Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s and NBC Universal Pictures are among the launch partners that will be using two new video products on Spotify For Brands – Spotify’s marketing platform. The first product, Video Takeover, is desktop-based while Sponsored Sessions is its mobile twin. Spotify is selling this as a way for brands to “own” the desktop and mobile experience among users of its free tier. On the desktop, these branded videos are only served when the client is in view (i.e. in the foreground and not minimised) during normal ad breaks. For the mobile version, users can “earn” a 30-minute ad-free session in exchange for watching a 15-second or 30-second ad, giving the service’s 30m free users a brief taste of the fuller mobile experience it sells its subscriptions around.
In related news, Calvin Harris has become the first UK solo artist billionaire on Spotify – well, his tracks have been streamed over 1bn times on the service. He will also host a Spotify Playlist Takeover today at a variety of times. (“1500EDT / 2000 BST / 2100CEST” according to Spotify – which is basically all the same time but in different places, if that makes sense. Well, it’s happening concurrently but in different times zones, hence the fact the numbers are different. Does that make more sense? Smashing.)
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…