Spotify trims ad sales team as it focuses on smaller clients and programmatic

Spotify is reorganizing its ad sales team, in a move that will lay off 40 people globally from account and campaign management teams, as the audio streaming platform focuses on developing its self-serve programmatic advertising business and looks to cater to more small- and medium-sized clients. Today, Spotify notified staff of the planned changes in an email. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to Ad Age that the company was conducting a sales team reorganization but declined to provide specifics, other than saying it would affect the 40 positions in ad sales, and remove 17 open roles that Spotify planned to fill. The reorganization means that account and campaign management teams will merge, according to a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The newly combined teams will fall under the purview of Pete Finnecy, who has been head of account management in the Americas and will now lead the “customer success team.” Spotify also plans to expand its partnership with Accenture, which will provide support to the customer success team, according to the person with knowledge of the plans. The moves come less than a month after Spotify’s latest B2B marketing effort—a music video coded into a Spotify Advertising media plan spreadsheet—won a Grand Prix at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Small business focus Spotify is responding to advertisers that increasingly are buying media through programmatic—automated channels—and it is looking to bring more small- and medium-sized businesses into its ad platform. Also: Inside Google’s post-cookie ad tech troubles with advertisers Spotify is not alone in shaking up ad teams to focus on small businesses. Earlier this year, Google restructured with layoffs that affected hundreds of ad roles, as it shifted resources from its large customer sales team to a customer solutions team, which is more dedicated to small- and mid-size clients. In the first quarter of this year, its most recent publicly released results, Spotify generated more than $420 million in revenue from its ad-supported subscription tier, up 18% from a year earlier. Last year, Spotify conducted a round of layoffs that affected about 17% of its total staff, during a time when many tech companies were making similar cuts. The latest cuts affect about 0.5% of the staff, and 2.7% of the ad sales team, according to the person familiar with the reorg.

Spotify trims ad sales team as it focuses on smaller clients and programmatic

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