Advertisments on my Ad-Free account

[Upen0178]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Operating System

Android, Chrome, Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Over the last few months I've been getting more and more ads on my ad-free account. I've been mostly ignoring them but now they've gotten so intrusive I have to scroll past them to actually get to my music. 99% of the time they're ads for Joe Rogan, but sometimes I'll get ads for other podcasts as well. I have never, and will never listen to a podcast on Spotify, how do I disable these ads?

A support agent told me I could 'Signal the content' to make it stop showing up but this only seems to be an option for Music ads, not podcasts. How do I 'signal' that I'm not interested in seeing ads for Joe Rogan on a daily basis?

[Kiril]

Hi there @Upen0178,

Thanks for posting in the Community!

We understand that you're unsatisfied with the content you see on your Home screen. We'd like you to know that what is shown on your screenshot are not advertisements but actually those are personalized suggestions for your profile. For the moment this is expected behavior of the app. These suggestions are based on your listening activities and the artists/shows that you liked, played (more than 30 secs) or followed. It's worthwhile to doublecheck if you haven't accidentally followed an unwanted show/artist and if so you can unfollow it, and this will in time remove the suggestions presented to you.

In case you want to browse/play content that you don't want to be reflected in your personalized suggestions, then you can take advantage of the Private listening feature.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[Upen0178]

How am I getting 'personalized' suggestions for podcasts? As I stated, I have never engaged with a podcast on Spotify, nor do I ever intend to. The only time I've ever even clicked on a podcast in Spotify is at the instruction of your support representative to attempt to block them from showing up on my account.

I've attached an image of all artists I follow, I don't think that's where I'm getting these podcasts ads. I've just unfollowed this artist on the off-chance that is what's causing it. It cannot be artists/shows that I've liked or played more than 30 seconds of because as I said, I've never listened to a podcast on Spotify.

If these advertisements are as you say, 'personalized suggestions for my profile' and not advertisements that Spotify is paid to display to me then what steps can I take to make your suggestions relevant to me? I'm interested in using Spotify to listen to music. How do I train your algorithm to suggest content I'm interested in (music) and stop showing content I'm not interested in (podcasts.)

[Yordan]

Hey @Upen0178,

Thanks for the reply.

The tabs shown on your Home page in the app cannot be customized as of yet, meaning it's not possible to hide Podcast-related tabs like "Episodes for you". This, however, may change in the future as Spotify continues to evolve in order to provide the best service possible to its users.

As soon as there's any info about this, rest assured we'll post an update on our Newsroom website.

The Community is always here if there's anything else you need assistance with.
 

Take care.