Spotify is bringing back political ads after a pause in 2020

Say goodbye to the peaceful listening experience over at Spotify, because political ads are making a comeback in 2022. The company put a pause on the content back in 2020, citing a lack of “necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”

The company has apparently reached the necessary level of robustness over the last two years, and with midterm elections fast approaching, they’re not leaving any cash on the table. In a statement (via Pitchfork), a spokesperson for Spotify said, “Following our pause of political ads in early 2020, we have spent the past two years strengthening and enhancing our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content. We are now beginning to sell select political advertisements in opted-in third-party podcasts via the Spotify Audience Network in the U.S.”

According to Protocol, the company ominously promised the advertising would appear “across thousands of podcasts on and off Spotify” in an email to potential partners. These partners will be able to employ “contextual targeting,” which allows advertisers “to place ads in podcasts when they are discussing issues relevant to their target audiences.”

The caveat is that podcasts will be able to turn political ads off if they choose. And for now, political advertising will only run on podcasts, not on the ad-supported free tier for music streaming. The company will apparently also “only host ads from known political entities, and it won’t accept ads from the much broader bucket of issue-related groups,” per Protocol.

Like any streaming service, Spotify has faced a lot of political criticism for the kind of content they host (looking at you, Joe Rogan). But like The Joe Rogan Experience, political advertising is presumably too lucrative a business to take a truly definitive stance against it, so listeners will just have to suffer through for another election season.