Brands
Spotify pushes the cart on the omnishopper’s retail journey
Mumbai: It’s never been a better time to be a shopper, given today’s buy-anywhere retail environment. It’s raining deals at stores, on social media, and inside in the comfort of the couch at your fingertips. Mobile commerce is expected to make up 83 per cent of all e-commerce sales by 2024, and 8 per cent of total retail1. And now shopping is such that points of discovery differ from the actual spot of purchase. A product on a streaming platform like Spotify catches a shopper’s eye who then swings by the store or their preferred e-commerce platform.
Catch the big wave in omnichannel surfing
With e-commerce sales expected to grow by 27 per cent by the end of 20211, there are more ways to shop and even more places for shoppers to discover that great find. So for an ‘omni-shopper’ who shops across multiple devices and places, more accessibility does not make it easy for brands to target them. These shoppers aren’t just buying what they need, they’re constantly looking for what they want, or didn’t know they wanted until they discovered it. This can make it hard for brands to foresee and prepare for their next move.
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Being spoiled for choice, messaging to this new-age consumer has to feel authentic, tailored, and respectful of their time and sensibilities. If not, they are going to bounce. So brands need to advertise in the right place that people trust. And when they do make a decision, it’s because they sense a personal relationship between themselves and the brand. At Spotify, we’ve worked hard to build this trust with our listeners.
Omnishoppers seek out to make a statement. 89.7 per cent of Spotify Free listeners discover brands and products from paid advertising2. A pair of kicks before everyone’s wearing them is a thing of pride, much like being the first in their group to discover a new song from a favourite artist.
The chase excites them and they know where to find it, just like how 43 per cent of Gen Z Spotify users said they’ve heard a song on social media, and then searched for it on Spotify3. And that’s why our listeners spend their time with us, eager to explore, spending an average of 2.5 hours every day, with multi-device listeners of Spotify Free spending an average of 1.5 hours on Spotify each day4.
Another big reason for brands to look at Spotify is what our listeners are planning. After delaying purchases in 2020, one in three Spotify users is looking at large, big-ticket purchases. Keep in mind that this is a user base that is likely to spend 15 per cent more on what they want than any other cohort
The experience gets more personalised for them as they spend more time listening. So Spotify matches their vibe through different moments of their day, and no other media can match that level of connection.
When it’s relevant, the recall is better too as 75 percent of Spotify listeners say they remember ads more when brands recognise their moment or setting5. Spotify helps brands reach listeners at the right moment, and the numbers speak for themselves – 2.7x higher awareness and 5.3x higher intent than campaigns with basic demographic targeting5.
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Help shoppers spot the next big thing on Spotify: Your brand
Spotify listeners are savvy to online shopping trends. They are the trendsetters. Spotify Free listeners are almost 4.3x more likely to discover brands and products via music streaming than through TV ads and 1.5x more likely than through radio ads2. Offers and benefits can be the turning point to steer through a plethora of options. 59% of Spotify Free users agree that free delivery is the top driver of online purchases for them2. 51 percent prefer easy returns and 45 percent pick the lure of discounts and coupons2.
It all comes down to targeting the right audience and enabling discovery for the engaged listener in an environment of trust. It’s just this that Spotify has built, that listeners keep coming back to every day, giving brands the perfect vantage point to reach the elusive omnishopper.
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Get in touch with us at spotify-advertising-india@spotify.com to see how your brand can engage with the right audience – avid shoppers and people seeking some retail therapy.
Sources:
1 – eMarketer, Retail Forecast, IN
2 – GWI, IN, Q1 2021
3 – Spotify Culture Next survey, conducted in April 2021 among 500 respondents 15-40 in India
4- IFPI Digital Music Report 2019
5 – Spotify Nielsen Brand Effect Studies, 2018
(This is an Advertorial, published in association with Spotify)
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
