SPOT Sep 2024 135.000 put

These 3 trends will dominate advertising: Spotify's Lee Brown

Spotify (SPOT) Global Head of Advertising Lee Brown joins Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Rachelle Akuffo at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss the future of the business and how AI is changing the advertising landscape. Spotify has been leveraging AI in its user experiences to offer its listeners everything from customized playlists to music discovery. On the advertising front, the company is rolling out a new tool called Quick Audio that will enable quick script generation and voiceovers for audio assets. Brown explains that over the next year, the major challenge will be "sifting through the AI landscape and what that's going to bring." He will be closely watching how the technology will impact creativity, targeting, brand safety, and performance, adding, "I'm a big advocate that it's going to play out in a very positive way for the advertising business." As for Spotify's future, Brown points to being much more than a music company: "Four years ago, we were mostly known for our music company, and we still are. That's the heart of what we do. But we made a really strategic decision to become an audio company and introduce podcasts into the app. And that was at the time, they said, 'Hey, you have to keep music and podcasts separate.' That's what everyone else was doing. And we were sort of among the first that brought them together." He points to audiobooks as a recent expansion of this idea to bring multiple forms of content to the Spotify experience. Brown adds that podcasts can also be viewed as videos to provide users dual consumption modes, and while he reiterates that Spotify will always be audio-first, he believes "video as a companion format is something that will enhance the experience." Alongside AI, Brown points to globalization and branding as major trends in advertising. He explains that marketers will be making ads more locally relevant to users, as well as focusing on building brand resiliency amid an inflationary environment. Click here to keep up with Yahoo Finance's coverage of 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This post was written by Melanie Riehl