Spotify has been making original podcasts for some time now, with its pipeline boosted by its acquisition of production studios Gimlet Media and Parcast. Now the company is making its long-awaited first move into podcast advertising tech. Its new ‘Streaming Ad Insertion’ [SAI] technology will give advertisers and podcast makers data including ad impressions, frequency and reach, as well as (anonymised) info on the age, gender and devices of listeners. However, SAI is also about putting ads in front of the right listeners in the first place.
“SAI will make podcast ads targetable – they’ll be relevant to the people who get them; measurable – we’ll more easily prove that they’re effective; and interactive – more to come here—for the first time,” said Spotify’s VP, head of global ads business and platform Jay Richman in an interview published on Spotify’s own website. Take note of that ‘interactive’ hint, by the way.
For now, SAI will only be available for ‘Spotify originals and exclusives’ though: “Sometime down the line we might expand this to more audiences,” said Richman. Hot Pod News has some good analysis of the implications, while in separate Spotify/podcasts news, Bloomberg reports that Spotify is developing “several daily sports shows” as part of its originals push.
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