Spotify’s Brian Berner on the ‘untapped’ potential of audio

When Taylor Swift drops a new album, Spotify isn’t just the place fans go to stream it — it sparks a cultural conversation.

That currency has quietly powered Spotify’s next chapter: an ad business that looks very different from the playlist app it started as. Earlier this year, for instance, the company launched the Spotify Ad Exchange, to allow real-time programmatic bidding.

Brian Berner, Spotify’s head of global ad sales and partnerships, joins The Big Impression to talk about how brands are looking for speed, flexibility and smarter ways to connect with audiences.

“Advertisers are looking for agility and flexibility,” Berner says. “And we’ve built the Spotify Ad Exchange to make it easier to create, buy and measure in real time.”

That shift has led to over 5,000 advertisers over the past year leaning into experimenting with AI-generated audio spots and new ways to extend cultural moments beyond the stage or the screen.

Spotify may still be synonymous with audio, but it’s now playing across video and display, too — aiming to become as central to advertising as it already is to listening. As Berner puts it, there’s still so much to come.

“It’s very clear that audio is a dominant media platform, and I think there is a lot of underinvestment and therefore still a lot of untapped opportunity and innovation that you’re going to see happen in audio,” he says.