Tag: Spotify Ad Analytics

Spotify Reports Second Quarter 2023 Earnings

July 25, 2023

Today, Spotify announced our second quarter 2023 financial performance.

Spotify had a very strong quarter. We beat guidance and welcomed more users and subscribers than expected, with growth continuing to come from markets all over the world.

As we previewed on the Q1 earnings call, we expected to incur charges in the second quarter related to our ongoing efforts to become a more efficient and stronger business. These were excluded from the Q2 guidance we provided last quarter.

  • Monthly Active Users surged 27% to 551 million. Net additions of 36 million were 21 million ahead of guidance and represent an all-time high for the company. 
  • Subscribers grew 17% Y/Y to 220 million. Net additions of 10 million were 3 million ahead of guidance and represent the highest Q2 in company history. 
  • Total Revenue grew 11% Y/Y to €3.2 billion, in-line with guidance. 
  • Adjusted Gross Margin** finished in-line with guidance at 25.5% excluding charges related to our actions in the quarter to streamline operations and reduce costs.
  • Adjusted Operating Loss** of (€112) million was better than guidance, excluding charges related to our actions in the quarter to streamline operations and reduce costs.

Take a look at additional highlights below:

Interested in hearing more? Click here to review the full earnings release and listen to the webcast Q&A on our Investor Relations site here. And click below to check out a sizzle reel of audio trailers from a few of our recent original and exclusive podcasts. 

 

**Adjusted Gross Margin and Adjusted Operating Loss are non-IFRS measures. See Reconciliation of IFRS to Non-IFRS Results below for additional information.

Reconciliation of IFRS to Non-IFRS Results

Head of International Sales Kristiana Carlet Shares How We’re Taking Advertising to the Next Level at Spotify Beach

June 19, 2023

Each year, Spotify showcases how our platform inspires creativity, connection, and innovation for advertisers and brands at the Cannes Festival of Creativity in France. This year, we’re also able to spotlight the tremendous growth we’ve seen recently—our ad-supported revenue grew 17% year over year in the first quarter of 2023—and how we’re moving toward a future where ads account for 20% of Spotify’s total revenue. 

Kristiana “Kri” Carlet has witnessed this growth firsthand. Since joining Spotify as the Head of International Sales, she’s taken our efforts in Europe, Asia, and Australia to new heights. The Italian native, who moved to the U.K. in the early 2000s to start her career in advertising, says that her desire to learn something new every day and her international branding expertise are a winning combination of tools to make Spotify a leader in audio advertising globally.

“We’re already seeing the forward momentum in Europe, so now I’m excited to turn my sights to the emerging markets like Japan and India, where we’re just getting started with our ads business,” she explained to For the Record on the ground in Cannes. “Every time I’m in those markets with the team and our customers, I’m blown away by the excitement around our brand, the creativity there, and the opportunity that audio represents for them! We’re going to have a huge ability to test new ideas and ways to advertise in those markets—I’m very interested in seeing that come to life.” 

We’re kicking off another standout year at Cannes. What are you most looking forward to this week at Spotify Beach? 

I’ll be very honest—I’ve done so many Cannes—but when I came with Spotify for the first time last year, I was blown away. And I wasn’t sure how we could top it! So I’m very proud to say that this year, Spotify Beach will come to life with even more interactive, playful experiences, from enriching masterclasses featuring the world’s most influential voices to truly FOMO-worthy evening concerts. 

Visitors can get excited for interactive experiences such as a Songs of Summer soundscape, an FC Barcelona partner zone, and an AI DJ interactive experience. Plus, Spotify Studio is back again and fully booked with creators, advertisers, and press taking advantage of our state-of-the-art audio-video facilities. We’ll also host a series of masterclasses featuring exclusive opportunities to hear from Spotify executives including CEO and founder Daniel Ek, brand partners like Coca-Cola and Samsung, and some of the world’s most exciting creators, including Emma Chamberlain, Trevor Noah, Issaa Rae, and Alex Cooper.

We’re also hosting a series of playdates that bring the magic of Spotify to life by inviting guests to get out of their seats and play. And of course, it wouldn’t be Spotify Beach without a lineup of can’t-miss evening performances, including Foo Fighters, Florence + the Machine, Jack Harlow, A$AP Rocky, will.i.am, and more. All of this makes Spotify Beach the perfect spot to meet our clients and partners and show them they are part of an amazing journey with us at Spotify! 

We’re constantly innovating new technologies and formats for content creators and advertisers. What are some ways we’re demonstrating these at Cannes?

Ahead of Cannes, we announced Spotify Ad Analytics and our new B2B podcast, Perfect Pitch, inspired by our Cannes Lions award-winning campaign, A Song for Every CMO. We also recently shared our Sonic Science 2.0 research study, which demonstrates how audio content connects both emotionally and physically with listeners. We found that Spotify listeners are bringing audio into their lives literally 24 hours a day—and are primed to embrace brand messages. Most recently, we’ve been focused on using AI to enrich the listening experience—like with our AI DJ, where each user’s own DJ creates personalized listening experiences for them. Now that I use it, I can’t live without it! 

But I think the best way to absorb everything we’re innovating on is our session with Daniel Ek, Trevor Noah, and our Global Head of Advertising, Lee Brown, as they share their perspectives on how to best leverage new technology to tell stories and drive deeper connections with audiences. I’m really looking forward to sitting in on that one myself.

Cannes Lions is also about awarding the most impactful, creative advertising campaigns and the people behind them. What are some of your favorite Spotify campaigns from the last year?

There’s been so much that we’ve been working on with the partners around us—I can honestly say that we get to work with the world’s most innovative marketers to create original and engaging ad experiences for digital audio. My favorites have been Destination Canada, easyJet, and especially Disney+, which allowed us to bridge our work with Disney to launch a new campaign that combines the worlds of music, film, and TV in a delightful and immersive experience. With it, Spotify listeners across Germany, the U.K., Ireland, Italy, and Spain were able to explore personalized recommendations, as well as new genres and titles from Disney+’s catalog based on their listening habits. It’s personalized, innovative, and meets music and television lovers right where they are—truly a Spotify experience. 

Why should advertisers visit Spotify Beach on the Croisette?

During typical client meetings, you focus on the brief and the specific business challenge that your customer needs you to meet. You can’t always bring the examples to life. I think events like Cannes give us the opportunity to give them a 360-degree view about the power of Spotify advertising and showcase how we’re really only at the beginning of this journey. 

Spotify Beach is really going to bring our creativity and innovation in the streaming industry as a whole to life. It will demonstrate the power that our creator and industry relationships have and how we make them available for our bands and partners. Clients and partners will get to see and experience the overall Spotify ecosystem. Spotify has such an impact on people’s lives, and coming to Spotify Beach shows that without question. 

What’s your personal work mantra?

When you come with a great deal of experience, it’s important to remind yourself that you don’t know it all—and you have to be very good at listening. Because of where I am on my personal journey, I have a lot of reminders to remove my bias and spend time listening to my team and customers. If we want to be successful in business, it always starts at the end of the day, with the people. Then I can help supercharge the experiences of my team and my customers. 

Finally, what would we find on your “On Repeat” playlist? 

At the moment, anything Harry Styles. I’m obsessed—and it’s a common passion I have with my 17-year-old daughter. We’ve been trying to learn the lyrics from Spotfiy on our car journeys so we can belt them out when we see him in concert. As an Italian, I also love Maneskin. They are so fun and they’re going to become an iconic global band.

Catch more of our full Cannes lineup here.

Evolving Brands’ Measurement Experience With All-New Spotify Ad Analytics

June 13, 2023

SpotifyAdAnanlytics launch

As digital audio continues to boom, advertisers and publishers need modernized tools to understand the impact of their ad investments. Since 2020, Spotify has led the charge with innovations like Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), which offers deeper ad insights and reporting than was previously available for podcasts. We continued our investments in this space last year with our acquisition of Podsights as we endeavored to accelerate podcast ads measurement and ultimately, strengthen audio ad measurement across music and podcasts on platform and beyond.

Today, we’re taking the next step in that journey and launching Spotify Ad Analytics (SpAA), a global measurement service for brands and agencies of all sizes. This free tool provides advertisers with more ways to better understand their investments on and off Spotify. For publishers, SpAA unlocks greater opportunities to prove the value of their inventories to direct advertising clients.

To learn more, For the Record spoke with Kelsey Woo, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Spotify who oversees product marketing efforts across Spotify’s advertising measurement, reporting, and insights tools.

Measurement in digital audio advertising lags behind other digital channels. What are some of the ways we’re addressing this with new tools like Spotify Ad Analytics? 

Measurement remains an industry-wide challenge across all of digital audio advertising. In the early days, podcasters began monetizing their content by simply recording their ad reads directly into the audio file for a specific podcast episode—these became known as “baked in” or “burned in” ads. 

The global shift in consumption from downloads to streaming has opened the door for advances in more data-driven podcast advertising measurement. When we launched SAI, we introduced impression-level insight to podcast advertising for the very first time. Rather than relying on download data, advertisers now had access to standard digital reporting like impressions, unique reach, and frequency, along with unique audience insights and creative performance metrics powered by Spotify’s first-party data. 

Last year, we acquired Podsights to solve this measurement pain point for advertisers, both on Spotify and across the industry. Today, by announcing that Podsights is now Spotify Ad Analytics, we’re taking the next step in that journey. 

Why the decision to offer Spotify Ad Analytics free of charge? 

It’s no secret that we believe in the power of audio. And as marketers increasingly invest in this powerful medium, we want to support that industry-wide growth by making it easier to measure the impact of the format. That’s why we decided to offer Spotify Ad Analytics as a free service to all customers. We feel it’s not only important to make this type of data and foundational knowledge accessible to businesses of all sizes, but to also provide it with the expertise that comes from being the world’s most popular audio-streaming service.

Spotify Ad Analytics builds on a strong foundation to provide our customers with a one-stop shop for Spotify’s measurement and reporting solutions. It gives advertisers even more tools to better understand the value of their investments across Spotify and beyond—free of charge. 

What does this mean for advertisers? What are the implications for publishers?

This new offering means that advertisers can measure more on Spotify. It also means both publishers and advertisers can measure real-time conversion tracking and attribution across an unlimited number of audio and podcast impressions. For customers who were previously working with Podsights, there’s no new installation required—they’ll get access to more tools and features just by logging in.

Why is measurement so important for both of these groups? How will Spotify Ad Analytics help accomplish their goals? 

Ultimately, Spotify Ad Analytics will help advertisers understand which media strategies are helping them reach their goals. In turn, this allows publishers to prove the value of podcast advertising and further accelerate the growth of their podcast businesses.

We’ve been testing the expanded capabilities since late last year, most recently partnering with advertisers like Grammarly and Shopify to measure the performance of streaming audio ads. We’ve received great feedback on the ability to streamline reporting surfaces and easily understand the holistic impact of different media types, so we’re really excited. 

Spotify advertisers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States can now use Spotify Ad Analytics to lean into the power of streaming to provide even more accurate and actionable insights across Spotify ads. Learn more here.