Spotify and multinational communications, advertising, and public relations firm WPP have entered a global strategic partnership that will permit WPP to grant its clients priority access to Spotify’s ad products, proprietary data, and creative avenues for interacting with wide-ranging audiences.
This collaboration marks the first time a digital audio platform will be integrated directly into WPP’s product offerings and solutions. This includes an association with WPP’s insights platform, Choreograph. WPP aims to leverage Spotify’s first-party insights to devise integrations that provide an understanding of aggregated listening habits. These insights are expected to inform the creation of effective digital audio advertising strategies.
Furthermore, Spotify will assist WPP in establishing leadership in the market and providing extensive training programs centered around digital audio creativity and Spotify’s ad products. WPP’s teams and clients will also gain precedence in accessing Spotify’s neuro-insights research, which concentrates on audience trends and insights.
A noteworthy initial result of this partnership is a WPP client-specific iteration of Spotify’s Sonic Science insights study, performed with WPP agency Mindshare. This study investigates the relationship between Spotify, digital audio ads, and listeners, indicating higher levels of engagement with Spotify compared to other media formats. An increase in ad engagement was observed when listeners transitioned from music or podcasts to a real WPP client’s audio ad, highlighting strong engagement in both podcast and music environments.
WPP Chief Technology Officer Stephan Pretorius stated, “In the fast-evolving media and entertainment landscape, audio streaming has become an integral part of everyday life. At WPP, we recognize the power of audio as a critical component of marketing. The intent of this first-of-its-kind partnership is to integrate Spotify’s insights with the Choreograph platform to create more innovative and relevant ways to connect our clients with their customers.”
Brian Berner, Global Head of Advertising Sales at Spotify, added, “We’ve long partnered with WPP to enable agency planners and buyers to make more informed decisions when planning for digital audio. With our new global partnership, we’re helping WPP clients modernize their strategy and planning. More than 550 million people across 184 markets come to Spotify every month to be entertained, to learn and to discover for nearly 2.5 hours each day. As we continue to drive innovation in audio and the advertising industry at large, partners like WPP are critical to delivering for advertisers, creators, and audiences wherever they are.”
