Spotify's direct ad sales fall €53m as automated buying lifts growth to 9%

Advertising has been moving from the phone call to the auction for more than a decade. Spotify's third-quarter filing, examined by PPC Land on Saturday, October 24, put a price on what that shift now looks like inside a single company: automated channels added €91 million in a year, while the direct sales team lost €53 million.

The same pattern ran through much of the weekend's news. A Nordic broadcaster reported that digital growth still cannot offset the decline of linear television. A German trade body published data suggesting the industry's most common attribution model counts only half of what affiliate marketing touches. Two surveys found marketers adopting AI and commerce media faster than they can prove either works. And on the receiving end of all that advertising, an open-source project for stripping ads from television home screens became one of the most popular repositories on GitHub in a week.

Spotify's sales team gives way to the auction

PPC Land reported that Spotify's direct ad sales drop €53m as biddable channels drive 9% growth, published at 07:21 UTC on October 24 and based on the company's results and its 6-K filing for the quarter to September 30. Ad-supported revenue reached €482 million, up 9% at constant currency and 10% as reported, and accounted for about 10% of Spotify's total revenue of €4.97 billion.

The composition matters more than the total. Automated channels, including biddable buying through auctions, added €91 million on the year. The direct channel, in which Spotify's own sales teams sell to agencies and brands, fell by €53 million, a decline the filing describes as "partially offset by a decrease of €53 million in our direct channel." Over nine months, automated channels gained €211 million and direct sales lost €177 million. Music ad pricing was soft, and podcast sponsorships supported growth.

Chief financial officer Christian Luiga said biddable buying is "now up to 40%" of the business, although a chart in the results shows about a third on a trailing twelve-month basis; the two figures use different measures, and the chart carries no data labels. "Our advertising business is coming out of a longer period of low single-digit growth," Luiga said. Spotify gave no numeric advertising guidance for the fourth quarter, saying only that ad growth should approach double digits. Its company guidance is €5.2 billion of revenue, 818 million monthly active users and 316 million subscribers.

The quarter's other figures were strong. Monthly active users reached 788 million and subscribers 306 million. Gross margin was 33.0%, operating income €672 million and free cash flow €735 million. PPC Land notes that Spotify restated its third-quarter 2025 ad revenue from €446 million to €437 million, did not quantify the pricing weakness and said nothing about how advertising works when listening is driven by AI agents. A mechanical royalty claim by the MLC could cost Spotify about €538 million if it succeeded in full, a figure the company does not treat as a liability.

Linear television keeps shrinking

In Scandinavia, the trend is starker. PPC Land reported that Viaplay ad sales drop 0.6% organically as the World Cup airs on rivals, based on the group's third-quarter report published on October 22. Advertising sales were SEK 766 million, against SEK 752 million a year earlier: up 1.9% as reported, but down 0.6% organically once a SEK 18 million currency effect is removed. The men's World Cup aired on competitors, while the comparison quarter in 2025 included the Women's Euro.

The report was blunt about the cause. Digital growth "could not entirely offset the ongoing structural decline in linear TV advertising sales," Viaplay wrote. Its commercial share of viewing in Sweden fell to 20.3% from 22.8%. Advertising represents about 15% of core sales of SEK 5.25 billion, which grew 0.1% organically. Streaming subscription sales rose 3.5%, and subscribers totalled 4.30 million.

Viaplay is also reshaping its balance sheet. Net debt stands at SEK 5.42 billion and leverage at 4.4 times. The Dutch business is being sold for €142 million, and chief executive Jørgen Lindemann said the integration of the satellite unit Allente was on schedule. To reach the bottom of its 2026 core EBITDA target of SEK 1.0 billion to SEK 1.4 billion, the group needs at least SEK 129 million in the fourth quarter. Viaplay does not split digital from linear advertising, and several of the figures are PPC Land's calculations.

Free channels are filling their schedules with low-cost studio shows. PPC Land reported that Fubo Sports Network gains an NFL draft show for its free 11 a.m. slot. The free, ad-supported channel, owned by FuboTV, in which Disney holds about 70%, adds NFL Stock Exchange with Fantasy Life and a second season of The Hoops HQ Show with Seth Davis and Andy Katz, both inside a six-series morning block called The Daily Gameplan. "Fall is one of the most anticipated times of the year for sports fans," said Pamela Duckworth, head of Fubo Studios. Fubo's ad revenue was $108.9 million in the quarter to June 30, against a pro forma $109.4 million a year earlier despite the World Cup, and advertising accounts for 7.4% of revenue. The combined Fubo and Hulu + Live TV business has about six million subscribers and targets adjusted EBITDA above $300 million by fiscal 2028. The announcement gives no premiere date, viewership or ad pricing, and three platforms have disappeared from the channel's distribution list without explanation.

Mobile programmatic grows, agency revenue falls

Machine-driven buying is lifting smaller platforms. PPC Land reported that Bidease hires an ex-Moloco revenue leader after two years of 200%+ growth. Dock Kim, who spent more than seven years at Moloco and was most recently its global vice president of revenue and sales, joins the New York mobile app ad platform as vice president of business development, leading go-to-market in North America, Latin America and EMEA. "Advanced machine learning with robust scale is central to how our campaigns perform," said chief executive Boris Abaev. Kim described the brief: "My job is to scale what's working and bring Bidease to more partners, especially in high-growth markets."

PPC Land flags the gaps. Bidease gives no revenue base for its growth claims, which imply at least a ninefold increase over two years. The release cites 650 million daily impressions, while the company's own website says 170 million, a difference of nearly four times. No start date was given.

A small Chinese media company shows the opposite movement in traditional agency work. PPC Land reported that Unitrend's ad agency revenue drops 43% ahead of a $25m Nasdaq IPO. The fifth amendment to its F-1, filed on October 23, offers 6.25 million shares at $4 to $5 to list as INHI. In fiscal 2025, advertising revenue fell 42.75% to $1.28 million, just 3.46% of the total, while total revenue rose 79.12% to $36.95 million on the back of film co-production. The prospectus attributes the fall to "decreased advertising demands from our customers." Cash was $933,665 against receivables of $20.85 million, the top three customers accounted for 57% of sales, and chief executive Bin Feng would hold about 87.83% of the votes after the offering. The company plans to spend 40% of the proceeds on distribution, 30% on production, 20% on an AI trading platform and only 10% on the advertising agency. PPC Land notes that the company's variable interest entity structure has "not been tested in a court of law," and that its China regulatory filing remains under review.

Last click undercounts by half

Germany's digital trade body has challenged the default way the industry assigns credit for a sale. PPC Land reported that last click shows affiliates in 12.41% of sales, not 24.92%, BVDW finds. The 21-page white paper, published on October 22 by the BVDW's affiliate and partner marketing circle, draws on touchpoint data from 185 advertisers supplied by attriXus, easy Marketing and Ingenious, collected in the first quarter of 2026. Under last-click attribution, affiliate touchpoints appear in 12.41% of transactions. Across the full customer journey, they appear in 24.92%.

"Actual contribution and visible contribution are a factor of two apart," said Anna Babajeva of Artefact, one of seven authors. The paper argues for treating affiliate marketing as a full-funnel "growth architecture", measuring it by customer lifetime value and incrementality, and keeping last click only as the basis for paying commission. German affiliate investment was €932 million in 2025, generating €18.7 billion in revenue. Average order value for affiliate customers was €81, against €51.90 across the market. Only 10% of advertisers use lifetime value as a KPI, and 39% have no incrementality method at all.

PPC Land is careful with the argument. The 24.92% shows that an affiliate was present in a journey, not that it caused the sale. The touchpoint study is described in a single footnote, with no sectors, attribution windows or explanation of how the three datasets were merged. The market figures are self-reported by 13 networks, every author works in the affiliate sector, and the paper's imprint says AI was used to produce it.

Recovering lost data does not remove the legal obligation to ask for it. PPC Land reported that server-side tracking still needs consent, iubenda tells marketers, based on a blog guide updated on October 23 and a 16-page white paper from the Italian consent management company, owned by team.blue. Server-side tracking can recover some signals lost to ad blockers and browser limits, the documents say, but GDPR and ePrivacy rules still require consent before data is collected from a device. "The rule follows the device, not the data," the white paper says. It also warns that "Server-side tracking is not a plug-and-play switch."

The guide cites the context: 29.5% of internet users block ads, Safari caps JavaScript-set cookies at seven days and Google's Consent Mode v2 relies on seven signals. PPC Land notes the commercial angle. iubenda's own server-side product is listed as coming soon, its links carry a pre-launch campaign tag, and some of its cited research assumed Chrome would drop third-party cookies, which Google reversed in April 2025. Hashed data remains personal data, and blockers can still block tracking subdomains.

Surveys outrun the evidence

Two industry surveys published their findings over the weekend, and both describe adoption running ahead of proof. PPC Land reported that IAB Europe finds 86% use AI for marketing, but only 48% have ad rules, in the second edition of its Impact of AI on Digital Advertising Report, published on September 24. Some 78% of respondents have a formal owner for AI governance, but only 48% have rules specific to advertising, up from 43%. Some 58% expect agentic buying to reach operational use or scale within a year, yet current AI performance in ad operations is rated 2.76 out of 5. "AI is moving beyond experimentation and becoming more embedded across advertising operations," IAB Europe says. "Security ranks as the number one AI-related concern," its release adds.

The sample is the weak point. Digiday and Market Radar put it at 50 respondents, down from 95 a year earlier, and individual questions draw bases of 21 to 31, where one respondent moves a result by more than three points. Because the two editions used different samples, the rise from 85% to 86% is not a trend. Company size divides the results sharply: at firms with more than 500 staff, 86% report agentic systems at level two or above, against 48% at smaller firms. Some 62% want industry guidance, 38% are still assessing the EU AI Act and 42% name a lack of expertise as the main barrier. The trade body designed and ran the survey itself.

PPC Land also reported that 46% of brands tie more commerce media spend to proven ROI, SMG and IAB find. The 36-page report, The Commerce Media Connection Gap, surveyed 281 people across brands, agencies and retail media networks in six countries in July and August. Asked what would unlock more spending, 46% of brands named proven ROI and incremental sales; no other theme reached 8%. Only 14% always plan from a single brief, and reporting is the least connected part of the process, at 34%. In-store media divides respondents most: 47% say it adds the most value when connected, and 41% say it is the hardest to connect. On AI, 44% expect it to deliver the biggest advantage, while 39% call it overhyped. "Commerce media doesn't need every retailer or channel to operate in the same way," said Collin Colburn of the IAB. Sean Crawford of SMG put the practical problem: "In-store is where the ambition of Connected Commerce meets operational reality." The survey measures perceptions rather than results, gives no margin of error, and was produced by a company that sells services to retail media networks.

Google, for its part, is making compliance easier to track. PPC News Feed reported, at 07:00 UTC, that Google Ads introduces centralized policy issue tracking, a Policy Summary page under Admin that lists account-level problems and individual ads or asset groups with violations, sortable by cost, conversions or ROAS. An August test suggested it would replace the existing Policy Manager, but both now coexist, with "the original Policy Manager still available under Tools > Troubleshooting > Policy Manager." The report does not say how widely the feature is available.

The audience pushes back

Advertising on television home screens has grown quickly, and so has the resistance. PPC Land reported on an open-source project that gained 30,900 GitHub stars in a week by removing Google TV home screen ads, published at 17:35 UTC. Its creator, a developer who posts as Gathin, wrote on X on October 17: "Gave Claude Code the model number, it found the TV on wifi, removed 25 Xiaomi packages and wrote a new launcher." The project uses an AI coding assistant and Android Debug Bridge to disable manufacturers' ad services, sponsored rows and telemetry, then installs a replacement launcher of about 497 KB. "Nothing is uninstalled, so a restore script can undo every step," its documentation says.

By October 24 the repository had 3,600 forks, 848 merged pull requests and coverage for 260 models from 77 brands; the original post drew 8.4 million views. The context explains the interest: LG Ad Solutions reports 60% growth in advertisers buying home-screen placements, and a Teads deal for Google TV mastheads reaches 500 million devices. PPC Land notes that firmware updates can undo the changes, that the method works only on Android TV and Google TV, that it does not touch ads inside apps such as YouTube or Netflix, and that the project publishes no download counts, so actual use is unknown.

Browsers are taking a more active role too. PPC Land reported that Chrome adds suspicious-site warnings for 1 billion Enhanced Protection users, based on an October 20 post by Chrome group product manager Jasika Bawa. A new lower-confidence warning tier sits beneath the red full-page warning for dangerous sites. Scam detection has moved from on-device Gemini Nano to "a more powerful server-side Gemini model," and Chrome now checks copied commands for so-called ClickFix attacks. Google says page text is processed ephemerally and "never logged, retained or used to train models." It published no thresholds, false-positive rates or rollout dates, and does not say how site owners can dispute a verdict. For advertisers, PPC Land notes, legitimate reseller, affiliate and comparison sites could be caught by the new tier.

Surveillance hardware drew scrutiny of its own. PPC Land reported that a Proton map shows 214,073 Flock devices in service, not 120,000. The map, hosted by the Swiss privacy company since October 21, draws on an inventory compiled by security researcher Joshua Michael from a December 2025 snapshot of Flock Safety's own systems, obtained through an access token Flock had left exposed. Flock has publicly cited about 120,000 cameras. The map lists 214,073 devices in service, 83,427 in planning and 38,190 decommissioned, with Harris County in Texas at the top on 6,322. "We don't host or distribute the underlying dataset," Proton says. The data is about ten months old, "devices" includes hardware other than cameras, and Proton sells privacy products. At least 214 cities and counties have ended Flock contracts, and a bill called the Ban Flock Act was introduced in October. Flock, which says it processes more than 20 billion vehicle reads a month, reportedly cut about 270 staff, or 18%, the same month. It did not respond to CNET, which checked the map against a single city.

Reading history for the AI bill

Behind all of these businesses sits a spending wave that its own leaders discuss in historical terms. PPC Land reported that Satya Nadella calls '1873' the book to be read as Microsoft spends $41bn. Asked about overbuilding of AI data centres on Microsoft's July 29 earnings call, Nadella said: "all of us are reading this 1873 as the book to be read," referring to Liaquat Ahamed's history of the railway boom and the panic that followed. Microsoft's June-quarter capital spending rose 70% to $41.0 billion, and guidance for the current quarter is above $50 billion. Azure grew 43% and passed $100 billion in annual revenue. Search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs grew 10%.

Ahamed was not persuaded that the lesson had landed. "I have a feeling that he misread the lessons," he said on The Ringer podcast in September, arguing that the danger is collective: each competitor overbuilds because the others do. He estimates AI spending at $800 billion to $1 trillion a year. PPC Land stresses that Nadella did not say which lesson he took, and that none of this means a crash is coming. Microsoft reports its next quarter on October 28.

The book is a fitting place to end a weekend of numbers. Spotify's growth now comes from the auction rather than the sales floor, Viaplay's from streaming rather than broadcast, and the measurement that justifies both is still being argued over by the trade bodies that publish it. Viewers, meanwhile, are learning to remove the ads entirely. The railways of 1873 were built faster than anyone could prove they would pay. The same question now hangs over a great deal of advertising technology.