Friday, May 28, 2010

Pandora - an ad placing machine?


Although Pandora has been around for almost 10 years, it is pretty new to me as its use restricted to US. Pandora iPhone app is still at top 21 of the free-app download list today. (http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/free-apps/) I think this is an excellent web-based software which can play music tailored to your music preference and plays them non-stop. Pandora changes the way that people listen to music as it diverts traffic from internet streaming version of the normal radio station like www.capitalfm.com . A lot of listeners actually prefer listening to straight music and skip the DJ. Also they can listen to the music they really like rather than what the DJ likes.

For the free version, there are advertisements everywhere, and it occupies almost half the page. These are mostly interactive ads that are tailored to internet radio station. It is apparent that Pandora survives on advertising revenue and it has 7 sales offices within US apart from its headquarters. The entire page (skin) could change color to suit the advertisement, there are many custom designed icons and features that could built into the advertisement. There are many different types of advertisements available and all very creative. The full description can be found here in the video for advertisers http://www.pandora.com/static/ads/media-kit/advertising.html

Pandora tries to entice the listeners to keep going back onto the page by asking listeners to click on whether they like or unlike the song (part of their tailoring method), so they can see the advertisement next to the Pandora. There are also many ads tailored to the iPhone or Blackberry application, like click to call, banner ads for mobile, click to find location etc.

Sometimes it acts similar to the normal radio station and slots in an audio advertisement in between songs. So in case you are not browsing the Pandora page, their ads can still reach out to you.

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