Sky Planning Digital Sales Cutbacks, Flirting With Spotify For Cricket

Sky’s PC and mobile ad sales house, Sky Digital Media, is planning to cut five percent of its 50-strong workforce after recent advertising declines. The company – which sells ads both on to Sky’s own properties like Sky.com and its 365 Network sites, plus a network of third-party publishers – confirmed a restructure to MediaWeek, which also reports Sky is nevertheless doing an interesting advertising deal with Spotify…

Sky is using the music streaming app’s audio commercials to pipe near-live commentary updates from the Ashes cricket tournament, inviting listeners to click a banner to watch the competition live via Sky Player. Spotify is clearly happy to please advertisers with inventive campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all spots, and this is one of the most interesting we’ve seen. Sky Player is Sky’s subscription-only web-based VOD and live TV viewer; the promo comes with a half-price offer for the service.