Music fans using Spotify’s free, ad-supported tier in Australia will now receive an interactive video and audio ad experience.

Active Media allows users to choose whether they want to hear, see, or skip ads, with advertisers to only pay for completed listens/views.

The Active Audio product is not only the first of its kind in the Australian audio space, but the first of its kind globally.

Here’s a simple explainer on how it will work:

1. A Spotify user is listening to music on its ad-supported free experience.
2. The user will receive an ad break consisting of targeted audio and video ads.
3. The user will be able to choose whether they want to hear, see, or skip an ad.
4. Spotify will learn from each interaction, allowing it to deliver a more personalised ad experience.

Andrea Ingham, head of sales at Spotify for Australia and New Zealand, said: “At Spotify, we’re committed to delivering the best possible free user experience.

“Active Media is a win-win for listeners and advertisers. Listeners benefit from an improved experience, allowing them to choose which ads they want to engage with, and in turn, we can offer advertisers better cut through and ROI.

“While Active Media certainly evolves our video products for today, it will redefine the audio format for tomorrow.”

Spotify’s streaming intelligence will be fuelled by each engagement, so the personalisation of the ads will soon match the personalisation capabilities of some of Spotify’s most popular playlists, like ‘Discover Weekly’, ‘Daily Mix’, and ‘Your Time Capsule’.

To support the launch of Active Media in Australia, Spotify has also launched ‘Be Heard’ – an invite-only initiative which has tasked Australia’s top creative agencies, including Cummins&Partners Sydney and Isobar Sydney for clients Pernod Ricard and PayPal respectively, to innovate on the audio ad format with Spotify’s new user-choice experience in mind.

The introduction of Active Media comes just two months after Spotify’s launch of its new free user experience.