• by Felicia Greiff , February 18, 2016

Last November, Spotify opened up its inventory to programmatic media buyers within a private marketplace.

Real-Time Daily spoke with Jana Jakovljevic, head of programmatic solutions at Spotify, on the company's recently launched programmatic offering. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

 RTD: How has Spotify's programmatic platform fared since the November launch?

Jakovljevic: We’ve had huge success with our PMP (private marketplace) offering. We've been able to reach buyers and budgets that would have otherwise been inaccessible, and PMPs now drive a very sizable percentage of our overall programmatic revenue. There's huge appetite from buyers for a premium ad experience and reliable, deterministic first-party data.

RTD: Could you provide an outlook and goals for 2016?

Jakovljevic: In a nutshell, we will continue to expand our offering to more ad products, advance our data solutions and continue to innovate on audio. Remember how 2014 was the year of mobile? Well, 2016 is the year of audio.

RTD: What does the IAB's OpenRTB 2.4 protocol mean for Spotify's entrance to programmatic?

Jakovljevic: The buying of display media was completely transformed with the release of OpenRTB. It provided the language and template to transact buys in real time. Publishers could sell intelligently and efficiently to hundreds, if not thousands of buyers, and brands could reach more of their audience through scale and granular targeting.

Audio is still a fairly foreign concept to programmatic buyers: How do they access it? What's the file format? What targeting is available?

Introducing a universal standard of how an audio ad is communicated through RTB provides a familiarity to audio for programmatic buyers. It's actually not too dissimilar to how programmatic video is transacted. And when buyers can work with their preferred and existing technology vendors, it makes for a very simple and seamless transition.

Real-Time Daily: What can Spotify offer programmatic buyers that other audio channels can’t?

Jakovljevic: Spotify is truly global: 75 million users in 58 markets and growing. Every user is logged in when they visit Spotify, and they're highly engaged, listening for more than two hours every day, throughout their day and across multiple devices. They're creating and listening to playlists built around their daily habits, mood and interests.

Spotify offers unique first-party data segments at scale -- and, in the case of display and video, a highly viewable, 100% share of voice ad environment.