Agencies across WPP’s network will gain access Spotify’s audience insights for better targeting across creative and media.
The multiyear partnership between Spotify and WPP’s Data Alliance, announced Tuesday, will grant WPP access to anonymized and aggregated data from Spotify’s 100 million listeners across 60 countries.
“The data we have from Spotify will resonate across WPP,” said Anas Ghazi, managing director of global partnerships at WPP’s Data Alliance. “[All WPP agencies] can grab these insights and infuse them into creative planning, media planning, media reach, insights and so forth.”
Wunderman’s proprietary data management platform, Zipline, will be the point of integration. Agencies can create segments in Zipline that are sent to Spotify. The streaming platform will enrich those segments with insights on its listeners and push them back to Zipline.
Spotify will give WPP insights on emotional factors, such as mood and music preference, which can influence consumer purchase decisions. Spotify also will provide data on location and device type to improve targeting across platforms.
“If you think about how music shapes your activity and thoughts, this is a new, unique play for us to find audiences,” Ghazi said. “Mood and moments are the next pieces of understanding audiences.”
In addition to data via Zipline, GroupM will gain exclusive access to Spotify audience data via its Live insights panel, which collects data from more than 5 million consumers in 30 markets. Spotify’s data will be infused into Live through Kantar’s Lightspeed Research platform, which will compare Spotify’s audience to terrestrial radio listeners across 12 markets.
Spotify’s insights will inform creative planning across WPP. These insights will also help WPP advertisers reach Spotify listeners with more relevant messages in specific moments.
“Based on the song and audience we’re speaking to, we’re able to connect that with the data assets that we have to inform what the creative will look like,” Ghazi said.
For Spotify, partnering with WPP offers a strategic growth opportunity for its ads business by moving the platform upstream into holding company conversations, said Alex Underwood, VP and head of global agency partnerships at Spotify.
“We’re looking to invest in our long-term advertising future,” he said. “With basic collaboration and data integration, this partnership allows us to move the advertising part of our business more front-of-mind so we can scale.”
Neither company would comment on whether WPP would commit to buying inventory from Spotify as part of the deal. Spotify hopes to ensure more purchases of its inventory by helping WPP gain a better understanding of its ad platform.
“It’s a deal that is strategic at its core and designed for the collective growth for our businesses,” Underwood said.
As part of the deal, Spotify will formally launch programmatic private marketplaces for in-stream audio inventory with GroupM via AppNexus, which was announced in July.
