Spotify is rolling out interactive carousel ads that allow brands to feature up to six different products, each slide with its own image, link, description, and pricing or promotional information. The ads will pop up in the app's Now Playing view while users actively consume content, as opposed I guess to appearing when the user is passively listening to music without interacting with their screen.
Spotify's global head of advertising revenue and partnerships told ADWEEK:
“The user experience is becoming a much more interactive, audio and visual experience. It’s just time for us to make sure that our ad strategy reflects the trends we’re seeing and the user engagement we’re seeing from our consumers.”
Spotify is also introducing a branded takeover of select playlists in which advertisers can pay to be the only featured brand, where their names appear prominently on the playlist's main page and their ads run exclusively during play.
Last week I reported that TikTok introduced a suite of new ad products including Logo Takeovers, which appear next to the TikTok logo on the launch page when users open the app, Sequential Storytelling Ads, which allow brands to deliver up to three ads to the same user within a designated 15-minute window, and TopReach Format, which allows advertisers to purchase the first ad users see when they open the app and the first in-feed ad within their For You Feed.
Do you see the trend?
Platforms have finally realized that random one-off ads that appear in users' feeds with no rhyme or reason to frequency and order are not as effective as ads with strategic placement and ad sequencing. Now they're creating new ad formats that cater to advertisers' desires to tell a story and build a narrative through their advertising.
Brands don't want to be AN advertiser, they want to be THE advertiser. They want to take over a user's entire session, not appear alongside other forgettable one-off ads as the user scrolls. It's the only way to filter through the advertising noise that the platforms themselves created.
There's more ad noise than ever out there now, and it takes more than a single standalone ad placement to cut through it. Platforms are finally recognizing that.
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