Blog / Insights
Spotify is known as the essential companion for people to enjoy music, podcasts, fandom and culture. For years, buyers leveraging DSPs have only had access to our engaged audience and content through Programmatic Guaranteed (PG deals). While PG can deliver predictability during key tentpoles and for key audiences, we recognized there was still opportunity to provide even more control and ultimately results to our clients.
That’s why we launched the Spotify Ad Exchange: to give advertisers more ways to buy. This drives better performance by making Spotify’s inventory fully biddable within powerful programmatic, omnichannel platforms like Yahoo DSP. In fact, advertisers on Yahoo DSP that currently have Spotify Ad Exchange deals added to their media mix see nearly 70% improvement in conversion rate, and cost per action declined almost 90%.¹
Yahoo and Spotify’s partnership provides:
- Flexibility That Drives Results
PMP buying gives marketers more control over budgets, targeting, and measurement, delivering improved results while respecting listener experience.
- Identity That Unlocks Outcomes
Spotify’s Yahoo ConnectID adoption means advertisers can more effectively reach their audience, manage frequency, and tie exposures to real outcomes. Spotify first-party segments and content also becomes a key inventory source for video and display (not only audio!).
- Podcasts That Fuel Audience Expansion
With Spotify’s high quality podcast inventory and the ability to target content by show genre or episode topic, brands can forge meaningful connections at scale.
Setting the Stage: Direct-to-Publisher Advantage
Audio advertising has evolved beyond broad reach. It’s now about context, relevance, and trusted listening. People engage on Spotify not just to listen to music, but to connect to fandom and culture. Spotify fans spend at least 2 hours per day on the app.² And it’s not just about time spent, it’s about the quality of that time: 85% of fans shared Spotify helps consumers enjoy daily moments³ , and that attention on Spotify is 29% higher compared to other platforms.⁴
With direct integration into Yahoo DSP, Spotify supply becomes instantly accessible for brands seeking:
- Highly engaging audio, video and display placements throughout the Spotify app
- Transparent buying paths that reduce complexity and waste (especially for Open Auction!)
- Flexible deal structures like PMP deals, which allow advertisers to leverage Spotify’s first-party audiences or Yahoo DSP pre-bid targeting
Expanding Opportunities: Yahoo ConnectID Integration and PMPs
Smarter targeting is where Yahoo ConnectID comes in. With Yahoo ConnectID, marketers leverage deterministic identity from 232 million logged-in U.S. users for precise targeting and robust frequency management.⁵ This is where scale meets accuracy in digital media buying. Streaming audio now matches the targeting rigor of CTV and display.
Most importantly, through ConnectID and PMP deals, you can add Spotify’s first-party behavioral and contextual audiences to your omnichannel campaigns. That means enhancing your existing programmatic audience strategy with the power of Spotify’s logged-in environment, personalized content, and uniquely attentive audience. Reach moments you’d otherwise miss, with the outcome-based bidding and optimization tools to drive efficiency.
Podcast Inventory: Scale and Variety
Podcasting stands out as a uniquely powerful channel for brands aiming to connect authentically with engaged audiences. With Spotify, reaching 696 million active users globally,⁶ advertisers can reach passionate podcast fans wherever they love to listen. This means scalable, highly relevant audience targeting, down to specific episode topics and show categories. Spotify’s advanced brand safety controls also ensure that campaigns run across a network of high-quality, brand-safe audio and video inventory.
If that’s not enough, consider that 70% of Spotify podcast listeners are receptive to ads,⁷ and 42% trust their favorite podcasts as much as their friends.⁷
Why this matters: Spotify unlocks incremental performance
Spotify Ad Exchange lowers the barrier to entry for audio to match the simplicity of activating display, video, and other programmatic channels. At the same time, the benefits (reach, frequency capping, audience layering) have been raised. And when channels are combined, performance reaches new heights.
A great example is the combination of audio and CTV. When we’ve combined Spotify with TV, campaigns delivered 27% incremental reach on top of TV campaigns alone.⁸ In a similar fashion, Spotify included in omnichannel media mixes adds 22% incremental reach on top of social and digital.⁹
Early Learnings: Flexibility, Identity, and Audio-Centric Growth
Agencies like Atomic 212° know the value of digital audio, and planning with consideration to user attention on ads. That’s why they chose Yahoo DSP and Spotify Ad Exchange to launch a first-to-market research initiative with Bupa, a leading health care company in Australia, to uncover how audience attention, and biddable buying link directly to performance.
Bupa partnered with an all-star measurement team, Mutinex, Adelaide Attention and Neuro-Insight, to measure and quantify performance.
The results speak for themselves: digital audio delivered 68% more attention vs. social,¹⁰ 25% stronger memory encoding,¹¹ and a 46% incremental ROAS with longer ad-stocks as reported by their MMM partner, Mutinex.¹² These findings help make the case for greater media diversification, showing that digital audio delivers both deep engagement and measurable business results.
The Path Forward: A New Audio Marketplace
Spotify Ad Exchange on Yahoo DSP marks a turning point for digital audio. As buyers demand better control, actionable data, and dynamic access to audiences — direct-to-publisher, identity-enabled activation sets the new standard.
Whether your aim is scale in music, precision in podcasts, or true cross-device reach, this integration delivers smarter campaigns for every brand.
We’re eager for partners to test, learn, and grow alongside us. The future of audio advertising is omnichannel, transparent, and performant.
Sources:
1. Yahoo Internal Data, Apr-Aug 2025
2. GWI Global Study, June 2024
3. Source: GWI x Spotify Moments Research Q1 2025, US
4. Adelaide Attention Study, global, Aug 2024
5. Yahoo DSP Internal data, Apr 2025
6. Spotify Earnings Report, Q2 2025
7. GWI, US, 2024 2. Spotify Culture Next Vol 6 survey C1, July 2024
8. GWI Recontact Survey, 2024
9. Nielsen Mixer Study, US, 2023-2024
10. Adelaide, July 2025
11. Neuro-insights, Jul 2025
12. Mutinex, Jul 2025
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Anne Bouttier is the Global Head of Automation at Spotify, where she leads the programmatic sales team. Previously, Anne served as Head of Automation, EMEA and JAPAC.Before joining Spotify, Anne held senior leadership roles at The New York Times and Dailymotion, where she helped build and scale the company’s proprietary video ad exchange.
