Spotify’s Brian Berner on Creativity, Connection, and What’s Next for Advertisers at Cannes Lions

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is officially underway for 2025, and Spotify is back on the Croisette to showcase how our platform is more alive than ever. Spotify—and Spotify Beach during the festival—is where creators share, fans explore, and brands are discovered, powered by a global community that continues to grow and evolve.

Throughout the week, Spotify Beach is amplifying the creativity that lives on our platform, offering attendees a chance to experience Spotify IRL—as a cultural force and the best home for creators and fans.

With new tools and innovations, it’s easier than ever for advertisers to join Spotify’s ever-evolving playground and engage with audiences. All week long, attendees will see how Spotify makes creativity tangible—showcasing innovative ideas, meaningful connections, and endless possibilities for cultural impact.

To kick off the festivities, we sat down with Brian Berner, Spotify’s Global Head of Advertising Sales & Partnerships, to hear about what’s next for advertisers, the evolution of creativity on Spotify, and what he’s most excited about at Cannes Lions this year.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity. How does Spotify continue to foster creativity for advertisers?

From music videos to audiobooks to video podcasts, Spotify sits at the heart of music and culture—and we’re always innovating to unlock new ways to deliver creativity on a global scale. With a worldwide community of creators, artists, musicians, and podcasters, Spotify is a platform that consistently inspires creative expression. In fact, 87% of creatives in the ad industry say Spotify allows them to be more creative than other platforms.

For advertisers, we have our Creative Lab—an in-house creative agency of storytellers, cultural investigators, marketers, art directors, strategists, copywriters, and Spotify lovers spread across the globe. This team is constantly creating, testing, and gathering data on what works on our platform to help advertisers maximize their creative potential.

Ahead of Cannes, we’ve also just unveiled two new initiatives to help brands further tap into Spotify’s creative playground: the Creative Lab Hub and our inaugural Creative Council. The Creative Lab Hub is a new global destination where brands and advertisers can access Spotify Advertising’s most effective tools, formats, and insights—making it easier than ever to create breakthrough campaigns.

Meanwhile, our Creative Council brings together industry-leading creatives to help shape the future of advertising and brand storytelling on Spotify. This group includes top creative leads from agencies including R/GA, BBDO, McCann, Anomaly, VML, and GUT, as well as brand leaders from Ulta, AG1, and Coca-Cola.

We’re excited to see how advertisers continue to uplevel their creativity on Spotify!

Spotify is hosting several panels this year. What’s the value in bringing these conversations to the stage?

Our Spotify Beach daytime programming brings together some of the world’s leading voices for compelling conversations that spark discovery, connection, and inspiration. From Louis Theroux and Paris Hilton discussing the art of storytelling to brands like Instacart and Luxottica sharing their strategies and results with the Spotify Ad Exchange, our sessions highlight how Spotify is closer than ever to the heartbeat of culture and driving impact for brands. These conversations showcase how we’re creating impactful connections between artists, creators, fans, and brands in innovative and unique ways—both on and off the platform.

How has the evolution of Spotify’s platform to include video content changed the game for advertisers?

Spotify is now so much more than music and podcasts, including when it comes to advertising. Video consumption on our platform is booming, with users’ spending 44% more time looking at our app compared to last year. This increased in-focus engagement unlocks more visual, multiformat opportunities for advertisers, like our latest Canvas and In-Feed ad formats. 

We’ve found that audio and video ads together are a powerful combination for campaigns on Spotify. In fact, combining both increases purchase intent by 27% and incremental sales by 66%, compared to audio alone. As engagement on our platform continues to evolve, we’re evolving right alongside it—offering brands new ways to deliver compelling, multiformat audio and visual campaigns to Spotify’s global audience. We’re excited about the potential of video and what it means for creators, users, and advertisers alike.

At Spotify Advance in April, Spotify Advertising announced updates like Gen AI Ads. What’s the response been so far? 

The response to our efforts in making it easier for advertisers to buy, create, and measure results on Spotify has been incredibly strong, particularly with Gen AI Ads.

Since launching Gen AI Ads, nearly 1,500 advertisers in the U.S. and Canada have already used the tool to create and launch more than 7,000 high-quality audio ads on Spotify. Advertisers tell us they love how fast and easy it is: On average it takes just 17 minutes to go from idea to finished ad, and half of advertisers complete the process in under 9 minutes. That speed, combined with built-in scriptwriting and voiceover capabilities, is making audio advertising more accessible and flexible than ever for advertisers of all sizes.

Given the successful rollout in the U.S. and Canada, we recently expanded Gen AI Ads to the U.K.—bringing these tools to even more advertisers, now with voiceovers featuring British accents. It’s our latest step in helping advertisers of all sizes tap into Spotify Advertising with ease and full creative control, all within Spotify Ads Manager.

What advertising trends do you expect to see in the coming year?

In today’s fast-moving culture, we’re seeing that people are reducing their dependence on social media in favor of more authenticity and positive connection—and Spotify is one of the places they’re choosing. That’s not just good news for fans and artists; it’s great for brands, too. The attention our listeners give to Spotify translates directly to ads: In fact, our ads capture twice as much attention compared to social media platforms. 

I think there’s so much opportunity to scale the fan experiences we’ve created and imagine new, more interactive ways for fans to connect—not just with artists, creators, and brands on our platform, but also IRL. That’s why we have Creative Lab and our in-house consultancy Spotify AUX—to help brands build even more impactful connections with fans both on- and off-platform.

We’re also seeing automated buying become the industry default. Automated digital audio spend in the U.S. is on the rise and now represents 26% of the market. That’s why our investments in automated channels like the Spotify Ad Exchange and Spotify Ads Manager are more timely and important than ever.

What are you most looking forward to at Spotify Beach this year?

As someone who’s been in the ad industry for more than 20 years, I love Cannes Lions—it’s when everyone comes together to share wins and learnings, build relationships, and get inspired by the creativity and innovation happening across the industry.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the film Sinners, so I’m stoked about our Wednesday daytime session happening on Spotify Beach: The Art of Personalization Through Music with Ludwig Göransson and Miles Caton. If you haven’t seen the film yet, I highly recommend it!