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Spotify app to offer 30 mins of ad-free listening if you watch a 15-30 second video ad first

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Spotify currently offers you a choice: pay ten bucks a month to listen without ads, or listen for free but have your music interrupted by audio ads. Those using the iOS or Android app will be offered a third option later this year: watch a 15-30 second video ad in return for 30 minutes of ad-free listening.

Known as Sponsored Sessions, the idea is that advertisers get the ability to run video ads for the first time, while the experience is made relatively painless for consumers by guaranteeing 30 minutes of uninterrupted listening afterwards.

Spotify began pitching the option to advertisers back in June, and Ad Age reports that a number of major advertisers have now signed-up.

Spotify will start testing the video ads in the fourth quarter with a limited number of brands and plans to extend them to all advertisers in the first quarter of 2015.

Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s and Universal Pictures have signed on as the ads’ first global buyers. Kraft Foods, Target and Wells Fargo will be the U.S.-only launch advertisers.

The Spotify app is a free download from the App Store.

Via Engadget

Madison Avenue execs describe Apple’s ad sales team as “slow, cocky and downright stingy”

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Apple is missing out on iAd sales opportunities because the company is too “slow, cocky and downright stingy” according to Madison Avenue media buyers cited in a piece in Advertising Age.

One exec told Ad Age that Apple doesn’t even have official sales targets for its ad business.

Cary Tilds, chief innovation officer for GroupM, said that Apple doesn’t have a big sales team. “It’s not their main focus to tell everyone in the world how amazing advertising in iAd is,” she said. “It’s just not as loud” … 
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Apple hires real-world radio executive for iTunes Radio, working on ad sales

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Via AdAge, Apple has hired Michael Pallad for its iTunes Radio team. Pallad’s LinkedIn confirms the report, citing Apple iTunes as his current occupation.

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AdAge says that Pallad joined Apple about a week ago and is in charge of international iTunes Radio sales. Pallad comes from Cumulus Media, a real-world radio organisation, as their Executive Vice President of Sales. As Apple’s initial round of iAd campaigns for iTunes Radios run out at the end of the year, it seems Apple needed someone versed in radio advertising sales to help setup its deals for 2014.


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