At our 2026 Investor Day, we shared an inside look at the rebuild of our advertising business. This pivot to our own purpose-built platform is already driving significant growth by respecting the user experience and connecting brands to culture.
As the advertising industry evolved toward automation and performance-based buying, we saw an opportunity to accelerate our own strategic pivot. We began enhancing our platform to expand beyond our traditional strengths in direct buys and our established U.S. market.
A two-part strategy for growth
Our strategy is driven by two complementary engines: High-Impact Sponsorships for brands to connect with culture and fandom, and Scaled Biddable Channels for advertisers seeking automation and performance. Together, these engines unlock more opportunities for advertisers who want to become part of culture and drive real performance outcomes.
With high-impact sponsorships, brands can go even deeper with fans on Spotify through live events, sponsored playlists, podcast host reads, or bespoke digital buildouts on our platform.
As we scale biddable channels, our self-serve Spotify Ads Manager gives advertisers a first-party path to our high-quality inventory, creative tools, and measurement capabilities, while the Spotify Ad Exchange gives programmatic buyers access to our engaged global audience through the platforms they already use.
The early results prove that the new approach is working. Our biddable channels now represent more than a third of our ads business, and active advertisers grew 68% year-over-year in the first quarter of the year. We’re seeing strong growth in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (up nearly 10% year over year), as well as in Latin America (up 25% year over year). This is exciting for two reasons: It allows us to drive price improvements, and it enables us to more effectively deliver personalized ads to our users.
The future is intelligent and integrated
Looking ahead, our focus is on accelerating this momentum. We’re using AI to solve real challenges for advertisers. For example, our Gen AI tools lower the barrier to audio ad creation—to date, we’ve seen more than 20,000 ads generated by over 7,000 advertisers with this tech. At the same time, we’re building ad experiences beyond standard impressions, creating deeper, more organic brand integrations, like our reimagined sponsored playlists that turn Spotify’s brand love into advertiser value.
We believe this strategy will drive better outcomes for advertisers, better experiences for users, and better monetization for Spotify. We expect higher growth in the second half of 2026 and double-digit growth beyond, building a much larger advertising business over time.
Explore all the news and announcements from Spotify’s 2026 Investor Day.
This post contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to Spotify’s SEC filings for a discussion of risks and uncertainties.
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