News August 12, 2018

Spotify aiming to let all free users skip as many ads as they want

Last month, Spotify announced their plans to let Australian listeners on their ‘free’ tier skip as many ads as they want. Now, it seems that this plan is working well enough to be trialled on a global scale.

Back in July, we noted how Spotify launched Active Media in Australia. The end goal of this concept is to give listeners a much more rewarding experience, by allowing them to skip the ads that they don’t want to hear. By doing so, the service manages to tailor the listener’s habits, providing with only ads that appeal to their lifestyle.

Now, it appears that this method is set to go global.

As Ad Age reports, this new approach to advertising is another appealing feature in the streaming service’s ‘free’ tier, which often results in users signing up to a paid subscription.

By giving free listeners the unlimited ability to skip as many ads as they want, it hopes to provide listeners with a much more enjoyable experience and advertisers with information on how to create a more targeted approach to their ads, while also assuring that they don’t pay for ads that have been skipped.

“Our hypothesis is if we can use this to fuel our streaming intelligence, and deliver a more personalized experience and a more engaging audience to our advertisers, it will improve the outcomes that we can deliver for brands,” explained Danielle Lee, Spotify’s global head of partner solutions.

“Just as we create these personalized experiences like Discover Weekly, and the magic that brings to our consumers, we want to inject that concept into the advertising experience.”

While Active Media is so far an Australian-only service, Ad Age notes that Spotify are hoping to roll out this new method on a global scale sometime soon.