Per Sendall, co-head of ads at Spotify, joins Brian Morrissey in Cannes for TRB Conversations, powered by EX.CO, to break down how AI agents are already changing the way Spotify builds and sells advertising.

Sendall explains why "the vast majority" of Spotify's code is now being written by software agents, how the company built and open-sourced a CLI plug-in that lets brands buy audio ads using natural language, and why he thinks agentic negotiation is still years away — because AI models are "hard coded to be nice," making them easy for human negotiators to exploit.

Also covered:

• Spotify's rebuilt ad tech stack: its own ad server, ads manager, and programmatic exchange (SAX)

• Why audio advertising has 30-year staying power, and what that means for attribution windows

• Spotify's new generative AI creative tool, available in 12 languages with 100 voices

• The "sponsor playlist" product and how Spotify is rethinking ad load in exchange for brand takeovers

• 00:00 EX.CO Spot

• 00:38 Intro

• 01:10 Welcome

• 01:28 Rebuilding the Ads Stack

• 03:58 Programmatic Audio Push

• 07:23 Free vs Premium Ad Experience

• 10:44 Agentic Ads Reality Check

• 14:28 Ways Off From Agent Negotiation

• 15:21 Cannes Memory Lane