Spotify is to TV as Engagement is to Interruption

The battle between interruption and engagement is being waged on the front line with Spotify on the leading edge.  Forbes quotes  Spotify’s Chief Revenue Officer, Jeff Levick, in a recent interview with Digiday:

Each TV hour has about 15 minutes of ads

“We don’t really want to offer just straight advertising. If our CEO had his way you wouldn’t see ads at all. The way we think about advertising on Spotify is communicating through content, whether that’s an audio experience, or a great app. That’s where we see the future of ads on Spotify – understanding the content itself in order to successfully message to consumers.”

Contrast that approach with the TV – the current king of ad revenue and time spent with American consumers.  According to Kantor media “… an average hour of monitored prime time network programming contained ten minutes, fifty five seconds (10:55) of in-show Brand Appearances and 14:20 of network commercial messages. The combined total of 25:15 of marketing content represents 42 percent of a prime-time hour.” (Kantar Media, 2010)

15 minutes an hour of advertising assault on their own fans.  No engagement there.  Contrast that to the approach taken by Spotify – the Reebok workout mix, the Coke partnership.  Spotify gets it and gives it back to their connected and engaged consumers. My bet is in the long run Spotify will be leading  ad  engagement  victory way into the future.

Room for discussion: How can TV content becoming infused with engagement by advertisers?  Select a show /channel and develop two strategies that combine potential advertisers with the content in a fashion that engages their fans.