OTT ranks with the hire of Maggie Zhang, former EVP of video research and insights at Dentsu Aegis Network. At Amazon, Zhang will develop reach and measurement products for Prime Video advertisers in a role that […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. News Pile On Media companies and tech platforms are seeing more site and app engagement during the coronavirus epidemic, but revenue is not rising with supply. Facebook said messaging across its apps is up 50% in countries hit by the virus, but monetization is […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let Me Be Upfront Beyond canceling the glitzy upfront events this year, the coronavirus pandemic might have a broader impact on how TV ad dollars are negotiated for the season. With studio productions for fall 2020 in limbo, most of the dealmaking between ad […]

It’s been just a year since Spotify entered the podcasting market, and consumption is already growing like gangbusters. Podcast hours streamed on the platform grew 200% year over year, and more than 16% of Spotify monthly active users (MAUs) engage with podcasts, the company said in its Q4 2019 earnings report on Wednesday. Spotify also […]

Measurement has been the bane of the podcast industry’s existence, as advertisers have had to rely on a faulty download metric as the best proxy for a listener hearing their ad. That’s about to change – at least, on Spotify. The audio streaming giant will start dynamically inserting audio ads into podcast streams on its […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. It’s Vox’s Forte Are you an advertiser in need of publisher first-party data? Then Vox has a holiday gift for you! The company, which made a big-scale play in 2019 when it merged with New York Media, has launched an advertising platform called Forte […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Long Live The CMO Two years after Coca-Cola retired its CMO role, kicking off what would turn into a trend among big brands, the job title is back. The company has promoted 24-year veteran Manolo Arroyo to CMO, Ad Age reports. But it’s not […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disinformation Wars Facebook is under new pressure to secure its ad platform against electoral shenanigans, following Google’s move to restrict targeting options in political ads and Twitter’s outright ban on such ads in October. One option on the table is to prevent advertisers from […]

This story previously said Spotify switched off of Google’s ad stack. A Spotify spokesperson said the company misspoke and that it has only switched off of Google’s order management system, Google Sales Manager. Friction from migrating off of Google Sales Manager in July caused Spotify to take a roughly $10 million revenue hit in Q3, […]

Companies large and small have griped for years that tech giants – Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple – habitually engage in anticompetitive behavior. Regulators around the world are now paying attention. In some cases, companies proactively proffer their grievances, while in others, regulators solicit their feedback as evidence gathering in newly launched antitrust investigations. Here’s […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Second Coming Of Aereo Fox, NBCU, ABC and CBS filed a suit against Locast, a nonprofit streaming service that retransmits local network feeds. Locast is funded partly by AT&T and Dish, the two largest pay-TV companies, and the broadcasters allege that the nonprofit group […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Member Me? It’s been just over a year since The Guardian promoted Lee Glendinning from US director to its first executive editor for membership. It’s been important to have a decision-maker who can bridge the newsroom and the business side of things. “Roles like […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Spotify said Wednesday in a blog post it would acquire podcast production network Gimlet Media and podcast creation, distribution and sponsorship platform Anchor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources pegged the price at roughly $230 million. If that estimate is correct, it’s the most high-value acquisition of a podcast network or platform […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The New News News industry downsizing continued last week with layoffs at Vice and buyouts at McClatchy, close on the heels of similar painful cuts at BuzzFeed, Verizon Media and Gannett. “We are changing the size of the workforce to align with the revenue,” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Jockeys Amazon has a monster ad business, but it’s missing one piece: video inventory. The Amazon Prime video library has the audience, but like Netflix, it’s ad-free. Some recent moves show how Amazon will broaden its video supply. At CES last week, Amazon […]

Audio remained an exciting area for programmatic advertisers in 2018 as the medium moved further toward automation. The podcast industry began to mature this year as growing audiences garnered attention from radio broadcasters, streaming audio giants and big brands. But a lack of available audience data still hinders programmatic and measurement. Meanwhile, streaming audio and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brand Safety, Cont. More than a year after the YouTube scandal that catapulted brand safety to public attention, the issue remains a stubborn thorn in the side of online advertising. Hundreds of websites with objectionable content or political propaganda attract mainstream brands via Google, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Right At Home, Out-Of-Home Google is working on deals for out-of-home advertising inventory in shopping centers and transportation stations in Germany, and may expand an OOH offering to the US and UK. The Android mobile operating system, which runs on 75% of smartphones in […]