Q4 2024 earnings: Highlights for advertisers
Share This
This week Spotify released its Q4 earnings report, reporting its first full year of profitability. We’re recapping the highlights of the quarter for Spotify Advertising and how advertisers stand to benefit.
This week, Spotify shared its fourth quarter 2024 earnings report, to close out a year that reached record levels of profitability. Nearly all of our KPIs exceeded guidance, with monthly active users (MAUs) netting out at 675M globally (up 12% Y/Y) and subscriber net additions increasing by 11M globally (up 11% Y/Y). Further, ad-supported MAUs now total 425M globally (up 12% Y/Y).1
Ad-supported revenue also continues to tick up—increasing by 7% Y/Y2, driven by global growth in impressions sold across music and podcasts, as well as automated sales channels.
“I am very excited about 2025 and feel really good about where we are as both a product and as a business,” said Daniel Ek, Spotify Founder & CEO. “We will continue to place bets that will drive long-term impact, increasing our speed while maintaining the levels of efficiency we achieved last year. It’s this combination that will enable us to build the best and most valuable user experience, grow sustainably, and deliver creativity to the world.”
Such growth allows Spotify Advertising to continue investing heavily in dynamic ad experiences and measurement solutions that further empower our advertisers to effectively reach Spotify’s highly engaged audience. Below we look back at five highlights from Q4 2024:
1.Our biggest Spotify Wrapped yet—while Wrapped for Advertisers brings a wealth of audience insights to marketers all over the world
Spotify’s 10th annual Wrapped campaign was our largest ever, delivering strong user engagement (+10% Y/Y)3 across 184 markets and 53 languages with an experience that celebrated the fans, artists and creators who made 2024 the culture-making, fandom-shaking year it was.
Meanwhile, 2024 Wrapped for Advertisers made a big splash of its own—engaging marketers worldwide with a mix of timely insights into streaming behaviors in their local market, helping them unlock new creative ways to reach their audience. Some of our most invested partners were treated to their very own Wrapped for Advertisers experience with tailored trends and insights available to view in the Spotify app.
2. AUX and Live Experiences expands to the UK
In December, Spotify's AUX Live Experiences offering debuted in the UK for an electric evening of entertainment that brought together more than 500 fans and a stellar lineup of Manchester-born talent.
After a successful US launch of Live Experiences as a key offering from our music consultancy, Spotify AUX, we introduced the first UK installment with Budweiser as our official partner. Together, we hosted a special “Music Depot” experience at Manchester’s iconic Diecast venue, a former metalworks factory, which brimmed with immersive experiences, eye-catching installations, and buckets of ice-cold Budweisers.
“Spotify is committed to deepening the connections between artists, brands, and fans. With AUX Live Experiences, we’ve seen that our branded live events are cultural moments that get people talking and deliver results for advertisers,” said Ed Couchman, Head of U.K. & Northern Europe Sales at Spotify. “We were excited to bring our AUX Live Experience with Budweiser to life in Manchester, offering local music fans an unforgettable experience.”
3. Growing video supply fuels further video consumption on Spotify—creating more opportunities for advertisers to visually engage their audiences
There are now more than 330,000 video podcast shows on Spotify4, and music videos are now available to stream in many global markets. With that, video consumption is rapidly increasing on the platform—more than 270 million users have watched a video podcast on Spotify, and nearly two-thirds of podcast listeners say they prefer podcasts with video.5
With video supply growing so fast, time spent with video is likely to continue trending upward—on mobile and other devices like Connected TV. This creates more opportunities for advertisers to engage ad-supported fans with video ads when they’re focused on their screens and audio is playing.
Video consumption is also fueling more baked-in ad opportunities in podcasts. These allow brands to deeply integrate with an influential host and reach a full show audience across platforms.
4. Spotify Advertising takes another step towards becoming a scaled automated ads business
As Spotify continues to scale, we’re committed to building a more flexible and automated service for advertisers of all sizes, and in Q4 we reached another crucial checkpoint in that journey as we began to invest in more performance-based ad services. We’re excited to see our automated sales channels were the largest contributors to overall advertising growth and will have more to share in the following quarters.
5. The Spotify Audience Network unlocks new audiences for advertisers in Mexico and Japan
In November, advertisers in Mexico and Japan became the latest to avail the Spotify Audience Network—our audio-first advertising marketplace that makes it possible for advertisers of all sizes to connect with podcast listeners both on and off Spotify.
The Spotify Audience Network gives advertisers the ability to scale their campaigns and target audiences with precision, meaning brands can take advantage of two different buying methods—audience-based buying, and title-by-title buying—in order to maximize their investment in podcast ads. Learn more here.
Ready to connect with your audience on Spotify?
Sources & References