Published June 11
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is here, and according to Spotify’s Anne Bouttier, audio is poised to play a bigger role in how brands reach fans throughout the tournament.
Bouttier, global head of automation sales at Spotify, pointed to the World Cup as an example of how advertisers are increasingly incorporating audio earlier in media planning rather than treating it as a stand-alone channel.
“We have seen planners think about audio in a way that’s super strategic,” Bouttier said. “We capitalize on pre-event excitement and then first-game excitement, layering contextual [signals], audience segments to find soccer fans and podcasts to be in the middle of the conversation.”
Despite accounting for roughly 30% of media consumption, audio captures just 3% of advertising spend. But speakers at The Trade Desk’s An Afternoon of Audio event this week said that gap may begin to narrow as advances in automation, measurement and planning tools make audio easier for brands to buy — and easier to justify alongside TV, video and social.
The shift is being driven in part by the growth of biddable audio, which allows marketers to buy, optimize and measure audio alongside display, video and connected TV as part of the broader media mix.
Since launching its exchange last year, Spotify has already seen progress as inventory has become more broadly available through programmatic channels.
“We’ve moved from being pretty heavy in direct and reserved publisher deals to being able [to make inventory] fully accessible and fully measurable,” Bouttier said.
The results, she added, have been significant. Looking across campaigns run through The Trade Desk, Spotify found that adding the platform to omnichannel strategies decreased cost per household reach by 9% and reduced cost per action by 40%.
The ability to prove incremental value is becoming increasingly important as marketers scrutinize every media dollar. By making audio easier to buy and evaluate alongside display, video and connected TV, biddable inventory is giving marketers more control over things like frequency capping, audience targeting and measurement.
The Trade Desk has seen biddable campaigns double over the past year, said Catie Birmingham, senior manager of research and insights, at The Trade Desk. Data from The Trade Desk Intelligence found that premium audio is 1.5 times more effective at driving positive brand association and 1.3 times more effective at driving higher purchase intent. When combined with other channels, those campaigns generated 3.4 times greater connection and 2.9 times lower cognitive load.
“Where you show up matters just as much as what you say,” Birmingham said. “You’re literally whispering in your customer’s ear.”
Still, brands and agencies can face an uphill battle internally when redirecting budgets to test new channels.
Alexis Gossard, senior manager of media strategy at Bayer, discussed the company’s efforts to bring more brands into audio. “We have been on an adventure over the past few years,” she said. “I’ve tried to build a FOMO moment.”
That fear of missing out has come from showing both leadership and brand teams how competitors are using audio, while also demonstrating the channel’s untapped opportunity through education and testing.
For Bayer, those tests have helped prove audio's value beyond awareness metrics. Gossard pointed to a campaign for One A Day Kids, where adding audio to the media mix generated 25% incremental reach.
Gossard said there’s a common misconception around channel investment.
“Brand marketers will feel that they have to fully fund a certain channel before they move into the next,” she said. “You don’t have to put your next dollar into linear or CTV. You might have enough there and by adding a new channel, you might actually get more out of it.”
As agencies and brands increasingly look for efficiencies across fragmented media plans, audio’s biggest opportunity may be that it no longer needs to be planned as a stand-alone channel.
“It can’t be an afterthought in terms of planning,” said Jeremy Randol, vice president of programmatic sales strategy at SiriusXM. “This needs to be a medium that you’re thinking about with your TV buy.”
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.
