Spotify to show video advertising

Online music streaming service Spotify is to run a video ad for the new Sony Picture film The Taking of Pelham 123.

The campaign, booked by OMD, marks the first time that the service has run a video ad.

Showing via Flash, users will be able to pause, play and rewind the ad, which will be joined by audio and display advertising.

Zia George, account director at Spotify, said: “As Spotify continues to evolve, our aim is to offer brands high quality and engaging advertising which avoids hampering our users’ experience – as well as enhancing it.

“Spotify’s video player allows brands to serve exciting visual content to an extremely captive audience. As well as having great potential to become a platform for branded content, the player is especially powerful as users will have actively decided to watch the content, rather than having it forced upon them.”

Spotify’s move into video advertising comes just days after Microsoft announced the launch of an ad-funded online video player to fill the hole left by Project Kangaroo (see Microsoft launches UK video player).