Modern technology gives us many things.

Spotify rolls out intelligent new features on free ad-supported platform

Spotify will today offer listeners who are using the free ad-supported platform in Australia a new interactive video and audio ad experience so users can now hear, watch or skip the ads altogether.

The Active Audio and Active Video offerings are the first of their kind in the world and can offer audio, video and display ads across a huge scale.

So here’s how it works.

  1. A Spotify user on the ad-supported free platform will receive an ad of a targeted audio and video ad.
  2. The user can choose whether they want to hear, see or skip the ad.
  3. From this, Spotify and Active Audio and Active Video will learn from what you watch and what you skip to deliver a more personalised ad that is more likely to be of interest.

Of course, if you’d prefer no ads you can always pay $11.99 a month for Spotify Premium or $17.99 for a family plan.

Screenless listening – when you’re cooking, training and commuting – is continuing to grow year on year.

Multi-device listeners spend more than 2.5 hours streaming on Spotify with 50 million using Spotify in the car while streams per day on smart speakers have increased by more than 40 per cent.

Active Audio will now allow marketers to reach customers in these key screenless moments.

“At Spotify we’re committed to delivering the best possible free user experience. Active Media is a win-win for listeners and advertisers; listeners benefit from an improved experience, allowing them to choose which ads they want to engage with, and in turn, we can offer advertisers better cut through and ROI (return on investment),” says Andrea Ingham, Head of Sales at Spotify ANZ.

“While Active Media certainly evolves our video products for today, it will redefine the audio format for tomorrow.”

The intelligence of the system will be developed with each engagement from Spotify listeners so it can match the same personalisation applied to Spotify’s most popular playlists like Discover Weekly, Daily Mix and Your Time Capsule.

The introduction of Active Media comes just weeks after Spotify transformed the free user experience.

Those changes included more on-demand playlists, more personalised content and the ability to stream music using less data.