PepsiCo’s fitness water brand Propel wants its digital messaging to reach consumers while they’re working out, so it’s focused its media investments around music and mobile. Propel has a deep relationship with Pandora as well as Under Armour’s fitness tracker app, Map My Fitness. “Propel as a brand has centered itself around uniting fitness tribes and […]
Pandora’s active listeners in Q2 declined 2.7% YoY to 76 million, the company reported on its Monday earnings call. That’s down from 78 million active listeners during the same period last year. To bolster its user base, Pandora will refocus its marketing efforts on getting users to sign up for its ad-supported tier and upgrading […]
Despite the wide rollout of its Premium subscription product in April, Pandora is still betting on ads for revenue. Now that Premium has hit the market, Pandora can refocus its efforts and resources on launching new ad products, including programmatic audio, in the back half of the year, said CEO and founder Tim Westergren on […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Eric Picard, vice president of advertising product management at Pandora. The first seven years of the programmatic revolution were driven by three major efforts. It began with the creation and propagation of the massive […]
Pandora’s audio ads are about to get personal. The streaming giant partnered with UK-based dynamic audio creative vendor A Million Ads on Thursday to bring tailored creative and sequential messaging to audio ads in-stream. The capability will launch this year in beta, but Pandora did not state specifically when. Pandora will leverage A Million Ads’ […]
In the 16 years since it launched in 2001, Propel, Gatorade’s fitness-focused water brand, has slipped from top-of-mind presence for its audience to out of mind. “Consumers would say, ‘I love Propel. I kind of forgot about it,’” said Gina Hardy, senior marketing director of Gatorade at PepsiCo. To get its brand back in action […]
Pandora is increasing its bet on ad tech. The streaming music platform will bring on Eric Picard as VP of ad product management to continue building out display and video products and lead its dive into programmatic audio. Picard is a longtime ad tech executive. In 1997, he launched Bluestreak, one of the first companies […]
Pandora will launch in-stream programmatic audio ads later next year, although no timeline has been specified. “We’re really excited about where programmatic goes in 2017,” Pandora Chief Revenue Officer John Trimble told AdExchanger on Tuesday at a company-hosted event in New York City. “We’ve built a really strong business on the mobile side. We’re looking […]
Pandora launched the Harmonic Audio Network on Thursday, in partnership with streaming platforms TuneIn and AccuRadio, to offer advertisers mass reach on premium inventory across digital audio platforms. The network will sell exclusive in-stream audio inventory from its own as well as partner platforms. Both TuneIn and AccuRadio will commit roughly 95% to 98% of […]
The programmatic salesperson only came into existence about five years ago. What started out as an outsider position in the sales organization has become more mainstream as programmatic adoption increases. But the very people holding programmatic sales roles are already predicting its extinction, as the role gets absorbed into the entire sales process. “In three […]
In lieu of a quarterly earnings call, Pandora invited investors to Terra Gallery in San Francisco on Tuesday for an in-depth discussion of its new product suite, developed to breathe life back into its struggling platform. Pandora, which has long monetized on in-stream audio and display ads, now faces a multiplying set of competitors that has […]
Banks, brokerages, insurance companies, mortgage providers and the like want to direct their advertising spend toward users they know will convert, which requires granular audience targeting. “The KPIs are just much more performance-oriented,” said Jordan Bick, VP of financial services at Pandora, which recently began working with financial services advertisers. “They want to know how […]
Spotify made its big debut of programmatic audio, but Pandora’s recent ad products focus on the visual. While the highest engagement is with its audio ads, Pandora is investing heavily in visual ads. Reason being: It wants to be more than a listening platform. Sponsored Listening, launched last year, allows brands to sponsor one hour […]
Political ad dollars, even more so than brand budgets, have conglomerated around a handful of major players. Of the more than $1 billion analysts predict candidates and super PACs will spend online this election, “half will go to Facebook and Google, Pandora – those are the big ones – and Twitter,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics […]
Merkle is introducing Publisher Addressable Marketplaces, which matches its advertisers’ CRM data with publishers’ subscriber data in order to target real people through partners like Pandora, Trusted Media Brands, Viant and LiveIntent. Publisher Addressable Marketplaces’ data onboarding and targeting capabilities are similar to Facebook’s hugely successful CRM matching program Custom Audiences, and its introduction comes […]
On Tuesday, Pandora revealed it would be introducing two visual ad units at the end of the year: a mobile ad unit delivered within the same space that has the album art, and that adjusts based on the phone’s screen size; and muted video in a responsive display unit. Both are in beta with Express […]
Pandora’s Q1 2016 call on Thursday revealed that programmatic sales of display inventory drove increased sell-through rates. In an earnings release, Pandora claimed the buying method is “starting to contribute meaningfully” to advertising revenue per 1,000 ad-supported listener hours, which grew 19% year over year to $45.47, and take pressure off ad loads. Pandora made […]
Digital audio inventory is increasingly available for programmatic purchase. But while audio publishers see value in the audience-based buying and granular targeting that programmatic offers, they are wary of dumping their inventory into an open exchange. And advertisers aren’t really sure how programmatic audio fits into their paid media mix. Here’s the landscape: iHeartRadio inventory […]
On Monday, Pandora appointed a new CEO, CFO, COO and CPO. And the company has lately begun evaluating a possible sale. But at least one member of the C-suite is still standing: CRO John Trimble. That may be because while Pandora’s user growth has stalled in the wake of competition from places like Spotify and […]
Brian McAndrews is out as CEO and president of Pandora, where he served since 2013. He has been replaced by company founder Tim Westergren. McAndrews, who has a long history in digital advertising, departs at a time when Pandora faces major growth challenges in the intensely competitive music streaming space. While McAndrews brought a long […]
When Taco Bell launched its breakfast option last year, the brand had two main challenges on its plate: driving awareness among millennials and translating that heightened awareness into repeat foot traffic. It was a tall order considering that Taco Bell isn’t known for breakfast and that competition in the quick-service restaurant space is fierce. (See the […]
When Pandora announced its intent in November to acquire the assets of Rdio, it was reportedly an attempt to make up an ad revenue shortfall. Though people increasingly listen to online radio, with 143 million each month this year (the number has doubled since 2010, according to Edison Research), streaming services are still working out approaches […]
Hear that? It’s the sound of political advertisers starting to open their wallets wide. Around $1 billion is expected to be spent on digital media during the 2016 presidential election, according to Borrell Associates, and Pandora is looking to attract some of those dollars with the release of souped-up political targeting segments. The music discovery […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by John Trimble, chief revenue officer at Pandora. Like many events in the ad business, the conversations that happen offstage at Advertising Week can be even more impactful than those that take place in the […]
Pandora knows sound. Now the music streaming service is experimenting with sight and motion in its quest for new users – and mobile is the central battleground. More than three-quarters of Pandora’s roughly 80 million monthly active users listen on mobile. “We want to acquire and engage high-quality listeners – aka users who actively use the app […]
Even if terrestrial radio still has the bulk of audience, the growth – and ability to target – is in streaming audio. And an international brand like Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos needs its tune to reverberate across a global stage. This is one of the reasons why it signed on to use a native […]
A troupe of traditional broadcasters has a message for media buyers: Your perception of audio streaming audiences is skewed, according to a study by Advertiser Perceptions released Tuesday. The study, commissioned by terrestrial broadcasters (including Cumulus, Westwood One, iHeartMedia, CBS Radio, Cox Media Group, Hubbard Radio, Radio Advertising Bureau and Radio One) found media buyers […]
Pandora took its Sponsored Listening product out of beta on Monday. The mobile ad format lets brands sponsor an hour of uninterrupted listening for Pandora users in exchange for 15 seconds of engagement with an ad. “Advertisers are hungry for a model that lets them buy attention and we’ve seen really great interest from the […]
Pandora is enjoying rising ad prices aided by its SMB sales efforts, CEO Brian McAndrews told investors during the company’s second quarter earnings call. “Our advertising investments, particularly in local, are paying off,” McAndrews said, adding, “RPMs were up 25% year over year, to a record $49.94.” According to McAndrews, Pandora’s success with local advertisers […]
The music streaming space got a bit more crowded on Tuesday with the launch of Apple Music, rivaling streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and Google Play. But as the war to win audiences escalates, questions about Apple’s model linger. After a three-month free trial, Apple Music will become a subscription-based platform for a monthly fee […]
