The Takeaways:
- Omnicom agencies including Hearts & Science, OMD and PHD will have first choice for ad spots on available Spotify podcasts.
- The holding company will also help provide support for podcast targeting, reporting and measurement, on Spotify’s platform.
- Omnicom says the deal doesn’t hold the company back from advertising on Spotify rivals such as Pandora.
- Spotify will begin selling ads in September through a partnership with PMM.
Why Spotify:
“Everything starts with content,” Catherine Sullivan, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media Group North America, told Ad Age. “The deal with Joe Rogan certainly fuelled a lot of the momentum behind [our decision], and the ad tech was the piece that brought it all together for us.”
In January, Spotify introduced a new technology, Streaming Ad Insertion, which not only enables advertisers to insert ads in podcasts that have already been recorded, but also lets advertisers know how many people heard a particular ad in a podcast. This provides more accurate insights than the common method of counting downloads for an episode.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the second-most popular podcast on Apple’s platform, according to Podcast Insights. By the end of the year, its content will be exclusively available on Spotify’s platform, though some video highlights will continue to be featured on YouTube.
Why it Matters:
The deal reflects Spotify’s ambitions to be the next major channel of addressable media—what Spotify executives describe as, “the Facebook of digital audio ads.”
Growing podcast audiences are attracting advertisers globally. Recent figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau show that more than $678 million was spent on podcast advertising in the U.S. last year, up 42 percent year-over-year. That figure is expected to climb to $1 billion next year, the IAB says.
